Nvidia Attempting to Censor Critical Reviews?

[Curufinwe_wins]

17 minutes ago, Carclis said:

I think you're missing the whole point. Nvidia knows what makes a product good and what will go down well with the public and they also know which reviewers are critical of their products, not necessarily being negative for no reason and there is a HUGE difference there. What I'm implying is that Nvidia knows it has a bad product, because of the price point, price increase generation over generation, absent features and features that work incredibly poorly because the technology is immature and they're using that knowledge to ensure that the people who will call a spade a spade do not get their hands on it. The same thing is done in the games industry where "influencers" are hired or sponsored to play the game as well as promote it through positive videos and content. Then there are instances like this where players have something they don't like it and they get banned/unsponsored instantly. As mentioned in a comment earlier, take a look where that industry is going with as few real critics as it has right now. Do you really see no problem with this?

 

 

If that were the case. Why did Linus get one? He was (I'd even say overly) critical of every single one of the RTX lineup. Why did GN get it? GN has been rather consistently critical of Nvidia recently. The statement doesn't hold water whatsoever.

 

The only (I say other, giving benefit of the doubt to HU here... I don't actually believe him tbf) person I know of that has been sorta blacklisted by Nvidia was Kyle... and again... he handled things in an insanely unprofessional manner in numerous consecutive incidents. Do I wish he was excluded as a result? No, I don't. Is it surprising or particularly unreasonable? No, I don't. And even then, the most recent news (direct from Kyle) we had on it seemed to imply that if Kyle was willing to play ball under the same rules Nvidia is asking everyone, he wouldn't have had a problem getting the review items and software. Rather instead Kyle took the choice not to take advantage of the opportunity (and then afterwards gave a huge middle finger to everyone else in the industry by his questionably sourced pre-embargo review.)

 

Also. Your quoted person... well he did literally do exactly what he was accused of doing. Cussing out people who didn't agree with him (before the ban). Not saying that I'm happy action was taken... or that his actions should be 'enough' for a ban... but it is a really crappy excuse. Straight up. There have been a lot of other examples of games industry companies using extremely questionable tactics with influencers for hire. I won't disagree.

[Carclis]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

 

 

They missed 0 of the points raised. They (and I, and for example @leadeater) simply disagreed with the value matrix that somehow came with these conclusions. Linus literally pointed out all of the same things, came to a different conclusion, and rant everywhere.

 

1. They weren't in control of the whole thing. We know this, we knew this then, it has been confirmed since then. Intel (as in marketing...) signed off on it (guess what, the results are in FACT TRUE for the dumb settings), but did not in fact run or supervise the running of the tests. Hanlon's Razor. 2. AMD doesn't disclose their test systems to nearly the same standard that PT did and still got chewed out for. Where ANYWHERE in the Radeon VII launch was details of the test system with respect to coolers, xfr/turbo boost settings, PL settings, MCE settings, or almost all the other stupid bullshit (minus dram timings) people wanted to harp on? Does AMD state that they make sure to close all their background processes? Below is an example of AMD's standard disclosures (and those are on slides that most press don't even bother including).

 

 

Let me be frank. A good 98%+ of the problems with the data were the result of Game Mode.

 

AMD SHOULDN'T HAVE A SETTING CALLED GAME MODE THAT GIMPS GAMING.

It isn't that flipping hard to disable the bios setting for processors that shouldn't be using it. AMD has done very little advertising to the general populous or the consumers of their chips letting them know 'game mode' is only beneficial (and only sometimes) on threadripper. Like I'm honestly serious here. I guarantee you that thousands of consumers did the exact same thing that PT has done, in seeing a setting called 'game mode' and knowing they want to game, then enabling it for processors it never should have been an option for.

 

Like seriously. Why does AM4 even have that option? How stupid can you get? 

 

From AMD's User Manual: 'The Game Mode profile is pre-configured for optimal performance for most modern and legacy games with these fixed settings'. That is IT. That is all they say about it in their own documentation for consumers.

 

You want to complain about misleading the public? ^ That is misleading the public. I am in no way, shape, or form surprised that an organization who isn't literally breathing cpu news 24/7 would mess that up.

