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UPDATE: NVIDIA backtracks - Hardware Unboxed blacklisted from receiving GeForce FE review samples over “focus on rasterization over ray-tracing”

D13H4RD
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Summary

NVIDIA: No, you can’t just review our RTX FE cards by focusing on the stuff 95% of gamers care about and treating ray-tracing as a bonus feature!

 

Steven Walton & Tim Schiesser: Haha, rasterization goes “weeeee!” 

 

Not too long ago, the Hardware Unboxed Twitter posted a tweet revealing that NVIDIA has blacklisted them from receiving review samples of GeForce FE cards apparently over their focus on covering rasterized performance over ray-tracing performance. While this is unlikely to affect overall GeForce coverage (AIBs will provide them with the relevant products and the revenue from both views, sponsorships alongside Patreon should help as well), the move strikes as odd.

 

 

My thoughts

 I think NVIDIA PR is just trying to poke a sleeping (but not hibernating) bear in the form of the internet with this one. While the GeForce RTX 30 series cards are indeed exceedingly powerful, RT still remains as a “nice to have” feature due to how games like CP2077 can look stunning with it enabled, at the cost of halving frame-rates, not to mention the number of supported titles is still limited. 

 

I also find it funny that Hardware Unboxed has nothing but praise for the RTX 30-series lineup but NVIDIA PR somehow still finds it salty that RT isn’t covered.....and that is despite other outlets like Gamers Nexus also focusing much more on rasterization rather than ray-tracing.....because very few games make use of it...

 

Sources

Hardware Unboxed’s Twitter post

 

UPDATE

NVIDIA has, according to Hardware Unboxed's words, "apologized" for the previous email and has walked back on previous demands and restrictions applied.

 

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11 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

I think NVIDIA PR is just trying to poke a sleeping (but not hibernating) bear in the form of the internet with this one.

For once, I hope the Internet does shift its massive rear-end and crushes NVIDIA on this. This kind of tactics of attempting to force reviewers to focus only on the things you approve of should not be allowed to pass and NVIDIA definitely would deserve to land in a torrent of hot water over this.

 

Alas, with the above in mind, I expect this will just be covered by LTT with...a brief mention in a Techlinked - episode and then forgotten about.

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imo, it won't hurt HU too much. they already receive 3rd party versions but they lose out on day 1 coverage. 

 

 

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Just now, The_Vaccine said:

imo, it won't hurt HU too much. they already receive 3rd party versions but they lose out on day 1 coverage. 

 

 

I don't think they'd totally lose out. They've got their ways of getting their coverage, as it's not like this is the first time NVIDIA hasn't been great to them. 

 

Not to mention that it is unlikely that this is going to stick, especially when this inevitably gets picked up by Gamers Nexus, Jayz and the gorilla that is Linus Media Group. 

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2 minutes ago, The_Vaccine said:

imo, it won't hurt HU too much. they already receive 3rd party versions but they lose out on day 1 coverage.

It's not even about Hardware Unboxed getting hurt in the first place; it's about NVIDIA attempting to strong-arm reviewers to only focus on the things NVIDIA approves of.

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7 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

It's not even about Hardware Unboxed getting hurt in the first place; it's about NVIDIA attempting to strong-arm reviewers to only focus on the things NVIDIA approves of.

Stuff like this is a BIG reason to not support companies that this.

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Wow... Clearly Nvidia wins in Ray tracing... That's a new low to Nvidia. Like sore losers.

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while companies are not obligated to send review samples, their reasoning for pulling out is kinda scummy

 

HUB have other means of obtaining GPU so eeh, small hit maybe

-sigh- feeling like I'm being too negative lately

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7 minutes ago, kiska3 said:

 

lolwut?

They're not entirely wrong in regards to the industry point. Real-time Ray Tracing is indeed where it's headed. 

 

Thing is, that's still a good few years off. Today, rasterization still matters because that's not only what people who play video games on PC mostly care for these days but also because the number of titles that support real-time RT is still limited. There is a good reason why in every reputable review of RTX 30 products, it's almost a 90-10 split between rasterized performance coverage and RT coverage. 

 

I can't see this as anything other than a severely out-of-touch PR strategy on the part of whoever was responsible it. It could also potentially have been fueled by the RX 6800XT matching the 3080 in rasterized performance. 

 

Whatever the case may be, they'll reverse it when the inevitable backlash ensues. 

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2 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

They're not entirely wrong in regards to the industry point. Real-time Ray Tracing is indeed where it's headed. 

 

Thing is, that's still a good few years off. Today, rasterization still matters because that's not only what people who play video games on PC mostly care for these days but also because the number of titles that support real-time RT is still limited. There is a good reason why in every reputable review of RTX 30 products, it's almost a 90-10 split between rasterized performance coverage and RT coverage. 

 

I can't see this as anything other than a severely out-of-touch PR strategy on the part of whoever was responsible it. 

 

Whatever the case may be, they'll reverse it when the inevitable backlash ensues. 

 

You have no idea this type of ideology is toxic. They want reviewers to highlight in what they do best. We can call it whatever name you want to call it. Ray Tracing in this case.

