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Nvidia bans HardwareUnboxed from receiving review samples
- Thread starter DemonCleaner
- Start date
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Not cool. Hardware Unboxed does good work.
Low Moral Fibre
Member
Been watching them for years and really like their content but I couldn't believe some of the more recent stuff where they just straight up disregarded DLSS and raytracing. I know they are still niche feature in terms of support but they were ignored like they just didn't exist.
People in the PC world are crazy enough to buy a new card for one or two games and I know I'd be disappointed if I bought a 6000 series card instead of say a 3080 for Cyberpunk 2077.
You could argue people should be better informed if they are interested in Nvidia specific (or Nvidia bias) features but where do they get information from? Places like this..
People in the PC world are crazy enough to buy a new card for one or two games and I know I'd be disappointed if I bought a 6000 series card instead of say a 3080 for Cyberpunk 2077.
You could argue people should be better informed if they are interested in Nvidia specific (or Nvidia bias) features but where do they get information from? Places like this..
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Eh. Good on nvidia. Why supply them with free review cards if they are going to contantly downplay or not even cover your biggest features?
isn’t a review ban. They just don’t get free stuff.
HU has been showing an anti RTX bias for a while now and it made me stop watching their videos a while back.
show us what the card can do...don’t tell us how we should use it or what we will likely use, or what’s important.
isn’t a review ban. They just don’t get free stuff.
HU has been showing an anti RTX bias for a while now and it made me stop watching their videos a while back.
show us what the card can do...don’t tell us how we should use it or what we will likely use, or what’s important.
TyphoonStruggle
Member
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Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Pictures aren't playable, otherwise you don't need a GPU and can make do with wallpapers, retard. Quote the whole post rather than edit to remove the bits that aren't in your interest you sad excuse of a corporate shill. Tldr, RT requires DLSS even on the beastliest machines resulting in this ugly:
Maybe if in 3 years you can run native high res with RT and maintain high fps so that motion resolution is high like the actual resolution it'll look better but until then it's not worth it, as impressive as the small interior in the part right after my timestamp is (when standing still to look at it).
In 3 years HU reviews will be different after all (but potentially with the same results, as games will also be more demanding than Cyberpunk, though with added RT cores and more powerful GPU on top maybe there will be no need for additional sacrifices compared to non RT playability).
So, no, picture comparisons of RT on/RT off and all other things being equal is not representative of how people play the games right now, because they all need to make other sacrifices to enable RT, such as enabling DLSS, if not reducing other settings too for some lower end RTX GPU.
Maybe if in 3 years you can run native high res with RT and maintain high fps so that motion resolution is high like the actual resolution it'll look better but until then it's not worth it, as impressive as the small interior in the part right after my timestamp is (when standing still to look at it).
In 3 years HU reviews will be different after all (but potentially with the same results, as games will also be more demanding than Cyberpunk, though with added RT cores and more powerful GPU on top maybe there will be no need for additional sacrifices compared to non RT playability).
So, no, picture comparisons of RT on/RT off and all other things being equal is not representative of how people play the games right now, because they all need to make other sacrifices to enable RT, such as enabling DLSS, if not reducing other settings too for some lower end RTX GPU.
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Jon Neu
Banned
No, they aren't at all. Doesn't matter the number of games with RTX, you either do an honest review of the capabilities of the card or you select what you want to show from it to satisfy your own bias.
RTX is right here already and it's obviously the star of the inmediate future. Not taking it into account is just you not being a reviewer, but a partisan.
Nvidia does anything.
AMD fans: oh, they're feeling the heat!
It's almost as if you could smell the silly confirmation bias and wishful thinking.
What wording? NVIDIA haven't said anything.
IF NVIDIA sents you a free GPU and you don't review it's RT capabilities, then it's completely justified that they don't give you any more free GPU's. If you can't even review a GPU properly, then that's entirely your fault.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
The whole point of a reviewer is to give their opinions on the product, whether good or bad. There were tons of reviewers who didn't test with or enable SAM on AMD GPUs for instance and that "works" on every game. (Although not all benefit) and some said it was not really worthwhile overall, should AMD ban all of these reviewers?
