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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ozzy702

Golden Member
Nov 1, 2011
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It would be far worse from a PR perspective to admit that anyone else wrote it and sent it out with no or minimal oversight from Bryan. That's the kind of thing that's going to get investors asking questions

Yep, which is why Bryan is just owning it. It still sucks and is a huge black eye, but admitting that he wasn't aware of it would mean immediate termination in a case this big.
 

DJinPrime

Member
Sep 9, 2020
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It would be far worse from a PR perspective to admit that anyone else wrote it and sent it out with no or minimal oversight from Bryan. That's the kind of thing that's going to get investors asking questions
This was why I previously said that Steve should have try to clarify with BDR first instead of posting it in public. You owe it to your colleague to try to fix things before doing something that could be embarrassing or damaging to that person's career. And I'm not talking about just getting the ban lifted, it's an opportunity to make NV see that their policy (if it was even a policy and not just some guy being a dick with hwub) was wrong and change it. I done that many times where a manager or peer said/email something wrong, I would do a side chat to have them fix their mistake and not me telling them they're wrong in front of everyone. That's why I found Steve's response disappointing, especially with his explain video where it was clear that he/Linus didn't think it was in character of the PR head. Yet they released the internet on him.
Be nicer to your fellow man. Not everything should be treated like a forum flame war :tongueout:
 
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kawi6rr

Senior member
Oct 17, 2013
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I've read quite a few pages of posts and noticed the same few Nvidia "holdouts", can't use the term "fanboy", actually defending Nvidia's actions. I hope you're getting kick backs from Nvidia because blindly defending a tech company for no money is just utterly stupid.
 
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Hail The Brain Slug

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2005
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This was why I previously said that Steve should have try to clarify with BDR first instead of posting it in public. You owe it to your colleague to try to fix things before doing something that could be embarrassing or damaging to that person's career. And I'm not talking about just getting the ban lifted, it's an opportunity to make NV see that their policy (if it was even a policy and not just some guy being a dick with hwub) was wrong and change it. I done that many times where a manager or peer said/email something wrong, I would do a side chat to have them fix their mistake and not me telling them they're wrong in front of everyone. That's why I found Steve's response disappointing, especially with his explain video where it was clear that he/Linus didn't think it was in character of the PR head. Yet they released the internet on him.
Be nicer to your fellow man. Not everything should be treated like a forum flame war :tongueout:

You apparently didn't watch his video where he explained the series of events.



They were skipped over for 3060ti FE samples with no word from nvidia.

He emailed them to inquire.

Days later, he emailed them to inquire a second time.

Days later, he emailed them to inquire a third time.

They replied to let him know they would look into it.

Then this email was sent to him.



It wasn't a drunk email out of the blue. It wasn't an isolated situation. There was premeditation leading up to it with skipping his review samples and then ghosting him. The amount of time it took for this reply to be sent to him after his persistent inquiries indicates it wasn't off-the-cuff, either.
 

ozzy702

Golden Member
Nov 1, 2011
1,151
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This was why I previously said that Steve should have try to clarify with BDR first instead of posting it in public. You owe it to your colleague to try to fix things before doing something that could be embarrassing or damaging to that person's career. And I'm not talking about just getting the ban lifted, it's an opportunity to make NV see that their policy (if it was even a policy and not just some guy being a dick with hwub) was wrong and change it. I done that many times where a manager or peer said/email something wrong, I would do a side chat to have them fix their mistake and not me telling them they're wrong in front of everyone. That's why I found Steve's response disappointing, especially with his explain video where it was clear that he/Linus didn't think it was in character of the PR head. Yet they released the internet on him.
Be nicer to your fellow man. Not everything should be treated like a forum flame war :tongueout:

I see that, but also see NVIDIA's extremely poor track record and the need for them to be put in check. Yes, it sucks for Bryan, but he should be running a tighter ship, and if there are bad actors on his teem, he should have done his job and removed them before they pulled something like this. In this case, I feel that sweeping it under the rug, while much nicer for Bryan, wouldn't change behavior and wouldn't nudge them in the right direction. This is a large enough PR nightmare that heads should roll and pain needs to be felt.
 

dr1337

Senior member
May 25, 2020
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This was why I previously said that Steve should have try to clarify with BDR first instead of posting it in public. You owe it to your colleague to try to fix things before doing something that could be embarrassing or damaging to that person's career. And I'm not talking about just getting the ban lifted, it's an opportunity to make NV see that their policy (if it was even a policy and not just some guy being a dick with hwub) was wrong and change it. I done that many times where a manager or peer said/email something wrong, I would do a side chat to have them fix their mistake and not me telling them they're wrong in front of everyone. That's why I found Steve's response disappointing, especially with his explain video where it was clear that he/Linus didn't think it was in character of the PR head. Yet they released the internet on him.
Be nicer to your fellow man. Not everything should be treated like a forum flame war :tongueout:
I completely disagree and pretty much for the same reasons you argued. BDR should have a grip on what emails he's letting his PR team send out; A sudden outright ban because of "editorial direction" without any sort or prior discussion also isn't very nice to your fellow man
 

gdansk

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2011
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In the future, no company will explain why they aren't giving out review samples. I'm actually amazed Nvidia did, it shows they thought they could get compliance (presumably from past experience?)
 

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
3,610
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In the future, no company will explain why they aren't giving out review samples. I'm actually amazed Nvidia did, it shows they thought they could get compliance (presumably from past experience?)
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.
 

Hail The Brain Slug

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2005
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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.

I agree.

The added layer of hilarity is the objective proof that Hardware Unboxed did indeed cover and positively review the very features nvidia claimed they didn't.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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I see that, but also see NVIDIA's extremely poor track record and the need for them to be put in check. Yes, it sucks for Bryan, but he should be running a tighter ship, and if there are bad actors on his teem, he should have done his job and removed them before they pulled something like this. In this case, I feel that sweeping it under the rug, while much nicer for Bryan, wouldn't change behavior and wouldn't nudge them in the right direction. This is a large enough PR nightmare that heads should roll and pain needs to be felt.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people are fired over this, but don't expect some kind of big announcement. Better to keep it quiet and let everyone move on instead of picking at scabs.

Just because he's falling on the sword in public doesn't mean no one else is getting the axe in private. Things are going to certainly change so something like this doesn't happen again.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
4,881
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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

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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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ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
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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.