nVidia blocks Hardware Unboxed due to rasterization focus. Update: nVidia retracts.

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BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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LTT coverage


My thoughts

I think this is wrong and to be completely fair, I called out this behavior when AMD played similar shenanigans with TPU and Tech Report.

As for the "gamers" comment above, as of right now I don't give a crap about ray tracing, and even less of a crap about DLSS. I own a 2060 Super and never use any of those features by choice, for various reasons. Perhaps in 3-5 years with 2-3 new generations of cards, my opinion might change.

Rasterization is by far the most important feature for me, and I'm not a minority by any stretch of the imagination:

Survey.jpg

Update: nVidia now retracted


I'm not surprised they retracted but I expected it to take longer along with a "it was an internal draft that was never supposed to be released", or similar.
 
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maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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Because the point wasn't to stop giving FE samples to a large review channel because you don't like the way they cover you. The point was to make it abundantly clear to that site that their editorial direction needs to change if they want to continue to be able to provide day 1 reviews of nVidia products which is something that probably makes up a decent part of their revenue stream.
And as an example to the rest of the community.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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editorial direction needs to change if they want to continue to be able to provide day 1 reviews of nVidia products which is something that probably makes up a decent part of their revenue stream.

Does it? Anandtech would be dead by now if day 1 reviews mattered that much given the track record in last couple months-years. Steady downhill trend.
 

maddogmcgee

Senior member
Apr 20, 2015
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Does it? Anandtech would be dead by now if day 1 reviews mattered that much given the track record in last couple months-years. Steady downhill trend.

Linus talked about it and said that Day 1 reviews are super important for his channel and make up a huge portion of the overall views. Steve said that it is not as important for his channel compared to some one like Linus. It would still obviously be a blow though, or he wouldn't look like crap from working late every time their is a new release.

Anandtech is a bit different to both I would say. I don't even know who their audience is anymore.
 

Guru

Senior member
May 5, 2017
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Guys this is going to stick to Nvidia, just like the GTX 970 3.5GB thing, just like the Kyle thing, just like the GT 1030 DDR4 thing, just like the Nvidia initiative when they tried to force partners to use their best brands for Nvidia products and create new brands for AMD products!

This is more ammunition against Nvidia, ultimately all of these add up and users are less likely to buy from Nvidia if AMD has an equivalent product available.

I always buy what is the best value, so I bought the GTX 1060 6GB over the RX 480 8GB become at the time it was better value, it run DX11 faster and consumed less power at that, yeah later with the RX 580 and optimizations and DX12 titles the RX 580 became better, but that was at least 1 year after release, probably more like 2 years.

Then I bought the RX 5700xt because it was best value, $400 card with a performance like Nvidia's $500 RTX 2070, it crushed the same priced 2060super, in fact it wasn't even a competition, the 2060s sucked, the 2060 vanilla sucked, garbage cards at their price as AMD's alternative were much much better! So I obviously went with the RX 5700xt as it is a much better card in every regard!

Now I bought the RTX 3070 8GB, but only because I could not acquire a RX 6800, they were much more expensive and pretty much unavailable as well, so I went with a RTX 3070. Pretty much same value as the RX 6800, but I really like that 16GB of vram for the 6800, I also think AMD are better positions for futureproofing due to the consoles!

But all of the listed issues above makes me look at Nvidia unfavorable and in the future I'm less likely to buy from them! I don't want to support a giant corporation that uses their influence and might to silence medium sized reviewers, that is just wrong! And HUB has every right to cover as little RT or DLSS as they want. Sure Nvidia don't have to send them cards, but the reason for it is basically evil.
 
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Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
16,600
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That claim is 100% true. You can use this to conduct your own research: https://consumerist.com/2006/02/08/nvidia-focus-group-member-details-hidden-program/

The hidden nVidia viral program - partnered with AEG - seeded multiple tech forums with shills using alt accounts. nVidia provided them gifts "evaluation equipment" of high-end video cards, 30" monitors, nForce motherboards, and 3DVision gear as compensation. These little dancing orifice puppets kept their affiliation hidden until finally exposed.