While you or I can agree or disagree about how many titles support RT/the performance hit and whether it is important or not right now, that is kind of side stepping the point a little bit. Steve gave his opinion and reasoning why they don't think RT is quite there yet in the grand scheme of things and they still included RT titles in their reviews, they just glossed over them somewhat.
The point here is that Nvidia is trying to throw their weight around/use their market leader position to influence reviewers or punish them for not doing what Nvidia want or otherwise giving an unfavourable review. Not getting review samples will massively hinder HU ability to review these products in a timely manner compared to their competition, which in turn will hurt their viewership, bottom line and overall ability to do their jobs. Personally I think that is a really shitty move and is done as a warning to other reviewers and tech tubers to show Nvidia in a positive light and push whatever feature/narrative they demand or suffer the consequences.
From a business point of view from Nvidia's perspective does it make sense to potentially cut off reviewers who don't care about RT or don't give you glowing reviews regardless of the actual product? Sure, but then it also makes business sense for the local chemical company to dump their waste in the local river rather than pay to properly dispose of it, doesn't make it right. Granted I'm not saying these two things are equivalent of course, but just pointing out that something making good business sense doesn't necessarily make it right or something we should accept.
BattleScar
Member
Ah my mistake.B BattleScar counting
- Control
- Deliver Us The Moon
- COD Modern Warfare
- COD Cold War
- Fortnite
- Metro Exodus
- Minecraft
- Quake II
- Lara Croft Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Watch Dogs Legion
- WoW Shadowlands
- Wolfenstein Youngbloods
- Battlefield V
- Ghostrunner
- Mortal Shell
- Cyberpunk 2077
So a handful over a dozen.
Still not exactly what you would describe as extensive.
Not to mention in eSports games like Fortnite it's quite literally pointless and serves only to ruin performance. And in many of the other games, aside from Control and the full Path Tracers the increase in visual fidelity is not worth the butchering of performance.
But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here.
I just don't give a single fuck if the 90%+ market incumbent might look bad because a couple guys on the internet (who otherwise produce pretty good benchmarks) didn't give them as favourable a review as they would have liked.
TyphoonStruggle
Member
It doesn't matter that you don't care about these games. The point is that some people do. And it's the job of reviewers to provide as much information as possible to people who are like you and to people who are unlike you. Duh!
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Mister Wolf
Member
That's not even all of them.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Er, read the op? It's all about what Nvidia said to them, they paraphrase most of it and they even directly quote an exact part of it "should your editorial direction change". Sort of what the whole thread is about, dude.
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Jon Neu
Banned
Actually we could argue it's the other way around.
HardwareUnboxed is doing clearly biased AMD favourable reviews by manipulating how they review Nvidia cards and then using the victim card to throw bad press at Nvidia when Nvidia stops giving them free cards.
rofif
Banned
They kinda really ignore rt and drooled over 6800xt.... It's like driving a sports car only 60mph in the traffic but the civic over there on free lane overtakes it.
Ok that's stupid comparison but they really made 6800xt look like competitive product while it's not. Look at cyberpunk now... You gotta play newest game without rt on newest card. DLSS and ray tracing are real and are added value
Ok that's stupid comparison but they really made 6800xt look like competitive product while it's not. Look at cyberpunk now... You gotta play newest game without rt on newest card. DLSS and ray tracing are real and are added value
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Jon Neu
Banned
You know what evidence is? How is some rando twit of some random reviewer the "wording of Nvidia"?
Doesn't matter what they claim Nvidia said to them if they don't provide any proof of it. If they have proof, put the entire message and we then could see what was really said, because it seems to me there isn't only their own reviews what they like to manipulate.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
So Nvidia said nothing and they have no way to know if they're banned from receiving products or not, just gotta wait for next products to come out and see if they will get any or not. Nice!