And do you feel like the 8700k was misreresented in any way at all? Was a third party hired to take the fall for intentionally botched benchmarks? To be completely clear, you and I and many of the people on this forum would probably be able to discern what bad benchmarks or misrepresented products look like, but apparently even some people in the tech press were incapable of that and reported on performance without including the disclosure either (PCGamesN). If it's good enough to fool those in the tech press then it's definitely enough to fool other people. Mind you anyone who wanted debunk the results couldn't anyway due to the NDA. Finally the people who were doing the testing (PT) have been in the industry longer than Steve of HUB (over 15 years) were apparently unable to see the flaws in their own testing despite Steve spotting them immediately. Yeah Game Mode is a dumb feature, but somebody who has been in the industry for over 15 years should at least know by the that there is some learning curve with a new architecture. Given the stupidity on show in the aforementioned case with PCGamesN I suppose it shouldn't be hard to believe but I find it difficult to rationalise that given the reputation the company seems to have, making malice the most likely scenario.

[Curufinwe_wins]

12 minutes ago, Carclis said:

And do you feel like the 8700k was misreresented in any way at all? Was a third party hired to take the fall for intentionally botched benchmarks? To be completely clear, you and I and many of the people on this forum would probably be able to discern what bad benchmarks or misrepresented products look like, but apparently even some people in the tech press were incapable of that and reported on performance without including the disclosure either (PCGamesN). If it's good enough to fool those in the tech press then it's definitely enough to fool other people. Mind you anyone who wanted debunk the results couldn't anyway due to the NDA. Finally the people who were doing the testing (PT) have been in the industry longer than Steve of HUB (over 15 years) were apparently unable to see the flaws in their own testing despite Steve spotting them immediately. Yeah Game Mode is a dumb feature, but somebody who has been in the industry for over 15 years should at least know by the that there is some learning curve with a new architecture. Given the stupidity on show in the aforementioned case with PCGamesN I suppose it shouldn't be hard to believe but I find it difficult to rationalise that given the reputation the company seems to have, making malice the most likely scenario.

Yeah. Actually. The cinebench (and blender) scores where it turned out that Zen had a literal bios mode for cheating the benchmark, and thus claiming disproportionate relative performance gains. Or did we forget about that one as well? I don't have a 8700k with me to test that exact configuration. I doubt very much that it would be 'wrong' for the configuration, but I don't know what the motherboard's cpu settings were with respect to MCE. NO ONE CARED to check even. We didn't even know this crap existed until after NDA lifted and the press figured it out.

 

The people who did this testing (who should NOT have done this testing) are people who have done a lot of random tests over the last 30+ years all over the industry. They haven't done 5+ consecutive years doing CPU benchmarks every single release. Steve has been. He has been inundated with all of these things, and had previous results already generated by his own hand. Overriding authority and trust in his own benchmarks was the primary reasons he noticed it in the first place.

[Carclis]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

If that were the case. Why did Linus get one? He was (I'd even say overly) critical of every single one of the RTX lineup. Why did GN get it? GN has been rather consistently critical of Nvidia recently. The statement doesn't hold water whatsoever.

 

9 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

The only (I say other, giving benefit of the doubt to HU here... I don't actually believe him tbf) person I know of that has been sorta blacklisted by Nvidia was Kyle... and again... he handled things in an insanely unprofessional manner in numerous consecutive incidents. Do I wish he was excluded as a result? No, I don't. Is it surprising or particularly unreasonable? No, I don't. And even then, the most recent news (direct from Kyle) we had on it seemed to imply that if Kyle was willing to play ball under the same rules Nvidia is asking everyone, he wouldn't have had a problem getting the review items and software. Rather instead Kyle took the choice not to take advantage of the opportunity (and then afterwards gave a huge middle finger to everyone else in the industry by his questionably sourced pre-embargo review.)

I don't particularly like the way Kyle goes about things either but I don't think he deserved to be excluded from review samples as a result.

 

12 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Also. Your quoted person... well he did literally do exactly what he was accused of doing. Cussing out people who didn't agree with him (before the ban). Not saying that I'm happy action was taken... or that his actions should be 'enough' for a ban... but it is a really crappy excuse. Straight up. There have been a lot of other examples of games industry companies using extremely questionable tactics with influencers for hire. I won't disagree.

