Questions about NV30

[Pete]

In any case, I didn't want posts here because I don't want NVIDIA to check this forum and see this thread with all the potential questions. If I were to ask questions based on what is posted here, they may refuse to answer it solely because it appeared on Beyond3D. You may think it is extreme but I honestly don't care if it is extreme or not - I just want good questions answered without any preconceived notions. When I do properly credit B3D for some of the questions asked, and if NV doesn't like it, I'll handle it myself.

And nVidia thinks this will make us think better of them? They'd do themselves a far bigger service by just letting their obviously (up till now) superior hardware and drivers speak for themselves. People dislike nV b/c of heavy-handed marketing tactics, and using that technique further won't mend any fences. I've always separated nV's engineering achievements from their marketing blunders, but each one of the latter digs them a little deeper.

Still, NV30 is compelling material, and I will be reading your interview. I'd think VE would have more of a problem crediting B3D for the interview questions than nV would.

I'm going to avoid the personal conflict for now--too tired to mediate. I'll stop in later, tho--I'm sure this thread'll be here upon my return, but larger, and hopefully less contentious.

 

[Reverend]

My intentions is not for an interview... it is simply to ask NV's product manager some questions... my original intention is to prepare for a NV30 preview, not an interview.

misae, your question is exactly what I mean wrt to how NV views B3D (staff or forum participants). It has nothing to do with official fact - ben's post is not based on known and "get-this-straight" fact. I don't care about "Was this really rendered on a NV30?". I only care if it will be when NV30 is officially available.

Also, to address some of the stuff in misae's post... my belief is that many of those that are truly interested in 3D likes discussing what is revealed... whether if it is here at B3D or elsewhere. I don't think these guys care about whose proprietary info it belongs to, as long as it is revealed and can be discussed. Yes, they can be "loyal" to B3D but that is limited and not as far-reaching as their ultimate passion, which is 3D. Again, not advocating "stealing" material, just the way I see it.

Geek_2002. There is no need to be "bias" for any one IHV, just to know how to ask questions in order to get answers. As well as mature enough to know what to post on your website in order to achieve roughly the same objective (i.e. to get answers). You won't get answers if you, or your website, is perceived as "anti" any one IHV.

jb, I do roughly the same thing at VE as what I've been doing at B3D. The only difference is that I enjoy it (now) and that everyone at VE respects me, not only for what they perceive me as (not that I care), but also what they think I can add to their website in terms of content and respect due to my industry relations. They (nor I) care not who reviews what, as long as it appears at VE.

 

[Kristof]

Perhaps you should've said this prior to your monkey image. You extended no respect with that image.

Blaming it on the poor monkey

I grabbed the monkey from this page :

http://www.mysmilies.com/?cat=confused

Notice the category is "confused" which represented my feelings about the issue, I was "confused" about allowing this or not allowing it. I liked the monkey (just noticed it's actually the logo of that website as well) and that's it... no other meaning should be sought behind the monkey image. I am sorry if that image offended you.

K-

 

[Tahir2]

Yes my question was harsh.

A good interviewer would ask these kind of questions too, IMO. Everything I stated is refutable by NVIDIA and would be an excellent chance for NVIDIA to set the record straight (at least there side).
Ben was embarassed so was the team at NVNEWS who had to later clarify the situation on their front page. That is not good PR at all... quite the opposite.

But then again, sometimes any publicity (good or bad) is good publicity. Perhaps it is because of these kind of questions being thrown at NVIDIA (the best question was at the conference call though, 'have you taped out?') explains why B3D may never get any hardware from NVIDIA.

Not that I see that as a big problem. If you are given something for free to preview/review you are expected to extoll its virtues anyway. A bit like what Matrox said about [H]

 

[Guest]

Personally, I can completely understand why NVidia is hesitant to give out "sensitive" hardware to B3D. One staff member currently works at a competing IHV and one worked at two competing IHVs. I'm suprised they get any sort of advanced looks at hardware or specifications from any companies out there.

"Borrowing" forum members is a bit strange, but at least he was upfront about it.