Then spend your reply as "I don't believe them" and leave it at that, but you didn't, because you know Nvidia said that bs. Like they wanna get sued by a mega corp on top for spreading lies about what they were told, lol. You're not very smart, are you? It's rhetorical, just in case.
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BattleScar
Member
Yeah like I said, agree to disagree.
I use multiple reviews and benchmarks to make my decisions regardless. And it's not as though Hardware Unboxed had absolutely no RT benchmarks at all, which they did.
And they placed a larger spotlight on DLSS, which is a much more useful feature across the board (though it's adoption is only really marginally better than RTX at this stage).
I simply disagree with Nvidia attempting to control the messaging from reviewers by rescinding their access to review samples for whatever reason.
The RTX 3000 series are good products regardless of the RTX situation. They don't need to control the message. They're competitive at rasterisation with their main competitor - winning at higher resolutions and losing at lower resolutions. They have DLSS, something their competitor as yet has no answer to and they're winning at ray tracing.
That comes at a slight price premium, so there is a value proposition. Almost all of the reviews I've seen - including HUB, state that if those value-add features matter then get RTX3000. If they don't , save the money and get RX6000.
Or, as is the case in the real world, buy whatever is actually available to buy.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
I disagree, I don't believe they are necessarily biased any more or less than you could say any other tech reviewer is biased. Although again this is kind of besides the point, there are tons of channels or what not that people could claim are biased one way or another, doesn't necessarily make it true.
Nvidia, the giant multi billion dollar corporation who has a near monopoly in the GPU space using its position to influence reviewers and threatening to punish non compliant reviewers/channels is unquestionably a bad thing, Nvidia is not the victim here and it is simply absurd to see people try to spin this narrative.
TyphoonStruggle
Member
Oh no! Hardware Unboxed being forced to do more work by greedy Nvidia is how they "control the messaging"
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AquaticSquirrel
Member
I'm pretty much in agreement with Gamer's Nexus take on it here:
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Jon Neu
Banned
Nvidia was sending free cards to people that then take the free cards, decides to not review it's more important features and do a manipulated review that doesn't show the objective picture of what those cards can do.
So Nvidia stops giving those people free cards and then those people come to twitter to incite a mob against them and start the same narrative you are gullible enough to swallow of the "evil multi billion dollar corporation monopoly against the poor independent freedom fighter reviewer".
I don't see how is HardwareUnboxed the victim here. At best they are just the victim of their own manipulations.
Soulblighter31
Banned
The job is to accurately and neutraly test the hardware piece you got sent. Thats the entire reason you get that piece. He does not do that. He is activelly shitting in fact on the key feature that nvidia built the card for. Come on, man. I miself have pointed to this website for these exact things.
They missrepresent data in favour of AMD, like comparing geforce 2060 to the radeon 6800 in Watch Dogs on a dedicated graph for RT. Ignoring that RT in Legion renders half the stuff nvidia does and therefore the performance impact isnt as severe and putting a 600 dollar 6800 against a 400 dollar 3060Ti and a 2060 ? Come on man.
AMD's semen is driping from this websites mouth.
Putting 3 AMD sponsored games right on que for the 6800 reviews, games that specifically underperform on nvidia. Valhalla is a valid game to benchmark. Turds like Dirt and Godfall are not.
Nocturno999
Member
Very shitty, considering HU did a great tech analysis of their Reflex tech.
BattleScar
Member
Oh no! Hardware Unboxed being forced to do more work by greedy Nvidia is how they "control the messaging"
Nah it's no more or less work for HUB. It's just less launch day coverage of Nvidia products.
Imagine simping for a multi billion dollar corporation.
TheKillerStove
Banned
What they're doing goes way above not reviewing how Nvidia wants. They're omitting features because the competition doesn't have them. That'd be like a game reviewer that only beelines the main quests because not all games have side content. It doesnt accurately represent the final product, and does a disservice to those who go above the lowest common denominator. It's completely reasonable for a creator to stop providing review units if their philosophy on reviews fails to accurately represent the product as a whole.
longdi
Banned
GN is arrogant af and have delete criticisms from their comments.
