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

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, tech.guru said:

This is why this area needs some regulation. I know most dont want.

 

The fact is youtubers influence purchase decision they need to disclose there interests that may present any conflicts.

 

Lets say he agreed out of fear, he would not disclose the private email and nvidia wouldnt obviously either. The people who would be the real victims, his viewers would be mislead expecting a non bias opnion.

 

How many people they black mail already? How many were afraid and said nothing and changed their coverage of nvidia to keep access to early release of products?

 

pretty much - imho if a product for review is received for free - even if only for a limited time - it needs to be declared as "advertisement" and not "review" because how can I trust the reviewer they aren't biased and that there are no precautions in place should the "review" be a bit too critical - I simply can't (anymore) after several of these "incidents"... 

 

 

[unsorted]

Hardware Unboxsed gets massive media coverage and loyalty but the System doesn't change at all. What is the System? It can best be described this way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marionette

 

The PR weasels are rarely named and shamed too. They hide behind their employer.

 

Anyway, this activity goes on routinely, as can be seen here, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCunZxEJEcc

A Nintendo example. Reviewers are controlled in exchange for free stuff. Controversial stuff is avoided in most reviews and life goes on. I think that the most important thing is that viewers get a clue about how this all works and put any reviews that they see in this context. The System won't change anytime soon.

 

Speaking of Nintendo: Nintendo wouldn't want this to be public knowledge, I bet

https://kotaku.com/the-nintendo-theyve-tried-to-forget-gambling-gangster-5784314

Oops, I accidentally posted it.

 

 

 

 

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, unsorted said:

Anyway, this activity goes on routinely, as can be seen here, for example:

it does in some sectors but our goal is to stop this for DIY PC. Apple and Nintendo are well know for it. Hell Nintendo doesn't even like you using the in game music and will copyright strike you.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, dilpickle said:

The whole "professional" review system is garbage. I don't just mean video cards but every industry.

 

 

that's true, the averages reviews simply appear to be advertising, usually with slogans and wording taken 1:1 from the manufacturer, and of course those items are generally received for "free" as well, because that makes any reviewer automatically a lot more "objective" lol. 

 

 

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Nex6 said:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this. I don't think you are being reasonable here.

How am I not being reasonable, Nvidia can send out as many samples as they wish and 100% have the capability to do so. They particularly do have this capability even more so now that they are a retailer for their own products and have global supply chain shipping for that.

 

How is it you somehow think review samples are limited? They are only limited in by way of how many Nvidia wishes to send out. If Nvidia wants to send out 100% of their entire stock as review samples they could do that, they won't but they could.

 

What is unreasonable is implying that there is an infinite number of reviewers, in particular that Nvidia would actually consider to work with. How many reviewers do you actually think there are globally? A tiny fraction compared to global stock, it's so small it's inconsequential. Having the required staffing resources to support these reviewers is a much bigger factor than the number of graphics cards and ability to ship them to those reviewers.

 

 

7 hours ago, Nex6 said:

As for your second point, I think that the review was not fair and I have stated my arguments why I think so.

You only think it was not fair because you value RT higher than many other people do and as I stated so few people actually buy solely on the basis of RT right now and even when weighing it in to the purchase decision it is little more than "generally how good is it". So tell me how did you not get a sense of the performance increase of RT during the Hardware Unboxed review? You were shown data of a game and could see how much improvement there was. Now I understand you wanted to see more games but your assumption there was that the percentage improvement from the last generation might be different on different games, which could very well be the case or it may not.

 

The problem is it comes back to how much time a reviewer has, Hardware Unboxed chooses to test a larger number of games than many other reviewers to get a stronger more statically significant average performance across the sample size. So if there isn't any signs that there is a great difference between games for this improvement and their audience does not significantly value the RT performance of products yet this is the content that will always be cut when time constrained.

 

It is not fair of you to demand that a reviewer do more than what is possible in the given time and to demand something that so few care about as much as you do. If you want to see a more RT focused review then you can go find one, Hardware Unboxed is not obligated to tailor their review to you and they will monitor their audience to see what the trends are and cater to that.

 

7 hours ago, Nex6 said:

Manufacturer does decide what the desired selling points are.

Like i said they can only decide on what they wish to market and push, that does not actually make them selling point. Nvidia could paint their cards green and push that in their marketing but that in no way makes it a selling point of the product, not unless the buyer likes green and that only makes it a positive selling point to that person. Unless the majority of customers buy cards happen to all like the colour green then it is not a selling point of the product no matter how much money Nvidia puts in to marketing the fact that it is green.

 

7 hours ago, Nex6 said:

But if you are provided the product by the manufacturer, then there are obligations

Correct, the only two that I already gave you. What you were talking about and probably still are is a sponsorship video which is not a review. Please do not start confusing sponsored content and sponsorship deals with product reviews, this is already happening and causes real problems.

 

Some companies would very much love to control the narrative and presentation around their products and have already started taking measures to do just that and such behavior has no place in product reviews.