There were at least four here including Rollo and Keysplayer (who joined after it was exposed). Rollo used to post under multiple handles at multiple forums using alts like JethroBodine and FallenAngel. Also another member (Wreckage) openly admitted posting anti-AMD sentiment purposefully to wind people up and to try to get into the program.

nTrollo was particularly slime-scum because he got numerous people banned for "witch-hunts" before we found out the accusations were true. He also repeatedly threatened AT with "freedom of speech" lawsuits and that he had access to unlimited ISPs to re-register.

The most interesting part is that nTrollo was dumb as a brick when it came to graphic cards, and he didn't even understand what he was actually testing or any of the tech. So clearly the program wasn't looking for competence as joining criteria.

And while I can't prove it directly, to this day I suspect the very highest echelons of AT such as Derek Wilson and Anand were in on it, as there was no real backlash, just a temp ban for nTrollo. I'll bet nVidia either provided AT compensation or strong-armed them somehow.

I mean nTrollo was allowed back in to do more even damage after exposed, and Keysplayer was given moderation powers. Who the hell voluntarily allows their own private commercial forum to be moderated by a sock puppet from a tech company that has a competing forum?

I’ll confirm everything you said. Rollo was trolling the entire forums for years before being outed banned and then reinstated.

Keysplayr was also very pro-NV, who then admitted to being part of the NV focus group then became a Mod. I too never understood that decision.

(Actually thinking back I’m getting strong LOTR vibes. I was there 3000 (well 15) years ago when the strength of men (mods) failed. Throw it into the fire! - Ban the guerilla marketers! No!)


AMD ostensibly pulled something similar to a lesser degree as I remember some former posters like @apoppin getting disgusted with the whole thing and leaving to start their own sites. (Which you helped contribute content to if I remember correctly)

For those who want to read up here’s one of the major threads

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...-with-aeg-exposed-updated-poll-added.1804008/
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,135
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Am I the only one who's struggling to give a damn about NVidia ray tracing performance either way? The 20X0 series cards did it poorly, and the 30X0 series cards have been completely out of stock for months.

Maybe this will change a year from now, when there are more than a dozen games with ray traced lighting support, and you can actually buy a 30X0 card in stores.
 

ozzy702

Golden Member
Nov 1, 2011
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Am I the only one who's struggling to give a damn about NVidia ray tracing performance either way? The 20X0 series cards did it poorly, and the 30X0 series cards have been completely out of stock for months.

Maybe this will change a year from now, when there are more than a dozen games with ray traced lighting support, and you can actually buy a 30X0 card in stores.

Yep. Ray tracing will eventually be fantastic but we're still a generation or two out from it being viable technology in my book.
 

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
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I’ll confirm everything you said. Rollo was trolling the entire forums for years before being outed banned and then reinstated.

Keysplayr was also very pro-NV, who then admitted to being part of the NV focus group then became a Mod. I too never understood that decision.
(Actually thinking back I’m getting strong LOTR vibes. I was there 3000 (well 15) years ago when the strength of men (mods) failed. Throw it into the fire! - Ban the guerilla marketers! No!)
..........

Both of them were low key trolling the AT forum, Rollo always skirting right at the edge of the rules and over, Keysplayr being more cautious but equally bad for his more subtle tricks, tried to poke people to get them banned. I think Rollo finally hacked the forum and got permabanned. A member got banned for exposing (without proof) Rollo/Keys for being secret AEG marketers and I'm not sure if he got reinstated.
Appopins case was different, he didn't get review hardware on time and had a meltdown.
 
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NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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Yep. Ray tracing will eventually be fantastic but we're still a generation or two out from it being viable technology in my book.

When raytracing can be run on low end cards and developers don't need to produce a no-RT version of their renderer, it will be a big leap forwards. It will simplify things greatly, and make life much easier. But right now it's just one more feature to develop on top of an already complex graphics engine.
 
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Mopetar

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Jan 31, 2011
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It's not just the low-end cards, but the integrated graphics in APUs (which are replacing the bottom of the low end) that need to be able to handle it before we'll truly be able to move off of the hybrid model.

That's far more than just two or three generations out and that's only when I think we'll start seeing acceptable performance in the mid-range GPUs.
 