Still, from a lot of the pro nvidia garble in the forum and the fair news coverage gets... there is no reason to say the Beyond 3D is biased for other IHVs. In fact a number of staff members have even in the face of blatent factual information stated "Beyond 3D is not in the buisness of making rumors" and then went on to defend nvidias CEO in their claims.. WTF.. I have even thought at one point that Beyond 3D was becoming an nvidia fan site!(No offence to forum staff but ...) Every new thread is about nvidia, sometimes most of the news regards nvidia and so on. Considering some of the forum staff works for other IHVs I am surprised how UNBIAS Beyond 3D really is....

 

[Reverend]

Kristof, I'd said this before in emails and I'll say it again - it does not matter what you say here nor what you say in private emails to these IHVs. You work for a competitor and is with a website. That is enough to write you, and your website, off. Yes, we all know you won't influence B3D reviews but how can you assure these competitors this *fact* other than word/text?

And as for a "this product rocks"... when's the last product that B3D views as "rocks"? It is good and all to raise questions about every single product by any one IHV... but it will forever be tempered by the fact that "Kristof Beets - PowerVR and Beyond3D.com" is with, well, Beyond3D.

As I said in emails - forget getting next-gen reference boards from ANY IHV at B3D (except from PowerVR, of course ) while Kristof is with B3D. What B3D loyalists should expect is in-depth, and informative, studies much (subjective word) later. If that is fine with the B3D loyals, and perhaps more importantly okay with the B3D staff, everything is peachy.

 

[RussSchultz]

It has nothing to do with being pro this or anti that. Kristof works at a competing company, period.

Why should NVIDIA share any priveledged information with a website that is run by somebody who works at a competing company?

Even if you can think of a reasonable answer, it doesn't mean that that company needs to abide by what you think is correct or not, as you're not the person making the decision or responsible for the aftermath.

The company I work for has multiple competitors, and business is cutthroat, complete with lawsuits and counter lawsuits, rivalries and stolen employees, and other forms of industrial espionage. I can assure you everybody's marketting team does their best to leave their competitors in the dark--and that means not giving away sensitive information to other companies employees, or talking too much shop while at lunch, or over beers after work.

 

[Guest]

Kristof, I'd said this before in emails and I'll say it again - it does not matter what you say here nor what you say in private emails to these IHVs. You work for a competitor and is with a website. That is enough to write you, and your website, off. Yes, we all know you won't influence B3D reviews but how can you assure these competitors this *fact* other than word/text?

And as for a "this product rocks"... when's the last product that B3D views as "rocks"? It is good and all to raise questions about every single product by any one IHV... but it will forever be tempered by the fact that "Kristof Beets - PowerVR and Beyond3D.com" is with, well, Beyond3D.

As I said in emails - forget getting next-gen reference boards from ANY IHV at B3D (except from PowerVR, of course ) while Kristof is with B3D. What B3D loyalists should expect is in-depth, and informative, studies much (subjective word) later. If that is fine with the B3D loyals, and perhaps more importantly okay with the B3D staff, everything is peachy.

Now you are pigeon holing Beyond 3D without any evidence to back up your claim that it is biased in some way.. and capitalizing on the fact that a staff member works for another IHV.. Reverend what you are doing here is a dirty rotten trick.. entirely. I would never have ever guessed that one of the staff here worked for a particular IHV ... never. Thanks to your mouth I do know now. .... I am thinking I wouldn't trust the likes of you as far as I could throw you. You are making an ass of yourself in my eyes, sorry for the harsh words but I just now realized what you are attempting to do. Discredit Beyond 3D and pimp out Voodooextreme ...

 

[Doomtrooper]

Why should NVIDIA share any priveledged information with a website that is run by somebody who works at a competing company?

Why should Nvidia share information with anyone period ?? Whatever Nvidia releases to the public being to Reverend or Wavy Dave is going to be nothing more than PR crapola.
There will be no trade secrets revealed in this interview, no indepth technical details revealed...that entire statement is a joke.
It doesn't matter WHO gets the information..if the Reverend does get some technical answers out of them...well it will be uploaded to a public, popular internet site like Voodooextreme where Kristof, ATI and all the other IHV's could read it..again there will be no technical details revealed here so that arguement is poor.

 

[Pete]

Why should NVIDIA share any priveledged information with a website that is run by somebody who works at a competing company?