 

That is the risk companies agree to when it comes to reviews, it could be negative. Companies do not have an inherent right to positive reviews of their product from reviewers, only fairness. What value would reviews have if all of them were always positive? How does that help the consumer? 

[Waldematrix]

Am I the only one that wants to see the email headers?
I've must be Googling wrong because I can't seem to find the EMAIL anywhere.

 

[Egg-Roll]

4 minutes ago, Waldematrix said:

Am I the only one that wants to see the email headers?
I've must be Googling wrong because I can't seem to find the EMAIL anywhere.

 

Because they don't have to hand it out? The fact nvidia backtracked on the email shows it was factual, else they would have made a PR statement calling BS on their claims.

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Waldematrix said:

Am I the only one that wants to see the email headers?
I've must be Googling wrong because I can't seem to find the EMAIL anywhere.

 

there is no screenshot of the full page released.

@leadeater funny thing is they did a video only about RT a week after the 3080 launch

Spoiler

 

 

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

@leadeater funny thing is they did a video only about RT a week after the 3080 launch

Yep but Hardware Unboxed needed to spend 48 hours in a day so they can do all 18 games with and without RT, oh wait not all 18 games have RT... 

 

A) Focus the review on a large sample size for better statically significant data on the most widely used render method

B) Focus the review on 4 to 6 games that is only viable on the highest end of the market and then have no sample data of the most widely used render method for other reviews and to compare against

 

Definitely B makes the most sense.

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, Waldematrix said:

Am I the only one that wants to see the email headers?
I've must be Googling wrong because I can't seem to find the EMAIL anywhere.

 

I don't think those would be public... that would be just bad form... 

 

the only way I could see those become public is when Nvidia would claim HUB would be lying about them, which would kind of force HUB hand... though that is apparently rather unlikely (and Nvidia not publicly stating anything afaik, can be seen a confirmation, even if not 100% bullet proof) 

 

 

On the other hand, I think they should just release the emails, because they already released the contents thereof and I wanna see them too!!

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Focus the review on a large sample size for better statically significant data on the most widely used render method

I noticed from the few reviews I watched, all of them (that I watched*) used the same couple of games - which I found A) rather sus and B) highly disappointing because I would have loved seeing games that are more relevant to me 

 

*didn't watch HUB though 

[Egg-Roll]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I noticed from the few reviews I watched, all of them (that I watched) used the same couple of games - which I found A) rather sus and B) highly disappointing because I would have loved seeing games that are more relevant to me 

The issue is your games may not be relevant to the masses so they typically stick to popular ones or ones they already have in their libraries, I'm sure many content creators are open to adding more games if their viewers really wanted to see them.

[Mark Kaine]

7 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

The issue is your games may not be relevant to the masses so they typically stick to popular ones or ones they already have in their libraries, I'm sure many content creators are open to adding more games if their viewers really wanted to see them.

the main issue really is that it were all the same games with no outliers whatsoever, which made everything feel staged... 

 

Also I take offense that you apparently think only a couple of the same games are "relevant to the masses" because that's simply not true in my opinion. 

 

Additionally, it would have been super interesting to see how Monster Hunter World specifically would stack up (a game that has just been sold ~ 20 million times btw) because it's a rather difficult game to run "maxed out" and I would have loved to see these cards struggle at 2k / 4k... with an "old" game (or not) 

 

 

[Egg-Roll]

9 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

the main issue really is that it were all the same games with no outliers whatsoever, which made everything feel staged... 

 

Also I take offense that you apparently think only a couple of the same games are "relevant to the masses" because that's simply not true in my opinion. 

 

Additionally, it would have been super interesting to see how Monster Hunter World specifically would stack up (a game that has just been sold ~ 20 million times btw) because it's a rather difficult game to run "maxed out" and I would have loved to see these cards struggle at 2k / 4k... (or not) 

 

 

I think the reason why they stick with similar games is because they are taxing or used to be, less LTTs logic behind CS:GO (there is none, sure it's #1 played on steam most days, but a potato can basically run it).

 

MHW is kind of a waste to get now that most have CP 2077 in their libraries if the sole purpose is to torture the GPU to its limits. That's why the meme for Crysis was a thing, if it could run it it would more than likely run anything/everything else.

[Mark Kaine]

26 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

I think the reason why they stick with similar games is because they are taxing or used to be

I mean it makes sense to use certain games, but I'm definitely missing some variety here, and not everyone likes shoot bang, even if they might really be most popular currently. 

 

28 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

CP 2077

I get that they would use this (altho they obviously didn't because it wasn't even out when 3070/80... released) but ultimately I think a badly optimized game from a mildly successful developer is rather irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. 

 

I mean, really, that's the new graphical showcase they would choose? 

Spoiler

 

LOL

 

One of the biggest embarrassments since NMS, that for the most part looks shit anyways... very poor choice, who cares about it really... 

