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.

 

[sandorski]

Ok? Minority opinions are not allowed?



It's not 2015 anymore

4k tvs are dirt cheap, the new consoles are doing 1440p 120fps / 4k 60

1080p / 60 is outdated

Please Comply

 

[MetalH2600]

Ok? Minority opinions are not allowed?



It's not 2015 anymore

4k tvs are dirt cheap, the new consoles are doing 1440p 120fps / 4k 60

1080p / 60 is outdated

Outdated?

Says whom? the 0.0001% who will even game at 4K / 120hz? Or the 0.00000000000000001% on 1440P 120hz? keeping in mind.. console.. and market aimed at...


LOL!

 

[tamz_msc]

Ok? Minority opinions are not allowed?

Wanting 1440p/120fps in a game with RT on is a minority opinion.

It's not 2015 anymore

4k tvs are dirt cheap, the new consoles are doing 1440p 120fps / 4k 60

1080p / 60 is outdated

The entire ongoing discussion is about opinions interfering with objectivity in reviews. And here you are doing exactly the same.

 

[sandorski]

Wanting 1440p/120fps in a game with RT on is a minority opinion.

The entire ongoing discussion is about opinions interfering with objectivity in reviews. And here you are doing exactly the same.

Is Objective just your Subjective Opinion?

 

[senseamp]

If a reviewer thinks a feature not important, fine, but why would a manufacturer who thinks that that feature is the main selling point of the product send it to them for free? Lexus is not going to send their luxury cars to a reviewer that makes it clear that it only cares about how fast it is around Nurburgring and repeatedly pans ride comfort as unimportant. If your editorial policy is to deemphasize features that a manufacturer is emphasizing, you are just not the target audience.

 

[tamz_msc]

Is Objective just your Subjective Opinion?

There's nothing objective about saying that 1080p is outdated.

 

[pj-]

Wanting 1440p/120fps in a game with RT on is a minority opinion.

Again, so what? Me and several hundred thousand other people seem to be ok with HU's fringe opinions

The entire ongoing discussion is about opinions interfering with objectivity in reviews. And here you are doing exactly the same.

Transparency and consistency are more important to me than objectivity. There is inherent subjectivity regardless. The games the reviewer chooses to use, the settings in those games, the resolutions they test at, the other components in the test system, etc. If he's reviewing hw with the bias that 1080p/60 is not sufficient then I'm much more interested in his thoughts than a reviewer who says "well according to steam hardware survey, most people use integrated graphics and a 1080p monitor so that's all you really need"

That's just my opinion, feel free to disagree!

 

[coercitiv]

Nowhere have I stated that reviewers shouldn't discuss RT and DLSS qualitatively.

You did exactly that, I'll quote your reply for the third time:

They'd be better off without including personal opinions on how a game's performance or visuals ought to be from the end-user's standpoint.

and for the third time: you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You don't want them to say 1080p is outdated or that 90FPS leads to sensibly better in-game latency, but you do want them to talk about how ray-tracing is the new must have. The fact that you're not capable to process the irony here is telling of your intentions.

 

[tamz_msc]

You did exactly that, I'll quote your reply for the third time:

and for the third time: you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You don't want them to say 1080p is outdated or that 90FPS leads to sensibly better in-game latency, but you do want them to talk about how ray-tracing is the new must have. The fact that you're not capable to process the irony here is telling of your intentions.

You're smarter than this. I'm disappointed. Discussing qualitatively the effects of RT and DLSS is not the same as stating subjective opinions on resolutions and frame rates.

 

[tamz_msc]

Again, so what? Me and several hundred thousand other people seem to be ok with HU's fringe opinions

Funny you should say that. They did a poll asking what frame rates are acceptable in an open-world game - the context was CP2077 - and this was the result:

 

[pj-]

Funny you should say that. They did a poll asking what frame rates are acceptable in an open-world game - the context was CP2077 - and this was the result:

View attachment 35586

And what about resolution?

 

[gdansk]

If Nvidia had simply stopped sending them cards because they had better returns else where, that's fine. But that's not what Nvidia wanted. To me it's clear they sent an email with the intent to change HWUB's behavior. That HWUB should, like every other reviewer, declare that you should consider raytracing an important feature. Even on cards where it is essentially gimped and will likely never be useful.

And personally, I can see why they de-emphasize raytracing. I've had raytracing cards since they debuted and have played only one game where the experience was an improvement: Quake 2 from 1997. All the other games I went back to traditional lighting methods because even on an RTX 3080 it drops to unplayable framerates, looks worse, or stutters.

Personally, raytracing does not yet figure into my GPU purchasing decisions. This year it was availability. Maybe next year.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Did I just step into an alternate reality? What is going on? Nvidia has been playing dirty pool for as long as I can remember but somehow now people are just noticing? And make no mistake this back stabbing win at all cost gaslighting predatory corporate culture comes straight from the top.

 

[coercitiv]

And what about resolution?

They used that poll data to calibrate minimum target FPS for multiple resolutions.



The result is anything bellow 2080Ti will require some sort of trade-off in image quality with RT enabled to keep min FPS around 60 even at 1080p.

 

[gdansk]

Did I just step into an alternate reality? What is going on? Nvidia has been playing dirty pool for as long as I can remember but somehow now people are just noticing? And make no mistake this back stabbing win at all cost gaslighting predatory corporate culture comes straight from the top.

You will find that collectively we have a poor memory, something akin to goldfish. Some forgive, most forget. Secondly, it seems to me a novelty to see a reviewer publishing Nvidia emails more or less demanding they toe the line.

