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

[BFG10K]

Full letter

Spoiler

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:

Spoiler

Update: nVidia now retracted

https://twitter.com/x/status/1337885741389471745

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.

 

[Martimus]

This is completely insane. Luckily they don't have a monopoly, and there is some pretty good competition. I will have a difficult time buying an Nvidia product after this.

 

[ozzy702]

That was such a fantastic video. Never seen Linus that fired up and he was spot on. NVIDIA is on the ropes and this was a damage control attempt that backfired on them spectacularly.

 

[Schmide]

Strong arm tactics when you're looking for regulatory approval of ARM.

 

[richierich1212]

I just watched 40 minutes of that LTT video and he’s spot on. I agree with Linus 100%.
F Nvidia. It’s too bad they’re practically a monopoly at this point in time. But I don’t like the precedent that has been set.

AMD can’t get enough wafers for their GPUs which means less in the hands of actual consumers.

I have a 144Hz 1080P monitor so a higher frame rate with the best visual quality is more important. Ray Tracing cripples the current GPUs more than I like. Maybe the 4000-series GeForce cards will provide fast RT performance at high FPS.

 

[RasCas99]

I expect an apology coming Monday morning , this is an American company , they rarely likes this kind of attention , what i find so puzzling is the "why" , why do you care about a 500K youtube channel , mind the fact they actually said GOOD things about the 3000 cards , are Nvidia that desperate to have an even MORE positive reviews ? disgusting and needless , what a PR nightmare for them , lowest ROI move ive seen lately in the PR world.,.... what a mess.
There is no way Jensen doesnt go berserk when he gets the briefing on whats going on , not because i believe he approves or not the end result of baring HUB from reviewing (beyond the point) , but because the wording is SO bad , and it comes officially from Nvidia , just dont give HUB cards the next go around , no need to explain , no need to discuss , nothing , but they HAD to write a mafia mail .....

 

[Guru]

What the actual F? Did Nvidia official, head of PR as they mention actually write that? It looks like a 15yo high schooler wrote it, because they had a sissy fit at the time!

Heads should roll at Nvidia, that guy and people related to this should be fired immediately, if Jensen doesn't fire these people, then he might as well be the one who wrote the email!

And they are seeking approval for the purchase of ARM and that they won't do any monopolistic bullshit like this! OMG!

 

[sandorski]

I think AMD has given them a scare.

 

[swilli89]

And this just... clearly spells out this disdain I've always had for NVIDIA. AMD certainly isn't perfect (since it will be compared), but NVIDIA has just always seemed so hawkish and hell-bent on winning at any cost.

In 2004 I bought a Geforce 6800 GT and I noticed in Homeworld 2 that ships looked like absolute pixelated jaggy garbage when I rotated the camera at extreme angles.

It turns out NVIDIA had enabled cheats in their drivers to boost their performance across the board in order to beat ATi and I've never forgotten that for as long as I've been a PC hardware person.

This is NVIDIA showing its true corporate culture. It all starts and rolls down from Huang. The dude is absolutely cutthroat, and I believe they are actually threatened by the fact that Big Navi is more or less on par with their latest and greatest.

 

[tamz_msc]

Well this is unwarranted but you can't deny that they are among the most pro-AMD reviewers out there. It is factually true that they never focus much on RT or DLSS - when they do show benchmarks of RT to compare against AMD, they chose the worst implementation of it by showing Dirt 5 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. They have the lowest gap between the 3060 Ti and 5700 XT among most of the reviews and they were constantly trying to undersell the 3060 Ti by stating that it's not enough of a performance uplift over the 5700 XT.

 

[maddogmcgee]

As an Aussie I am a big fan of that channel. Just bought a 3060ti but I am regretting my decision TBH and will do my best to buy AMD in the future.

 

[maddogmcgee]

Well this is unwarranted but you can't deny that they are among the most pro-AMD reviewers out there. It is factually true that they never focus much on RT or DLSS - when they do show benchmarks of RT to compare against AMD, they chose the worst implementation of it by showing Dirt 5 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. They have the lowest gap between the 3060 Ti and 5700 XT among most of the reviews and they were constantly trying to undersell the 3060 Ti by stating that it's not enough of a performance uplift over the 5700 XT.

I mean, it's hard to disagree with the fact that rasterization is way more important than RT at the moment.

 

[KompuKare]

Strong arm tactics when you're looking for regulatory approval of ARM.

Yes, a bit strange.
So unlike the other thread asking the competition authorities to investigate GPU prices amids a shortage, complaining that due to a history of strong-arm tactics Nvidia would make a poor owner of ARM might actually get somewhere.

 

[tamz_msc]

I mean, it's hard to disagree with the fact that rasterization is way more important than RT at the moment.

It's one thing to say that rasterization is more important but it's something else to dismiss raytracing altogether.

 

[coercitiv]

It's one thing to say that rasterization is more important but it's something else to dismiss raytracing altogether.

Look at HUB dismissing raytracing altogether:

Try again? Yes/No.

 

[Leon]

I honestly having trouble believing the Head of PR wrote this drivel. Its almost sounds like stereotypical Mafia theat. Doesn't matter, Nvidia will apologize on Monday and will blame it on intern or something

 

[Karnak]

Some words from Jayz about Nvidia's decision (and even more in general about them)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1337602911187025920

https://twitter.com/x/status/1337602912587980801

 

[Kocicak]

This is so bad that I feel the best response would be if the sympathising media simply stopped reviewing products of this company.

But who would do that? I mean money is money, right?

Is there any media company having balls doing this???