I definitely agree with that but I suspect what he did was out of frustration being the only one who cared enough about the game enough to criticise it instead of just taking the wads of cash and praising it.

[Curufinwe_wins]

5 minutes ago, Carclis said:

I don't particularly like the way Kyle goes about things either but I don't think he deserved to be excluded from review samples as a result.

 

I definitely agree with that but I suspect what he did was out of frustration being the only one who cared enough about the game enough to criticise it instead of just taking the wads of cash and praising it.

I mean... if you refuse to sign the NDA... you aren't going to get the part (for something like this). Whatever background crap that really cemented this issue (of which Kyle played a not small role in making a reality), that is pretty standard procedure. 

 

It should be noted... that if it turns out HU was actually excluded (or a larger pattern of this behavior appears) while having as signed the NDA and been told he was going to be sourced the cards... that is a very different situation than that which occured with Kyle. I just don't think we have close to enough evidence to support that claim yet.

[Carclis]

5 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Yeah. Actually. The cinebench (and blender) scores where it turned out that Zen had a literal bios mode for cheating the benchmark, and thus claiming disproportionate relative performance gains. Or did we forget about that one as well? I don't have a 8700k with me to test that exact configuration. I doubt very much that it would be 'wrong' for the configuration, but I don't know what the motherboard's cpu settings were with respect to MCE. NO ONE CARED to check even. We didn't even know this crap existed until after NDA lifted and the press figured it out.

That's true, but note that AMD is claiming responsibility for these numbers and they'd look like complete idiots if that is what they did. There are also no pre-orders up for Zen 2 as far as I know and this is a single benchmark as opposed to a review. It was also mentioned by PCWorld that MCE was off on the Intel system. So essentially the only things touched in the Asus bios were MCE and XMP and I'm fairly sure Asus are the only ones who have MCE on by default these days.

 

3 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I mean... if you refuse to sign the NDA... you aren't going to get the part (for something like this). Whatever background crap that really cemented this issue (of which Kyle played a not small role in making a reality), that is pretty standard procedure. 

 

It should be noted... that if it turns out HU was actually excluded (or a larger pattern of this behavior appears) while having as WELL signed the NDA and been told he was going to be sourced the cards... that is a very different situation than that which occured with Kyle. I just don't think we have close to enough evidence to support that claim yet.

Agreed. Do note that Steve was pretty much clueless in this whole situation. He knew that there would likely be some sort of announcement for the 2060 and only found out from other contacts that they had already begun testing on the RTX 2060 and that was a week and a half out from CES. That means he only got his NDA to sign a week after everyone had received their units and begun testing.

[Paranoid Kami]

Their company. They can give cards to whoever they want. This isn't "censoring".

[laminutederire]

7 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well gamers nexus doesn't shill for anyone,and he still gets cards to review so i'm not sure how anyone would assume they're shilling for Nvidia.  I don't see how it matters where they are located, if Hardware Unboxed would work with Nvidia on the issue before making a "OMG we didn't get one we got screwed" video they would have probably gotten one to review.

Have you read what I said?

I specifically said that gamer nexus can not still all they want because YouTube revenue isn't essential to them, so Nvidia has less leverage over them, and keep sending them cards, because if you can't bury them, suck up to them.

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have because it does seem like Nvidia is doing it on purpose repeatedly.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Carclis said:

Finally the people who were doing the testing (PT) have been in the industry longer than Steve of HUB (over 15 years) were apparently unable to see the flaws in their own testing despite Steve spotting them immediately. Yeah Game Mode is a dumb feature, but somebody who has been in the industry for over 15 years should at least know by the that there is some learning curve with a new architecture.

PT operates more in the enterprise space creating marketing and performance analysis for servers and storage arrays as well as evaluating software, operating systems and hypervisors. It is perfectly reasonable, I'll use my colleagues as primary examples, of having zero idea about AMD Zen and their CPUs let alone specific features like Game Mode. I'd wager 1 or 2 of them don't even know AMD has even released these new Zen based products at all, they know of the company but don't have any interest in either AMD nor Intel for desktop CPUs.

 

The time frame PT was given was very short and that is before considering other details like having to research hardware and software (games) that you don't normally evaluate or use in current standard tests. Professionals make mistakes especially under time pressures, you can tell that they are indeed professionals just by looking at the published information and detail included. That's the difference between consumer electronics and entertainment and business/enterprise where false or misleading information can result in legal action and the target audience are also professionals with the capability and resources to fact check the results and would do so.