 

[MetalH2600]

Did I just step into an alternate reality? What is going on? Nvidia has been playing dirty pool for as long as I can remember but somehow now people are just noticing? And make no mistake this back stabbing win at all cost gaslighting predatory corporate culture comes straight from the top.

The downvotes of my comments from a person who opened their account here in 2020 and has only interest in AMD products speaks to me that people like to just be extremists in their views, but there are people expressing how wrong it is too, a mix that is bad and rather it don't matter... the discussion of it really leads no where, other than ego baiting, ego upholding, skewing it to the common power held at the time and that power right now is that Nvidia are the devil and AMD are saints, this is how narrow minded people think and work. Power always changes hands...

When a lashing of truth is factored in and we bring it in with common sense, you get posts like mine.

But truthfully a lot of people are not for common sense or truth as it's far more personal to them.

 

[darkswordsman17]

If a reviewer thinks a feature not important, fine, but why would a manufacturer who thinks that that feature is the main selling point of the product send it to them for free? Lexus is not going to send their luxury cars to a reviewer that makes it clear that it only cares about how fast it is around Nurburgring and repeatedly pans ride comfort as unimportant. If your editorial policy is to deemphasize features that a manufacturer is emphasizing, you are just not the target audience.

Er...Lexus literally did exactly that.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Did I just step into an alternate reality? What is going on? Nvidia has been playing dirty pool for as long as I can remember but somehow now people are just noticing? And make no mistake this back stabbing win at all cost gaslighting predatory corporate culture comes straight from the top.

Apparently you did as this thread is full of people mentioning past bad behavior by Nvidia.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Apparently you did as this thread is full of people mentioning past bad behavior by Nvidia.

In the past it has been mostly glossed over. I've never seen Nvidia's shenanigans in the crosshairs to this extent, even during bumpgate.

 

[Mopetar]

OK so you find RT massively overblown. Fine. But why then state things like 1080p is outdated just because he personally doesn't use that resolution?

That's just another opinion. I also disagree with it and one only need look at data about the resolutions that many gamers are playing at to see that there are presumably a good number of people who'd probably also agree with it as well. However, there are some people who already have 1440p or 4K monitors and for them 1080p is essentially outdated as far as they're concerned.

Everyone has different opinions about what's most important. For some people, the highest resolution is what's important. For others it's the fastest frame rate. Some want the best possible image quality. No matter what you prefer, there's no way to have them all at once.

 

[coercitiv]

You're smarter than this. I'm disappointed.

Imagine my disappointment to see you out of all people endorse a company's strategy of bartering free video cards in exchange for positive coverage of their technology.

You champion facts and objective purchase decisions, yet on this occasion you endorse a company which is attempting to morph reviewers into this:


(Spoiler: he got a free card and more)

Discussing qualitatively the effects of RT and DLSS is not the same as stating subjective opinions on resolutions and frame rates.

It is the exact same thing, you're asking them to tell you how nice RT visuals are while not telling you how nice 1440p or 90FPS is. You want to pick and chose which subjective benchmarks are allowed.

Nvidia's main gripe with HUB is about them not focusing on qualitative data such as perception of RT effects and focusing on quantitative data such as the low number of games with RT and DLSS support.

 

[Grooveriding]

I think RT is relevant, nowhere near as much as rasterization, but if you care about the games where it's done well; it's an impressive effect. DLSS should be left out of reviews. I don't understand the benches I've seen at 4K with nvidia running DLSS vs AMD. It's just not a fair comparison, nvidia is literally runnning a lower resolution and upscaling it, while AMD is running at 4K. Plus the image degradation with DLSS, whether quality mode or not, is really noticeable to me.

Granted it's nice to have. You couldn't even run 4K in CP2077 at playable frames without it, but it should be kept in context. It's not true 4K or 1440p or whatever.

 

[UsandThem]

So many "reviews" anymore, across multiple hardware review sites, have simply become an ad thinly discussed as an "article". It's like they don't even try to hide that aspect, as I believe the younger readers can't tell the difference since all the other major websites do some form of it.

Just take a look at all the "best of" and "lowest price ever" posts at places like Tom's, Anandtech, etc. It's all about money from referral links and the manufacturers, so I'm not all surprised Nvidia took this stand. That doesn't mean I like the direction everything is going, it's just something I've noticed since corporations began buying all the hardware review sites.

 

[Mopetar]

So many "reviews" anymore, across multiple hardware review sites, have simply become an ad thinly discussed as an "article". It's like they don't even try to hide that aspect, as I believe the younger readers can't tell the difference since all the other major websites do some form of it.

Just take a look at all the "best of" and "lowest price ever" posts at places like Tom's, Anandtech, etc. It's all about money from referral links and the manufacturers, so I'm not all surprised Nvidia took this stand. That doesn't mean I like the direction everything is going, it's just something I've noticed since corporations began buying all the hardware review sites.

How many of those "reviews" to you read or watch though? I think most people start to gravitate away from that kind of content because all it doesn't actually inform them of anything. The problem is ultimately self-correcting and maybe there's some money to be made in the short term, but you can only sacrifice your credibility so many times before it and any audience it gained you is gone.

 

[swilli89]

The hilarious thing is NVIDIA had Hardware Unboxed's own quote saying how good DLSS is on their own freaking website.

Pretty blatant skeezy lying and gaslighting.

https://images2.imgbox.com/c0/0e/UMjFi2lC_o.png