Yeah, a review board a month before public release is privileged info, when every fanboy and his wrestling-infatuated brother will be able to read the benchmarks a day later anyway.

Oh well, at least nV isn't a sole manfacturer--you can always turn to OEMs for review samples.

And as much as I'm for the community discussion aspect, the reality is that B3D still needs to pay the bills, and they'll have to consider that first (WRT to providing questions to "competing" sites). Of course, I think credited questions on another site is a free plug, and most of us read multiple reviews anyway. We all know B3D is a great, if not the premier, source for 3D tech. This can come back to bite us in the ass, tho--witness the recent infusion of babbling fanboys.

Edit: I propose a moratorium on further usage in this thread. 's are still allowed, and even encouraged.

EditEdit: Is the word fanboi also on paid vacation? If so, then consider "every fanboi and his brother" to be "everyone and his brother."

 

[Reverend]

Now you are pigeon holing Beyond 3D without any evidence to back up your claim that it is biased in some way.. and capitalizing on the fact that a staff member works for another IHV.. Reverend what you are doing here is a dirty rotten trick.. entirely. I would never have ever guessed that one of the staff here worked for a particular IHV ... never. Thanks to your mouth I do know now. .... I am thinking I wouldn't trust the likes of you as far as I could throw you. You are making an ass of yourself in my eyes, sorry for the harsh words but I just now realized what you are attempting to do. Discredit Beyond 3D and pimp out Voodooextreme ...

Evidence? Do you actually talk to NVIDIA? Or ATI? Or Matrox? While stating you represent Beyond3D? Try it.

I am not "capitalizing" on the fact that K works for a competitor - that only works if I think of it first... but that's not the case... I was told that because K works for B3D that obstructions are automatically in place... well, call me Sally and smack me silly (is that the way it goes?), but I was ignorant of this "fact"... I thought everyone, including competitors, really accepts the fact that B3D publicly announced a press release that K works for PowerVR and will not have anyhting to do with video cards (and, hidden, saying he will not have any influence on such).

Pimping VE? VE needs no pimping, dude.

Discredit B3D? Unfortunate case as it, yes...

 

[BenM]

Geek-

The fact that Kristof works for PVR is pretty obvious. Look at his sig.

_________________
Kristof

Developer Relations Engineer PowerVR Technologies
Technical Editor Beyond3D

Reverend didn't let the cat out of the bag on Kristof's employer

 

[Doomtrooper]

The reality here is none of the questions we would want answered wouldn't be anyways. Especially the indepth technical details and timeline's...it would be a few answers that would make claims to being the best for Doom3...
So stating that Kristof would benefit from this information is truly 'funny'.

 

[RussSchultz]

Ever thought it possible that there's a lot more discussion and facts revealed under NDA then ever show up in these interviews?

Nah, couldn't be.

 

[Dave Baumann]

On eof B3D's staff is selfish. He doesn't appreciate the contacts and relations I have in the industry, which is what is truly valuable to any website wrt any one of its staff. He is jealous that I approached NVIDIA for a NV30, which he deemed as "getting it for yourself", when he doesn't see the big picture, which means that it goes to "Beyond3D" regardless.

I’ve not followed this discussion as yet, and I still don’t really have the time to comment on it fully as yet, but, Rev, you are portraying a completely one sided blinkered view of things here and they are not even remotely correct. You’ve commented about ‘airing dirty laundry in public’ once before (despite it all coming from your side), however the restraint I’ve shown in these matters is nothing short of Herculean. I still choose not to discuss these things in public.

Since running B3D I have constantly ascribed to the values that you requested when you were running the site – and I still do. I wished for nothing more than the same in return.

NVIDIA do not like B3D. I have stated the reasons here and in other threads. B3D has staff with a competing IHV. B3D has two staff that has always appeared to doubt NVIDIA (as opposed to actually bashing NVIDIA). They are Wavey and John. IMO, they still doubt NVIDIA regardless of what NVIDIA comes up with.

That’s your opinion, its not correct, but its your opinion. And, you have no idea of what sort of relationship I’m building with NV, or any of the other vendors, from this end – from where I’m sitting it seems that we’ve be privileged to more NDA info than we ever had before so I seem to be doing something correct.

It has nothing to do with being pro this or anti that. Kristof works at a competing company, period.