 

PoCs/Pilots/Evaluations are a common thing and if whatever it is doesn't stack up to the marketing that's the end of it, can also be the end of the business relationship too. Due to a rather serious incident around 10 years ago EMC is now essentially dead to half my team and they have zero hope of getting any business with us.

[Carclis]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

PT operates more in the enterprise space creating marketing and performance analysis for servers and storage arrays as well as evaluating software, operating systems and hypervisors. It is perfectly reasonable, I'll use my colleagues as primary examples, of having zero idea about AMD Zen and their CPUs let alone specific features like Game Mode. I'd wager 1 or 2 of them don't even know AMD has even released these new Zen base products at all, they know of the company but don't have any interest in either AMD nor Intel for desktop CPUs.

 

The time frame PT was given was very short and that is before considering other details like having to research hardware and software (games) that you don't normally evaluate or use in current standard tests. Professionals make mistake especially under time pressures, you can tell that they are indeed professionals just by looking at the published information and detail included. That's the difference between consumer electronics and entertainment and business/enterprise where false or misleading information can result in legal action and the target audience are also professionals with the capability and resources to fact check the results and would do so.

 

PoCs/Pilots/Evaluations are a common thing and if whatever it is doesn't stack up to the marketing that's the end of it, can also be the end of the business relationship too. Due to a rather serious incident around 10 years ago EMC is now essentially dead to half my team and they have zero hope of getting any business with us.

Whilst that is true it's strange that they would take responsibility of this kind of testing if they were treading in unknown territory. Being a company called Principled Technologies and all I'm genuinely surprised that they didn't take greater care to ensure their testing was accurate. As a result they've now damaged their reputation for doing so. Assuming it was just a series of honest mistakes, how would PT have even known about Game Mode anyways?

[leadeater]

42 minutes ago, Carclis said:

As a result they've now damaged their reputation for doing so.

Not sure how big that actually is, I very nearly completely forgot about them as a company.

 

42 minutes ago, Carclis said:

Assuming it was just a series of honest mistakes, how would PT have even known about Game Mode anyways?

By in general looking in to current AMD products and seeing that it was a thing, and it's in the BIOS and Ryzen Master. Plenty of prompts to know it exists and still not fully understand what it is, what it's for or why it's there.

 

Edit:

They were also contracted by Intel and that is the client, had it been AMD they would have been correctly briefed on the products and given guidance as required.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Carclis said:

Whilst that is true it's strange that they would take responsibility of this kind of testing if they were treading in unknown territory. Being a company called Principled Technologies and all I'm genuinely surprised that they didn't take greater care to ensure their testing was accurate. As a result they've now damaged their reputation for doing so. Assuming it was just a series of honest mistakes, how would PT have even known about Game Mode anyways?

I think we overestimate the effects these things have on companies. A lot of noise on forums like this or even reddit doesn't necessarily mean reputation being damaged or financial losses.  If I had a dollar for every post where someone said they thought an activity would hurt a company I'd be able to buy each company.

[Carclis]

35 minutes ago, leadeater said:

By in general looking in to current AMD products and seeing that it was a thing, and it's in the BIOS and Ryzen Master. Plenty of prompts to know it exists and still not fully understand what it is, what it's for or why it's there.

 

Edit:

They were also contracted by Intel and that is the client, had it been AMD they would have been correctly briefed on the products and given guidance as required.

Well they enabled Game Mode through Ryzen Master which makes sense because it's named something convoluted like downcore control in the bios (MSI). That said, you kinda have to be an idiot to not notice the software is telling you 50% of the cores are disabled. But I guess that's just my opinion

Spoiler

 

[Carclis]

10 hours ago, Jec3504 said:

Maybe , Maybe not , who cares.

People who care about hardware and the industry presumably. If this is actually what's happening it'll be near impossible for anyone to start out as a hardware reviewer. How do you expect there to be any independent/unbiased reviews at that point?

[sof006]

"We didn't agree with your review, we won't be sending more stuff to you. Make your review sound more on our side and we'll let you have more cards"

 

Sounds like Nvidia.

