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I don't find that particularly surprising. Linus and Jayz do better not just because they're more popular but they also have a much more "condensed" version that explains the product in a nutshell. It gets the basic outlook done and out of the way without diving much deep into metrics for the sake of video length. Viewers of HWUnboxed and Gamers Nexus generally like to have more detailed and technical stuff, and is why HUB's detailed technical dives and monitor reviews tend to receive more views in general. HWUnboxed in particular has an advantage as they're one of the very few "larger-than-avg" TechTuber who does these sorts of technical dives and monitor reviews.

It’d also make a headline grabbing point with Turing, so I can sorta see why. Too bad Turing also took a huge L.

Pretty much. Microsoft rolled out the software/APIs for ray-tracing to be implemented. All that was needed was hardware that can leverage it without crippling performance to a severe extent.

For what it’s worth, RTX isn’t just for ray-tracing. Even though that’s its primary thing (RTX), RTX is an entire platform, notably comprising of not just real-time ray-tracing but also other features that leverage on machine-learning to work, stuff like DLSS and RTX Voice (now absorbed in Broadcast). And, funnily enough, also includes improved rasterization, as RT in its current implementations require strong rasterization performance to begin with. Fully ray-traced modern titles would be on the way in the next decade probably.

I think they've already got heaps of support from their community already. I reckon their Patreon income is more than enough for them to purchase cards for review if manufacturers aren't willing to send them samples.

For what it's worth, ray-tracing isn't a fundamentally new concept. It's been used for quite a few years in rendering, notably for films that incorporate CGI. It's just that the process of RT is computationally taxing, so much so that to render a fully ray-traced scene is measured in seconds per frame. NVIDIA's just the first to roll out consumer graphics cards that include dedicated hardware to help accelerate calculations for RT with Turing. Not entirely sure if they rolled out their own API for, but a majority of the RTsupported games use DXR for their RT. Considering that RT is often described as the "holy grail" of computer graphics, I'd wager that the adoption of real-time RT for video games was inevitable. Someone just had to lay down the first patch on the path towards it.

Shouldn't be anything to worry about. Stock vBIOS NVIDIA cards have a whackton of limits and safeguards to protect the card from damage.

Done

Well, he made a video that was critical of MSI's Bravo 15 laptop. An MSI rep contacted him and apparently kept trying to convince him to change his narrative, until he was offered money to change his narrative or hide the critique. That was when TTGB decided to let the public know what's going on, and led to the MSI fiasco.

Like I said, it's unfortunately common in the tech-industry. Hardware Unboxed were threatened by ASUS with a lawsuit after they released a video criticizing the TUF A15's poor thermal performance and I assume everyone knew what happened with TTGB. NVIDIA (and probably Intel/AMD as well) have likely done the same. They were just better at hiding them until NVIDIA barked up the wrong tree.

If I'm honest, RT wasn't the reason I got a 2070S over a 5700XT at the time I was picking between the 2. While I agree that it might be a reason, said reason is usually confined to the higher-end cards like the 3080, where their rasterization performance is already more than powerful enough to offset the performance loss induced by running ray-tracing calculations (mitigated by the RT cores). There are plenty of other reasons why people would choose the Team Green option over Team Red, and that does not include brand-loyalty; NVENC - I know everyone's also said it, but it is a genuinely compelling feature if you stream or record gameplay on the regular. AMD's alternative isn't yet on par. Broadcast - Again, if you stream regularly, this might be compelling. However, I know some people would find RTX Voice useful. CUDA - My personal big reason on why. While I still hope for OpenCL to catch on, many of my most-used programs still work better with CUDA, and this, unfortunately, has me platform-locked for a bit. And I'm just going to say it. Green's just got a better track record for rolling out stable release drivers than Red. While AMD's been getting better, they still have some ways to go.

Eh, it's none of that. If you'd known how NVIDIA management has worked, you'd realize none of this is terribly surprising. It's also unfortunately common in the world of tech reviews, that MSI fiasco not withstanding. I think the reason for Tim's optimism versus Steve is that he's usually the one behind the deep dives and other content that make HUB one go-to for me such as monitor reviews. Steve's CPU/GPU reviews, I don't really have much of a problem with but there were areas where I didn't agree with them and/or felt that their methodology was flawed. But Tim's content such as laptop stuff, monitor reviews, deep-dives on DLSS/RT/FidelityFX and game settings guide are the stuff that I regularly watch on HUB and it's the combination of his presentation and content delivery that make me interested in those, especially the settings guide.

I think that also describes much of NVIDIA's management style. Jensen's a smart guy, no doubt, but the company's management is also known to be paranoid control freaks, always wanting to appear as the winners and being reluctant to back down or accept a perceived loss whilst wanting more and more control over what's being done with their products. They've got brilliant people on the engineering team, without a doubt. Ampere and stuff like DLSS post-2.0 are a testament. I never had a problem with their product lineup. But their management style is......icky to say the least.

And that's fine. As much as I get that brand loyalty is a thing, I very much prefer to be brand-agnostic and purchase the product that best fits my requirements and needs at a desired price point. It doesn't mean companies that get themselves involved in scandals get a pass from me, as it means I will most likely avoid their products if an alternative that fits those same needs exists. However, when there's only one company that makes the product that fits my personal needs, you can kind of see the problem here. It's why I've been dearly waiting for bigger GPU competition.

He's not entirely wrong though. Look at all of us discussing about this and notice just how many of us use NVIDIA GPUs... And I know people have claimed they will be switching to AMD but it's not like it's that simple as AMD has their own stock issues to sort out. Not to mention features like CUDA have some of us sticking to Team Green whether we like it or not.

For what it’s worth, I do prefer the content Tim puts out. Love the monitor reviews and all the deep dives. Not to mention, that ‘stache

Pretty much me....unfortunately

I think the point Senz was making was just in regards to NVIDIA refusing to provide review samples of FE cards at all. They're well within their right to not provide samples to reviewers for whatever reason. That said, in this case, said reason opens up a huge can of worms, something that NVIDIA will find very difficult to seal up.

With all that said, I've never heard, let alone see Linus be this frustrated and upset in a long time.

On a technicality, NVIDIA is free to do whatever it deems fit as it's their product and they set the terms. There are indeed ethical can of worms here especially for a situation like this, but technically, they are allowed to do so. However, I don't think they quite expected this sort of response. That or they knew what they were getting into but chose to do it anyhow for whichever reason.

I don't think RT will go by the way of PhysX. Ray-traced computer graphics has been around for a while (just mostly done in server farms for rendering as it is excruciatingly expensive computationally) and has usually been described as "the holy grail". The fact that the new consoles have it means that hardware-accelerated ray tracing is here to stay and will gradually be developed for the future. It's just that we are in very early days for the technology and it still has a lot of room to grow and mature. And all this goes back to the "enthusiast's bubble" I talked about earlier. Graphics cards powerful enough to run intense ray-traced visuals whilst maintaining strong performance are mostly in the enthusiast category as of now. Whilst this is indeed changing, with consoles and the 3060 Ti putting this closer to reach of those without the same means, ray tracing as of now is still pretty much an enthusiasts' feature. A lot of people who play video games just want to experience a game with a good mix of performance and visual fidelity relative to their hardware. So while a lot of the people vouching for ray tracing have a point, what's being lost is that it is still firmly in enthusiast territory as of this time, and it needs more time still before the feature becomes a "must enable", let alone be the default.