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Nvidia bans HardwareUnboxed from receiving review samples

I mean, they aren’t doing proper reviews. Intentionally Ignoring half your feature set just because the competition lacks it is insane.

The “reviews” are basically just trolling for clicks. Why should Nvidia be obliged to support it?

this isn't about HUs opinion on things, it's about nvidia methods trying compel outlets that are saying things they don't like into submission.
 
Nvidia is a force in innovating, no doubt, but their marketing tactics are simply the worst.




disclaimer: i'm quite contrary to HU's opinion on ray tracing, but shit like this really shouldn't be happening.

Hardware Unboxed arbitrarily decided to omit benchmarking ray-tracing graphics. They should just give people all the benchmark results and let the people decide for themselves.

A lot of popular games now support ray-tracing graphics, including the most popular ones right now: WoW Shadowlands and Cyberpunk 2077.

I think when they released their 3070 review, they had a throwaway sentence to not include ray-tracing benchmarks because they think that not enough games support it. I closed the tab in disgust. That's them forcing their opinions into a review that should be free of bias.
 
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bargeparty

Member
While Nvidia is out of order here, HU did basically no RT testing on some recent videos I watched and it was kind of ridiculous seeing as how it's one of the reason to buy an RTX card. There was 1 test for Watch Dogs with like zero effort put in, just set everything Ultra and see what happens. Which is counter to their optimization videos so it was just puzzling to me and a bit off-putting.
 
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Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
I don’t agree with HU’s decision to ignore ray tracing but I sure as heck think Nvidia is in the wrong here. They’re dictating what reviewers do? Get bent. They’re not under any obligation to give HU a review product but the idea of “should your editorial decision change” is terrible.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
The wording on Nvidia's part (assuming that it's being accurately reported, which I would not assume. When an outlet gets blacklisted, it's conveniently never their fault) is a bit strong, but let's be honest here: receiving review product is not a right. It's a privilege.

If an outlet decides to completely ignore a major feature of a product they review, they're doing a disservice to their viewers/readers. As such, they should have much more relevant concerns than being blacklisted from receiving free stuff.

At this point in the hardware industry, ignoring ray tracing in graphics card reviews pretty much means offering a misleading representation of the value of the hardware, especially when comparative. Even consoles have ray tracing out of the box nowadays. It's not 2018 anymore.
 
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longdi

Banned
i watched a few hardware unboxed videos, they are definitely amd biased or at least strong support for the underdogs.
but sometimes when a shadey MSI sponsored them stuffs, they becomes pro MSI 🤷‍♀️

im not surprised that nvidia called them out.
waiting for intel to follow up.
 
If I make a product and send them to people to review, then those people decide to ignore entire features when comparing it's performance I would stop dealing with them too. Imagine ommiting a product's strength because its competition doesn't compete then playing victim. They can still go buy the product and review it, just like many reviewers do, Nvidia isn't saying they can't.

Nice of GN to step in and flex its muscle there too. White Knight Steve riding in on his cat to save them from mean old Nvidia. Tech YouTubers are insufferable.
 

londontko

Member
If I make a product and send them to people to review, then those people decide to ignore entire features when comparing it's performance I would stop dealing with them too. Imagine ommiting a product's strength because its competition doesn't compete then playing victim. They can still go buy the product and review it, just like many reviewers do, Nvidia isn't saying they can't.

Nice of GN to step in and flex its muscle there too. White Knight Steve riding in on his cat to save them from mean old Nvidia. Tech YouTubers are insufferable.

Incoming autistic 30 min review video on Nvidia and their review practices.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Nvidia is a force in innovating, no doubt, but their marketing tactics are simply the worst.




disclaimer: i'm quite contrary to HU's opinion on ray tracing, but shit like this really shouldn't be happening.


This shit should happen. those people need to buy there own gpu's so tthey are no longer on these people's pay walls.

The fact that nvidia blocks him says enough how much pull they have with other reviewers. its laughable. the same goes for game reviews.