 

 

Thats different than actually Crysis or MHW, which aren't actually badly optimized but just have some really taxing settings - it also shows or at least hints at the narrow mindedness of these reviewers (and I suppose their audience) and that they're not actually knowledgeable about games, outside a certain target audience... again, I would have really loved to see those cards taking on MH maxed out, with high resolution textures... I'm fairly certain they'd still struggle, that also goes for the previous generation of cards btw, barely any benchmarks (there are a few, but then they just say "high" or whatever, so not maxed out probably, and therefore also slightly irrelevant) 

 

 

While I get what you're saying, I think my point is still relevant, a very limited choice of game selection, with barely any significance for the PC gaming market as a whole. 

 

 

[Egg-Roll]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I mean it makes sense to use certain games, but I'm definitely missing some variety here, and not everyone likes shoot bang, even if they might really be most popular currently. 

I would love more variety, but also one has to be realistic as well because there is a point in every reviewers time where doing anything more wouldn't be profitable. I personally hate LTT using CS:GO it's a useless benchmark now, I doubt anyone will buy a 3090 for CS:GO, yet it's there.

 

Now there are still review sites that do many games, they won't be in video format but they do exist.

 

13 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I get that they would use this (altho they obviously didn't because it wasn't even out when 3070/80... released) but ultimately I think a badly optimized game from a mildly successful developer is rather irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. 

 

I mean, really, that's the new graphical showcase they would choose? 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

LOL

 

One of the biggest embarrassments since NMS, that for the most part looks shit anyways... very poor choice, who cares about it really... 

 

 

Thats different than actually Crysis or MHW, which aren't actually badly optimized but just have some really taxing settings - it also shows or at least hints at the narrow mindedness of these reviewers (and I suppose their audience) and that they're not actually knowledgeable about games, outside a certain target audience... again, I would have really loved to see those cards taking on MH maxed out, with high resolution textures... I'm fairly certain they'd still struggle, that also goes for the previous generation of cards btw, barely any benchmarks (there are a few, but then they just say "high" or whatever, so not maxed out probably, and therefore also slightly irrelevant) 

 

 

While I get what you're saying, I think my point is still relevant, a very limited choice of game selection, with barely any significance for the PC gaming market as a whole. 

Yea CP 2077 is a hot mess right now, but hopefully when they fix those issues it'll become a decent bench marker.

 

NMS I didn't mind at launch, it is much better now tho.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ASwN0cq-0g

 

That was a 2 second search, sometimes you actually need to go past normal reviewers for the information you seek. Do the big players need to improve their library? Sure but it's hard to justify doing so when even MHW is still being beaten by GTA V or PAYDAY 2...

 

MHW is sitting at #19 in 24 hour, and #47 currently which is only 200 more in game than Euro Truck Sim 2.

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/Steam-Game-and-Player-Statistics?l=english

https://steamdb.info/graph/

 

Or more simply put if their current testing setup is "good enough" for most of their audience, why change? Changing would require money to be invested in newer games, not even LTT had to buy CP 2077, so unless the viewers start giving keys to the creators things won't likely change.

[Ginger Penguin]

There's probably an element of having data for old cards to compare against. If you're running the same game for a few years at a time as a benchmark, you don't have to spend time running newer games on older cards if all you're trying to do is get a comparative result between them.

[Moonzy]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Additionally, it would have been super interesting to see how Monster Hunter World specifically would stack up

HUB used to include mhw in their old GPU videos iirc, that's why I subbed to them

They probably dropped this title because it's not a good benchmark, there's no good way to benchmark it and frankly speaking, it's shitly coded to say the least

 

Edit: 7:03

Spoiler

 

 

[WkdPaul]

* thread cleaned *

 

Please, do not engage or quote troll replies, doing so will get your reply removed.

[i_build_nanosuits]

So long as they keep constantly pushing the boundaries of graphics technologies, Nvidia has my blessing i don't care.

[GDRRiley]

31 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

So long as they keep constantly pushing the boundaries of graphics technologies, Nvidia has my blessing i don't care.

ah yes total pushing it.

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

So long as they keep constantly pushing the boundaries of graphics technologies, Nvidia has my blessing i don't care.

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. 

[WhitetailAni]

I realized something.

I'm not speaking for everyone here, but I think some people think we are giving Hardware Unboxed a free pass on their review.

No review is perfect.

It's just not really the focus of this whole thing like some people are making it out to be.

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD said:

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. 

what they did there with Ai and deep learning goes far beyond that and i hope you realize that...these compute cores allow for SO much more than that too...

Nvidia basically made fast Ai compute possible. Do you know of the app called Reface? worth to check out (Deepfake)

With that technology they will now be able to develop games faster and better than ever before (ray tracing does most of the lighting and shadow computes on the fly in future titles...couple years down the road3080 is still only Gen2)...and movies, with popular actors that are long gone or very old...etc.

 

[WhitetailAni]

I think I realized something.

I'm not speaking for everyone, but I think some people think we are giving Hardware Unboxed a free pass on their review.
It's not perfect.

No review is.

But it's not really the focus of this whole fiasco - Nvidia's treatment of Hardware Unboxed is.

The review is just the context.