Steve going for that cancelled culture.
I support Nvidia in this case. No reason to send hu free gpu if they chose to slant their commentary.
Jensung is ruthless and awesome at the same time
AquaticSquirrel
Member
I for one am shocked at this highly out of character and unexpected outcome!
BattleScar
Member
Why bother waiting for benchmarks at all.GN is arrogant af and have delete criticisms from their comments.
Steve going for that cancelled culture.
I support Nvidia in this case. No reason to send hu free gpu if they chose to slant their commentary.
Jensung is ruthless and awesome at the same time
Just take Nvidia's word for it. The 3080 is twice as fast as the 2080, right?
AquaticSquirrel
Member
Actually AMD's 6000 series GPUs do have Ray Tracing and HU have shown some benchmarks with RT so this narrative doesn't really fly. Similarly tons of reviewers either didn't use or turn on for example SAM or the (lol) Rage Mode on AMD cards in their reviews, are these not valid reviews? Are these reviewers Nvidia fanboys somehow? Should AMD revoke review samples of their CPU/GPU products from these channels? What about the ones who did test SAM but glossed over it or said it wasn't worth it? Should they be removed too?
You see how this narrative doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
Jon Neu
Banned
Soulblighter31
Banned
nvidia said up to 2x faster than the normal 2080. With RTX on. Show me in this picture where the lie is.
"Up to" doesnt mean literally 2x faster in every single thing. Means it will be possible to reach that point, in some things. Its not that nvidia misrepresents the performance. It seems users dont read carefully what it says then blame nvidia
TyphoonStruggle
Member
Why bother reading Hardware Unboxed review at all? They just ignore significant parts of products’ feature sets cause they know what’s best for you.
Meanwhile I’ll read my reviews elsewhere out of the dozens of hardware reviewers available. Where else are you gonna buy a GPU? AMD?
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rofif
Banned
so it's better to just follow all twitter drama without analyzing or checking facts?
What's so hard to understand in having to review a product... they received for review... they were not asked for their opinion. They were tasked with reviewing
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Jon Neu
Banned
What kind of moron decides that Nvidia should be giving free cards to reviewers that purposely manipulate the reviews to make those cards look worse, or else they are "silencing" them?
Ah, right, AMD and butthurt console fanboys.
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Randy_Lahey
Banned
Lol i falled for the RX5700XT meme and bought Sapphire model. Drivers got barely fixed after 1 year, and still not perfect. Sold that shit and waiting for nvidia stock.
On the topic, yeah we will just ignore these pretty big features because other brand does not have them. And then cry on twitter
On the topic, yeah we will just ignore these pretty big features because other brand does not have them. And then cry on twitter
kuncol02
Banned
Sometimes paid by that corporation kind.
MadchesterManc
Member
Priceless. So they're now biased towards AMD because of being blacklisted by Nvidia for not pushing RT even tho they have RT games in their benchmark suite. Fanboys on GAF are something else
Low Moral Fibre
Member
They have just put out a video on Cyberpunk 2077 and excluded DLSS and RTX (but did say it was coming in a later video before anyone attacks). I just don't see the point in making a whole video and excluding key features the game offers.
With DLSS on quality my 2070S is around 6800XT level at 1440p per their benchmarks at the bit of the game they tested and clearly my card would get absolutely massacred at native res.
I'm not entirely stupid and I know DLSS is not magical and there must be a trade-off for using DLSS v native res but I honestly can't see it at least at the quality setting and can't imagine many PC gamers would reject a feature that gave them a huge performance boost for a difference in quality an untrained eye can't even detect.
If I bought a 6800XT to play Cyberpunk 2077 based on this video I would have felt stung. Again I know buyer beware and do your homework before you buy but putting out a specific Cyberpunk 2077 video and ignoring DLSS seems crazy to me.