Its simple u didn't buy the gpu u are a paid shill, the same with reviews.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
What a show of strength... oh well, I hope they cut off more review outlets and we stop with this bullshit access based “journalism” where these professional bloggers are half split between protecting their early and free access to content and trying to land a job in the industry they review in (mostly)... and trying to tell people to trust their reviews...
 

kuncol02

Banned
This shit should happen. those people need to buy there own gpu's so tthey are no longer on these people's pay walls.

The fact that nvidia blocks him says enough how much pull they have with other reviewers. its laughable. the same goes for game reviews.

Its simple u didn't buy the gpu u are a paid shill, the same with reviews.
Even if money would not be a problem then that cards are simply not available to buy for anyone.
 
this isn't about HUs opinion on things, it's about nvidia methods trying compel outlets that are saying things they don't like into submission.


they didnt demand to say something in particular. They said they simply ignore an entire feature set from benchamrking. Not only that, but shit posting personal opinions along with it. Its a channel thats asskissing AMD and downplaying nvidia. Why would you want to be represented by such a channel ?
 

GHG

Member
I commented on this a few weeks ago. It's not just the fact that they seek to ignore ray tracing performance in their reviews, it's the commentary that accompanies it.

Reviews for hardware are supposed to be impartial and data driven, their 6800 series reviews were not, and it's a shame because those cards are actually very good in their own right.
 

longdi

Banned
they didnt demand to say something in particular. They said they simply ignore an entire feature set from benchamrking. Not only that, but shit posting personal opinions along with it. Its a channel thats asskissing AMD and downplaying nvidia. Why would you want to be represented by such a channel ?

yes exactly. i think they have a website, techspot.
if you dont have time to view their videos, you can read their reviews

hwub clearly chose to slant towards amd bigly. so the reviewers themselves are no saints.
even now, using the internet as their mouth pieces to cancel nvidia 🤷‍♀️
 
That's a retard-level take. HU is ignoring key functionality of the product they're supposed to be reviewing.
Given that even now; a full 2 years later, you can count on two hands the number of RTX titles, I would say Hardware Unboxed are perfectly justified in mostly ignoring RTX. Even the games which actually use it, only one or two actually provide a serious upgrade in visual fidelity and in those games the performance is tanked massively to the point where DLSS is necessary.

Yeah, they're ignoring functionality, but given that the functionality is currently unavailable in 90% of games released that's fine. Nvidia can do what they like, obviously, but right now they're basically attempting to bully an independent hardware reviewer into hitting all of their marketing notes.

Why are they doing this? Because AMD are threatening them. Do you think they'd do this if they had an unequivocal lead of say 30% in rasterisation? Nope. We saw as much with Turing.

Real time ray tracing is the future sure, but that future isn't here in a meaningful capacity yet. That might change in a year or two now that the consoles support it. But right. Is Hardware Unboxed are perfectly justified in mostly ignoring RTX. They're under no obligation to act as free marketing for Nvidia. Nvidia obviously are clearly not obligated to provide them review hardware, but their wording clearly shows they want to control the message.

What's next? If AMD bring themselves to parity with RDNA3, are they gonna ban reveiwerw for ignoring Hairworks? Or PhysX?
 

longdi

Banned
I commented on this a few weeks ago. It's not just the fact that they seek to ignore ray tracing performance in their reviews, it's the commentary that accompanies it.

Reviews for hardware are supposed to be impartial and data driven, their 6800 series reviews were not, and it's a shame because those cards are actually very good in their own right.

they did the same biased commentary with their zen2 reviews and msi motherboard reviews. 🤷‍♀️
 

Reallink

Member
Why does Nvidia even care? This is so comically petty. They have 80-90% marketshare and sell every card they can make. Even ignoring AMD's terrible RT performance, the 6000 series cards are still 5-10% behind the equivalent Nvidia in raster, and are absolutely annihilated by DLSS. The AMD's are poor values and poor buys across the board. No one sophisticated enough to install a GPU or find a nerd channel reviewing computer hardware is going to be swayed by a potentially mildly biased opinion.
 
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Typical Nvidia scummy tactics. I'm actually a little surprised to see the usual suspects cheering for this, I understand having a brand preference but this is unquestionably a shitty move from Nvidia.