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
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That's far more than just two or three generations out and that's only when I think we'll start seeing acceptable performance in the mid-range GPUs.
What is acceptable performance - I bet you'll be able to use RT + DLSS on a 3050 in cyberpunk - sure not at max settings but it'll be a graphical step up on whatever it could do without RT.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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What is acceptable performance - I bet you'll be able to use RT + DLSS on a 3050 in cyberpunk - sure not at max settings but it'll be a graphical step up on whatever it could do without RT.

I doubt a 3050 will handle RT very well at all given what we've seen from performance at the high-end cards. Even those struggle with running RT and from video reviews it's still easy to spot where the DLSS isn't doing a good enough job or results in a blurrier image. At a certain point the render resolution is so low that it's just not possible to reconstruct a high resolution image without a lot of inaccuracies cropping up in the image. Several reviews that have looked at RT + DLSS in Cyberpunk have said that going below the 1440p render resolution is where it starts to drop off.

But why bother turning RT on when you can just run DLSS fine without it? For all of the people who swear they can't tell a difference or that it actually makes a more realistic image than native rendering, there's no longer any point in getting a high-end card since a mid-range one will be perfectly capable of upsampling from lower resolutions. You'll essentially get the same performance as the high-end card would doing a native render, but if you can't tell the difference why spend an extra $400+ for it?
 

Dribble

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Aug 9, 2005
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I doubt a 3050 will handle RT very well at all given what we've seen from performance at the high-end cards. Even those struggle with running RT and from video reviews it's still easy to spot where the DLSS isn't doing a good enough job or results in a blurrier image. At a certain point the render resolution is so low that it's just not possible to reconstruct a high resolution image without a lot of inaccuracies cropping up in the image. Several reviews that have looked at RT + DLSS in Cyberpunk have said that going below the 1440p render resolution is where it starts to drop off.

But why bother turning RT on when you can just run DLSS fine without it? For all of the people who swear they can't tell a difference or that it actually makes a more realistic image than native rendering, there's no longer any point in getting a high-end card since a mid-range one will be perfectly capable of upsampling from lower resolutions. You'll essentially get the same performance as the high-end card would doing a native render, but if you can't tell the difference why spend an extra $400+ for it?
All the reviews run with ultra + full RT, or ultra + no RT and quality DLSS. There are other settings! I'm guessing you would use something more like high + medium RT + balanced DLSS at 1080p and it'll be fine on a lower end RT card (3050 which I guess will be similar to say a 2060 super) while still looking better then any mix of settings without RT at the same res.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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I’ll confirm everything you said. Rollo was trolling the entire forums for years before being outed banned and then reinstated.

Keysplayr was also very pro-NV, who then admitted to being part of the NV focus group then became a Mod. I too never understood that decision.

(Actually thinking back I’m getting strong LOTR vibes. I was there 3000 (well 15) years ago when the strength of men (mods) failed. Throw it into the fire! - Ban the guerilla marketers! No!)


AMD ostensibly pulled something similar to a lesser degree as I remember some former posters like @apoppin getting disgusted with the whole thing and leaving to start their own sites. (Which you helped contribute content to if I remember correctly)

For those who want to read up here’s one of the major threads

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...-with-aeg-exposed-updated-poll-added.1804008/
Thanks for linking to that classic drama. It was worth skimming through for the reference to Sharky Extreme alone. :cool:

I tried to tell them that most corps treat biz as warfare. Some considered The Art of War an instructional. That some members seemed genuinely upset that there were other members with hidden agendas, was high comedy to me. As if the plant in the crowd, the snake oil salesmen used, was an alien concept to them. The ones talking about how they were influencing people to buy stuff was even more comical. Brian/Rollo was hated by anyone not already on Nvidia's stringer. None of them were going to listen to him. Anyone listening had already drank the green sour apple kool-aid.

Here we are 15 years later, and Nvidia has never stopped waging war. For people like myself, it was expected that they benefitted greatly from doing so. If any of you are wondering why they can keep getting away with it, the answers are simple.