I'm happy to be proven wrong and if someone can show me where DLSS ruins image quality I'm happy to listen.
With DLSS on quality my 2070S is around 6800XT level at 1440p per their benchmarks at the bit of the game they tested and clearly my card would get absolutely massacred at native res.
I'm not entirely stupid and I know DLSS is not magical and there must be a trade-off for using DLSS v native res but I honestly can't see it at least at the quality setting and can't imagine many PC gamers would reject a feature that gave them a huge performance boost for a difference in quality an untrained eye can't even detect.
If I bought a 6800XT to play Cyberpunk 2077 based on this video I would have felt stung. Again I know buyer beware and do your homework before you buy but putting out a specific Cyberpunk 2077 video and ignoring DLSS seems crazy to me.
I'm happy to be proven wrong and if someone can show me where DLSS ruins image quality I'm happy to listen.
Soulblighter31
Banned
i mean, yeah. Then go ahead and cry on twitter that you're not gonna get free stuff anymore because the corporation has it out for you, not that you're a biased incompetent lying asshole
Jon Neu
Banned
It's literally fanboyism disguided as a technical review.
Technical reviews that somehow miss the two most important technical feats.
BattleScar
Member
Why bother reading Hardware Unboxed review at all? They just ignore significant parts of products’ feature sets cause they know what’s best for you.
Meanwhile I’ll read my reviews elsewhere out of the dozens of hardware reviewers available. Where else are you gonna buy a GPU? AMD?
I mean I couldn't buy either right now if I wanted to.
But I guess you'd be ok with AMD not sending Zen 3/Radeon review samples out to outlets that ignored SAM, because that's a significant part of the featureset that offers up to 10% more performance?
That would be okay?
Raytracing is better on Nvidia GPUs, but it's not exclusive to Nvidia GPUs any more. RX6000 may be shit at it, but it's still capable of it. I mean in certain games such as Dirt 5 it's actually better at it than Nvidia.
HUB still didn't give a shit, so its not as though they're doing it to favour AMD. They're applying their own standards across the board.
TyphoonStruggle
Member
I didn’t think Hardware Unboxed were biased for AMD. I just thought they were lazy in a single review. Maybe they were desperate to put something out in timely manner. It happens to the best of us that we sometimes fail to meet a deadline.Priceless. So they're now biased towards AMD because of being blacklisted by Nvidia for not pushing RT even tho they have RT games in their benchmark suite. Fanboys on GAF are something else
But since they decided to cry on Twitter, Hardware Unboxed can get fucked for all I care. It’s something that only trash people do, and Hardware Unboxed is now a trash brand.
Gamers Nexus is walking on thin ice here by making a statement on a controversy that does not involve them. Idiots.
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BattleScar
Member
It's coming in a separate video??
Given that 75% of the market still run 1060s, I'm pretty sure it's okay to review the rasterisation performance first and then focus on the RTX and DLSS performance separately and in greater depth for the tiny minority of users who have a Turing or Ampere GPU.
AquaticSquirrel
Member
Hardware Unboxed's take and kind of covers the CyberPunk stuff too
The Cockatrice
Member
So many nvidia ass licking shills around here holy shit and this is coming from someone who only owned an nvidia card. If hardware unboxed does not want to review what is considered a marketing gimmick more than the future, at least for the current cards then they are free to do so but then again so is nvidia free to deny them the right but we know what that means. We really need a competition for nvidias dlss/rtx because this is bs. The cards we have now barely handle ray tracing and we have not even begun to scrape the surface of what ray tracing can do.
Jon Neu
Banned
That's good, because seems those 1060 are the only cards HardwareUnboxed will be available to review from now on.
Buggy Loop
Member
That’s the thing, the competition is not lacking the feature set. It’s just not a good look on them. Hardware unboxed is yeah... just a tad above Moore’s law is dead as far as AMD fanboys go.