 

The issue is "Talk only good about my product" This is highly unethical. Rasterization performance is what 99% of games have.

 

Clearly AMD doesn't have a chance with Ray Tracing. If it was the reverse and AMD had the leading edge and Nvidia didn't I doubt they would say the same thing to HardwareUnboxed.

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3 minutes ago, Dionyz said:

You have no idea this type of ideology is toxic. They want reviewers to highlight in what they do best. We can call it whatever name you want to call it. Ray Tracing in this case.

 

The issue is "Talk only good about my product" This is highly unethical. Rasterization performance is what 99% of games have.

 

Clearly AMD doesn't have a chance with Ray Tracing. If it was the reverse and AMD had the leading edge and Nvidia didn't I doubt they would say the same thing to HardwareUnboxed.

Oh, I agree with you there. It's a scummy move that is pretty much guaranteed to backfire on them.

 

If NVIDIA is so afraid of competition, then perhaps they should buckle down and create better products. They are clearly very capable of it...

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To be honest, Nvidia has done a great job of using rtx and optix in real world applications like blender and rendering, you can slash the render times by like half with optix and denoising is just awesome. AMD Radeon is not an option for us creators due to the poor features but for gaming rtx has a long way to go and doesnt seem like it'll go mainstream until games that people care about support it. Add it to games people care about and Nvidia will be praised for it.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, YourRandomForumGuy said:

To be honest, Nvidia has done a great job of using rtx and optix in real world applications like blender and rendering, you can slash the render times by like half with optix and denoising is just awesome. AMD Radeon is not an option for us creators due to the poor features but for gaming rtx has a long way to go and doesnt seem like it'll go mainstream until games that people care about support it. Add it to games people care about and Nvidia will be praised for it.

 

 

The creative performance and featureset is one of the reasons why I'm still on Team Green. I hope AMD becomes more competitive in this area but it definitely looks like RDNA is more focused on the gaming side, which is fair as that forms the bulk of the number of people who order consumer GPUs designed for PCs. 

 

The real issue is NVIDIA seems to be attempting to strong-arm reviewers into essentially acting as forms of advertisements by wanting them to focus more on ray-traced performance rather than rasterized performance, at least partially due to AMD's resurgence in sheer rasterized grunt, and NVIDIA's indisputable performance lead being pretty much limited to ML and RT applications (outside the 3090).

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40 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Stuff like this is a BIG reason to not support companies that this.

Yet inevitably people will. Call them pricks, sore losers or whatever you want. This isn't anything new about Nvidia. We all knew that PR wise they're on Santa's naughty list year after year. But based on Steam's hardware survey, people for all these years don't seem to care. 

 

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1 minute ago, D13H4RD said:

The creative performance and featureset is one of the reasons why I'm still on Team Green. I hope AMD becomes more competitive in this area but it definitely looks like RDNA is more focused on the gaming side, which is fair as that forms the bulk of the number of people who order consumer GPUs designed for PCs. 

 

The real issue is NVIDIA seems to be attempting to strong-arm reviewers into essentially acting as forms of advertisements by wanting them to focus more on ray-traced performance rather than rasterized performance, at least partially due to AMD's resurgence in sheet rasterized grunt, and NVIDIA's indisputable lead being pretty much in ML and RT applications. 

If NVIDIA truly cares, they should really focus on raw performance more than things like DLSS 2.0 which just increases performance by using software hacks instead of raw performance. Most gamers will really care about eye candy in sightseeing titles but NVIDIA has created software hacks to make it at least run on their own hardware while increasing eye candy in FPS/competitive and battle royale games where gamers would really want high framerates

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4 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Yet inevitably people will. Call them pricks, sore losers or whatever you want. This isn't anything new about Nvidia. We all knew that PR wise they're on Santa's naughty list year after year. But based on Steam's hardware survey, people for all these years don't seem to care. 

I would go Radeon if I could but a lot of the work I do with GPU acceleration just plays so much better with NVidia cards. Sometimes you don't really have a choice.

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wow thats not surprising but dam, like I already hated this RT push and knew it was BS. so salty

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Guess who's going to be making a conscious effort to start supporting Hardware Unboxed the second they can.

 

Me.

Judge a product on its own merits AND the company that made it.

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Just now, AluminiumTech said:

Guess who's going to be making a conscious effort to start supporting Hardware Unboxed the second they can.

 

Me.

time to sign up for their floatplane.

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I mean Nvidia can totally do it but the question is wether they should do it and I‘d say no

Hi

 

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hi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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GN to boycott NVIDIA in 1... 2... 3... 

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1 hour ago, Dionyz said:

Wow... Clearly Nvidia wins in Ray tracing... That's a new low to Nvidia. Like sore losers.

I doubt it will stay that way, with the new consoles having RT and they're big navi cores, which means games optimized for big navi RT

42 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

wow thats not surprising but dam, like I already hated this RT push and knew it was BS. so salty

I doubt NVIDIA is going to have RT to push in the future either, speaking that the console have big navi cores, and stuff will start being optimized for console RT

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