[Jito463]

On 1/10/2019 at 5:29 AM, leadeater said:

*cough*  *clears throat* *cough*

 

 

Spoiler

 

Ugh, I don't have epilepsy, but that flashing nearly caused an attack for me.  At the very least it was giving me a headache.

On 1/10/2019 at 7:58 PM, Uttamattamakin said:

When you buy something on line do you read the positive reviews or the negative reviews?  (I read the negative and decide if they are reasonable credible complaints.)

Personally, I read both (but I agree with you about the negative reviews).

[Guest]

Probably because:

1) Hardly anyone watches Hardware Unboxed

2) Too overly critical reviews

3) Why would Nvidia give a guy a free card to give bad publicity?

 

Nvidia probably just don’t care, not really censoring,

[Canada EH]

10 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Probably because:

1) Hardly anyone watches Hardware Unboxed

2) Too overly critical reviews

3) Why would Nvidia give a guy a free card to give bad publicity?

 

Nvidia probably just don’t care, not really censoring,

Yeah so its a conundrum isnt it.

Can't trust no reviews until the consumers get it, then its the real deal info.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Yeah so its a conundrum isnt it.

Can't trust no reviews until the consumers get it, then its the real deal info.

Always try before you buy!

[Canada EH]

3 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Always try before you buy!

Yeah but people hardly ever if never use their systems to anything close to 75% but they still insist on buying the newest of the new. Just the way society is now a days. Unless the pc/gpu is needed urgently for business purposes then sure go ahead and purchase early adopters.

 

It amazes me people buy vehicles in their first year of production, and vehicles that are known shitbags.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Yeah but people hardly ever if never use their systems to anything close to 75% but they still insist on buying the newest of the new. Just the way society is now a days. Unless the pc/gpu is needed urgently for business purposes then sure go ahead and purchase early adopters.

 

It amazes me people buy vehicles in their first year of production, and vehicles that are known shitbags.

Not to mention most games now these days are just medium titles like e-sports, they can run on just about anything. Most titles don’t even support new technologies.

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Probably because:

1) Hardly anyone watches Hardware Unboxed

2) Too overly critical reviews

3) Why would Nvidia give a guy a free card to give bad publicity?

 

Nvidia probably just don’t care, not really censoring,

 

4 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Yeah so its a conundrum isnt it.

Can't trust no reviews until the consumers get it, then its the real deal info.

That's why I like having multiple mostly professional organizations that benchmark,  each of them have to be accurate because as soon as one of them releases a benchmark (and their results for a specific product aren't within margin of error) everyone looks and asks why. The whole review industry in this regard mimics the scientific method in that as much information about the testing methodology and systems is listed and conclusions are generally qualified against unknowns.

 

It is very difficult for any company to push these larger reviewers to a specific result, because as soon as results aren't accurate, that site loses credibility and then any product being promoted becomes a shill product and also gets a bad reputation.

 

It's also what I like about the sub system in you tube,  3 reasons why people sub:

 

1. content is informative and trustworthy

2. content is fun and entertaining

3. content is non offensive

 

When you have 1 channel below 100K subs and 15 above 1M you can be rest assured 1 and 2 is lacking more than 3.

 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

It's also what I like about the sub system in you tube,  3 reasons why people sub

I don't sub to any 

[Canada EH]

5 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Not to mention most games now these days are just medium titles like e-sports, they can run on just about anything. Most titles don’t even support new technologies.

Yes, most could do with a simple 15yr old pc and a 20yr old vehicle. But leasing for a write off is understandable. My buddy just went from a Nissan big suv, cant think of the name, to a fucking GM Cadillac, he writes it off and obviously doesnt do the payout at end of term. I play indie games and windows Chess and Tetris.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Canada EH said:

Yes, most could do with a simple 15yr old pc and a 20yr old vehicle. But leasing for a write off is understandable. My buddy just went from a Nissan big suv, cant think of the name, to a fucking GM Cadillac, he writes it off and obviously doesnt do the payout at end of term. I play indie games and windows Chess and Tetris.

Maybe a 10 year old PC, Time hasn't flown by that fast. I like my in-car tech though, got a CarPlay head unit and nice speakers etc. I'll keep those pretty modern, but thats because there's just a huge difference to what was in my car before.