This is designed as a warning to any other tech reviewers to toe the line or else. In a world where reference models are the only reviews 95% of people watch, where supply is massively constrained to the point of needing bot armies to buy on launch day, where a reviewers continued success and livelihood is partially based on receiving these samples to have reviews ready at/before launch and where the competition who is willing to toe the line will get their samples this is a really shitty move from Nvidia.

Not surprising because this type of thing is Nvidia's M.O and has been for a long time, but still a very shitty move.

It goes to show how dependent on maintaining access to review samples most tech tubers and reviews sites really are and how that must influence their reviews and opinions of products. I would love for that not to be the case and for every reviewer to be truly independent and buy their own, but unless everyone suddenly decided to do it at once it will never happen as getting it early gives you a massive leg up on and competing channels or reviewers who don't have that early access.

Speaking of hardware unboxed they are one of the best reviewers around with a huge benchmark suite, one of the biggest I've seen, where they review modern games, update their suite to the newest title in a popular series rather than using an older title in the same series and they have a balance of both Nvidia and AMD sponsored titles.
 

GeekyDad

Member
I think the term ban is wrong. They aren't banning HU from anything, they simply choose not to provide free product to pre-review.
They can't ban them from reviewing anything.

Exactly. They can't ban them from reviewing it when it's out there. They don't have to give anyone anything for any reason.
 
Given that even now; a full 2 years later, you can count on two hands the number of RTX titles... [followed by a bunch of bs]
  1. Control
  2. Deliver Us The Moon
  3. COD Modern Warfare
  4. COD Cold War
  5. Fortnite
  6. Metro Exodus
  7. Minecraft
  8. Quake II
  9. Lara Croft Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  10. Watch Dogs Legion
  11. WoW Shadowlands
  12. Wolfenstein Youngbloods
  13. Battlefield V
  14. Ghostrunner
  15. Mortal Shell
  16. Cyberpunk 2077
B BattleScar counting
tenor.gif
 
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Typical Nvidia scummy tactics. I'm actually a little surprised to see the usual suspects cheering for this, I understand having a brand preference but this is unquestionably a shitty move from Nvidia.


It sounds like a poor move. But think about it. You have an outlet thats publicly shitting on your products features and options, in their forums, social media, reviews. Constantly, many, many times. Misrepresenting and ignoring key features that you use as a selling point.

Even dismissing nvidia vs amd, the fact that steve is forcing his personal stance on this onto his reviews is not professional.

3 days ago, we had WOW Shadowlands becoming the fastest selling PC game in history. Almost 4 million copies in 24 hours. Then 2 days later, we have the biggest game since GTA 5 in 2013 becoming itself the fastest PC selling game in history at almost 5 million copies just from preorders alone. Cyberpunk.

Both have ray tracing. Watch Dogs Legion has ray tracing. Call of Duty has RT. Hitman 3 and Far Cry 6 have RT. Witcher 3 will get a patch for it next year. The next Call of Duty has RT. The 2 biggest games in the world have RT - Minecraft and Fortnite. The next Battlefield will have it. At this point, to dismiss RT or continue with the "arent enough games, i cant see the difference,etc" means the person is either a mouth breading imbecile or has an agenda. Guess which one techspot falls into.

PC Games Hardware has a larger selection than them for benchmarks, so does Computer Base. So does TechpoweUP. With very new and older games. None have AMD coming on top, at any resolution. Except one. Hardware unboxed/Techspot.

Its an AMD leaning website that misrepresents nvidia in order for AMD to appear different that they are. If you were in charge at nvidia, you'd do the same. The nvidia coverage of this website feels like its doing everything to misrepresent nvidia and inflate AMD.

And we can sure how their reporting will go from now on. Doing everything behind the scenes to favour AMD (turning the AC when testing AMD so it runs cooler and boosts higher and turning it off for nvidia testing. Running benchmarks 5 times and choosing the best one for AMD and the worst one for nvidia instead of doing an average.)
 
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Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
If you're ignoring RT and DLSS in post Cyberpunk 2077 world, you're not doing your job properly as a reviewer. Sorry not sorry.
CP looks overall better without RT though, because RT pretty much requires aggressive DLSS even on the beastliest of machines and DLSS may look really close to native res up close but distant elements get distorted and unpleasant compared to non-RT/non DLSS.


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.
 
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