  1. The public has a short memory.
  2. There is always a fresh crop of new PC gamers to sell to.
  3. Many that detest their tactics, end up buying their products. The seemingly reasonable mental state of "I do not have loyalty to any company. I buy whatever the best product for my money is, when I am looking to buy." Well, it turns out, that product is often the "bad guy's". So if your principles are not such that you are willing to permanently boycott a company, you are part of what you perceive as a problem. Because they will just keep doing whatever they want, since they get to laugh all the way to the bank with your money.
It may be hard to hear, but either you take a stand, and boycott companies that offend you, or you accept that you are financially supporting said offensive behavior. Myself? I am not offended, in fact, I would be shocked if any of these companies did not follow the "All is fair in love and war" attitude toward how they run their biz.
 

CP5670

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Jun 24, 2004
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I remember those days. Rollo was irritating, and the worst thing is he had an outward appearance of being very knowledgeable that made people easily listen to him. It was definitely entertaining though. :D

I also assume all these companies do shady things and will buy whatever products I like. The PR departments have to justify their own paychecks somehow.
 
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blckgrffn

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May 1, 2003
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www.teamjuchems.com
Things would be better if so many companies hadn't outsourced the PR departments to Mordor.


Results tend to win contracts, not necessarily methods. Everyone wants to be able to sleep at night, but having been a marketing director you get to choose whether to lose sleep over missing targets or the methods your outsourced firms and employees are using to avoid those discussions. It's way easier sleeping when the company is hitting revenue targets and everything is "fine" at the office, let me tell you.

I mean, Sauron would have won that war more than once if not for persistence and luck ;) Those rings were a solid strategy!
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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All the reviews run with ultra + full RT, or ultra + no RT and quality DLSS.
Not true, HWUB tested minimal RT (reflections only) which has the smallest RT performance hit.

I'm guessing you would use something more like high + medium RT + balanced DLSS at 1080p and it'll be fine on a lower end RT card (3050 which I guess will be similar to say a 2060 super) while still looking better then any mix of settings without RT at the same res.
Except DLSS + 1080p isn't 1080p, it's 720p (or lower). DLSS is the "emperor's clothes" of technology because the upscale-to-resolution doesn't actually exist.

Given even a 3090 can't run RT acceptably in CP2077, a 3050 is DOA, especially since it'll almost certainly be 6GB.
 

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
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....................
  1. The public has a short memory.
  2. There is always a fresh crop of new PC gamers to sell to.
  3. Many that detest their tactics, end up buying their products. The seemingly reasonable mental state of "I do not have loyalty to any company. I buy whatever the best product for my money is, when I am looking to buy." Well, it turns out, that product is often the "bad guy's". So if your principles are not such that you are willing to permanently boycott a company, you are part of what you perceive as a problem. Because they will just keep doing whatever they want, since they get to laugh all the way to the bank with your money.
It may be hard to hear, but either you take a stand, and boycott companies that offend you, or you accept that you are financially supporting said offensive behavior. Myself? I am not offended, in fact, I would be shocked if any of these companies did not follow the "All is fair in love and war" attitude toward how they run their biz.

Why turn things around for trying to pin the blame on people who criticize stealth/viral marketing. You're ignoring the fact that the AT forum moderators banned people for implying that someone was an Nvidia viral marketer without absolute proof. Did AT ever bothered to reinstate Tuttle's (I think that was him) account? You're just giving Nvidia and every company who stooped to using scummy tactics a free pass if you are not offended and go on insisting that people who don't like it have to temporarily/permanently boycott Nvidia. Instead of thanking people for bringing such matters to light, now they are part of the problem for not 'sticking up for their principles', what BS.

It boggles the mind that people like Rollo/Keys got to become mods when they were low key trolling the forums. Constantly making subtle jabs and disingenuous assertions, subtly trying to turn opinion against Radeon/AMD, making the forums a more corrosive experience. At least I get to point that AT mods/admins have to own that mistake and doubly so when the forum got DDOS'd by Rollo.
 
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Glo.

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Given even a 3090 can't run RT acceptably in CP2077, a 3050 is DOA, especially since it'll almost certainly be 6GB.
3050 is based on 107 die, according to our latest knowledge, which means its not 6 GB.

Its 4 GB, or 8 GB should Nvidia decide to give more VRAM to customers. But most likely, knowing Nvidia, its 4 GB on 128 bit GDDR6 bus.
 
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