 

[Kuiva maa]

Well this is unwarranted but you can't deny that they are among the most pro-AMD reviewers out there. It is factually true that they never focus much on RT or DLSS - when they do show benchmarks of RT to compare against AMD, they chose the worst implementation of it by showing Dirt 5 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. They have the lowest gap between the 3060 Ti and 5700 XT among most of the reviews and they were constantly trying to undersell the 3060 Ti by stating that it's not enough of a performance uplift over the 5700 XT.

I guess they are so pro AMD that their Ryzen 5000 series review was one of the least favorable on the internet. Nonsense imho. HU guys are not the most technically proficient reviewers among their peers, they do the odd error here and there and they may have been too eager to throw elbows with others on twitter in the past. But as far as their content goes, they are as subjective as it gets in a reviewer scene marred by open or covert shilling. Branding them as pro AMD is absolutely unfair and more of a testament on how accustomed we are with sites catering to nvidia by default.

 

[Timorous]

It's one thing to say that rasterization is more important but it's something else to dismiss raytracing altogether.

They don't. Try again.

They say that RT is not in many games so for most people should not be a primary consideration when buying a GPU. This is especially true when looking at 3060Ti and lower level GPUs since the only way they will get to have RT on in any capacity is with DLSS @ upscaled 1080p because the performance is not there now and it will not be there for more demanding RT in the future.

RT is the future and ML upscaling is the future but do you really want to bet on DLSS when there are going to be DX and Vulkan open standards? Do you really think a 3060Ti or even 3070 level card is going to be enough for RT in 2 years time. Sure in 2 years time I expect you can turn it to minimum to have a console level RT implementation but the property stuff that actually makes a difference will require Hopper / RDNA 3 at least.

It is like when AA/AF became a default on feature with the launch of the 9700 pro. We need an RT equivalent of the 9700 Pro and RDNA2 / Ampere are not it. At best they are Geforce 4 but more likely Geforce 3 tier and we need another gen or 2 for that benchmark to be hit.

 

[gorobei]

assuming the email is real (i dont think the HWUB team is stupid enough to fake it)

its not like this is a new thing.
adored put together a complete timeline from news stories 2years ago.

people have forgiven nv so long as they had top performance and guzzled nv marketing's kool-aid happily.

nv has abused aib partners, foundries, console makers, laptop makers, tegra customers, and even customers directly(remember the driver update that fried gpus).

when you let them get away with it for so long, it just encourages this stuff.

 

[GaiaHunter]

They have the lowest gap between the 3060 Ti and 5700 XT among most of the reviews and they were constantly trying to undersell the 3060 Ti by stating that it's not enough of a performance uplift over the 5700 XT.

The performance between AMD and NVIDIA is quite dependent on the games chosen. If you run more games and run games that are sponsored by AMD as well the performance will be different.

As a owner of a 5700XT I wouldn't upgrade to anything that is less than 50% increase and generally want a 100% increase (at similar price of possible). So it matches at least my opinion.

 

[linkgoron]

They have the lowest gap between the 3060 Ti and 5700 XT among most of the reviews and they were constantly trying to undersell the 3060 Ti by stating that it's not enough of a performance uplift over the 5700 XT.

It really isn't worth upgrading from a 5700XT to a 3060TI. Even TPU puts the 3060ti at just over the 2080S. As the 5700XT was $399 and the 3060TI is $399, it would've made more financial sense just buying a 2080S originally for $699 instead of buying a 5700XT and a year later buying a 3060ti. The same will hold true for the 6700XT, it won't be a worthwhile upgrade for 5700XT owners.

 

[MetalH2600]

Until AMD stop sucking with drivers (RX 5000) then Nvidia will still have custom, the end goal is to have a GPU which performs but is also stable, the political side of it all matters far less to a consumer, though yes i dislike Nvidia, their cards are solid, their drivers are way more reliable.

 

[linkgoron]

Until AMD stop sucking with drivers (RX 5000) then Nvidia will still have custom, the end goal is to have a GPU which performs but is also stable, the political side of it all matters far less to a consumer, though yes i dislike Nvidia, their cards are solid, their drivers are way more reliable.

Nvidia had to lower clocks on the 3080 after launch because they were unstable.

Some RTX 3080 cards reported unstable. Driver fix lowers boost - HWCooling.net

Game crashes and GPU instability on GeForce RTX 3080 card is probably caused by some filter capacitor configurations on the reference PCBIt looks like the release of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 “Ampere” will not be amongst those GPU launches that were free of initial issues at the start. Last week...

www.hwcooling.net

Tested: Nvidia’s new drivers fix RTX 3080 crashes

Nvidia's new Game Ready 456.55 drivers fix the issues we've had with a GeForce RTX 3080 crashing during games, but slightly limits the top GPU Boost clock speed.

www.pcworld.com

There were also tons of issues with the 2080ti and "space invaders":

Nvidia addresses failing GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards

Over the past few weeks, reports have popped up of dying GeForce RTX cards without any particular reason whatsoever. The problem revolved mostly around Founders Edition RTX...

www.techspot.com

I've been invaded by aliens. RTX 2080 Ti *Updated 5/6*

He's dead, Jim. Not even 5 months old: eVGA RTX 2080 Ti "Black Edition" Run for most of its short life at 80% power limit Always running nice and cool with 7 case fans including 2 bottom intakes blowing cold air directly on it. Subsequent reboots yielded black screen/crash in Windows as soon...

forums.anandtech.com

Also supposedly killing GPUs:

Latest NVIDIA Driver is Apparently Killing GPUs

NVIDIA's latest driver release, 364.72 apparently is plagued with issues and apparently has even been killing gamer's GPUs! Reports of issues with this specific driver have been all over the GeForce Forums, Reddit, and many other forums.

thinkcomputers.org

I know that the 5700xt really had issues in the beginning, and it took them a few months to sort it out. However, I've been using a 5700xt for more than a year, and have only had minor problems with two specific games, but definitely nothing major.