This has been a bone of contention with me for a while, however I think the site would be far worse off without Kristof’s technical input just for the sake of getting NDA info than it is presently (although I do need to light a fire under K’s ass now and then to get him to churn out those articles – so, how is that vertex shader article K? ). WRT to NDA info if we do sign an NDA then its not a site NDA (because of K’s links) if I sign it then its only revealed to me and our editor, if one of the others sign it then I’m also privy as E-I-C, K isn’t until the article is published (he doesn’t even know the sites current FTP details).

In fact no other vendors appear to have any issue with this, other than NVIDIA. I have spoken to Andrew Humber about it a couple of times and he even agreed that the site would be worse off for losing K’s input. I explained to him the capacity that K operates within the site and he accepted it at that time (and, yes, I have still been receiving info off them under NDA since then – witness the NV30 details on the main page). However I accept that although Andrew may ‘buy’ what I’ve said that still won’t necessarily go for everybody in the company who frequents this site – perceived bias can always been seen wherever you go and that’s far easier to perceive when you see a competitor apparently working on the site. I am open to suggestions though – I even suggested to Andrew at the time how about providing me access to some technically competent NVIDIA employee’s...

 

[Guest]

Geek-

The fact that Kristof works for PVR is pretty obvious. Look at his sig.

_________________
Kristof

Developer Relations Engineer PowerVR Technologies
Technical Editor Beyond3D

Reverend didn't let the cat out of the bag on Kristof's employer

Crap, I never noticed it before myself. i supose that would be a credit to the fact that he rarely posts anything in the forum. I guess that is nvidias perogative to disalow Beyond 3D an interview...

Regardless I do think what Reverend is doing is a dirty trick. I suggest you get Voodooextreme posters for a resourse of "questions to ask nvidia" as they would hardly give you or anyone else for that matter any real good information with regards to what the hardware will have.. outside of an NDA. What good will that do for your article? None...

Reverend comes here to discredit Beyond 3D yet he wants some of the forums input for questions with regards to the NV30? Give me a break..Reverend doesn't need this input... this thread is about drawing lines, distancing himself from Beyond 3D and discrediting it to get back with his connection with nvidia. All the while establishing a connection with Beyond 3D and Voodoooextreme... yuk.. Dirty indeed.

 

[Kristof]

I think Doomtrooper made the point, me being linked to this website is not going to give me access to any top secret information. This website and all other websites handle public and marketing screened information. Competitors keep track of all the reviews and leaks out there, competitors can buy hardware and analyse it. Websites do not get hardware or details "months" in advance, they get it days maybe a week in advance. Documents might be given earlier but we all know how informative those documents usually are.

In the end product and technology have to speak and nothing I can do or say will change features or performance of a product.

The real problem, I believe that Beyond3D has, is that B3D is highly technical. Our readers and staff understand the real issues and is not fooled by marketing talk. When we ask questions we ask technical questions that quite often Marketing can not answer (because they possibly don't even understand the question). Our questions do not allow marketing to copy a paragraph or 2 out of their marketing document and thats the problem.

What would you prefer : Website that asks nice easy questions or website that asks about the things your hiding or avoiding or don't know about/understand ?

Beyond3Ds forum has "engineers" from all IHVs participating in the discussion, publically or anonymously... I wonder why...

Beyond3D IMHO does not need the preview board (you can not analyse a product when you are given 3 days to hit the deadline of all the other rushed previews), what we do need and deserve is a fair shot: meaning we get access to the same documents and hardware as all others, be it maybe a bit later.

Say I leave B3D do you think things will change ? Will NVIDIA/etc suddenly go : "Oh look, he is no longer mentioned in the staff list, he no longer has B3D in his sig, lets send them docs and hardware" ? I don't believe this... Beyond3D asks questions that are too tricky, we know and understand too much, companies hate that... and with good reason. Companies prefer the fan sites, the people that love the hardware no matter what, forums and people that blindly believe anything marketing tells them.

Point is : ask for interview questions in this forum and ask for interview questions in a fan forum. The questions will be completely different and I know which ones Marketing prefers to answer and which ones Engineering would love to answer but isn't allowed to.

Maybe we should do a second poll: "Should Kristof leave his official position with B3D ?".

 

[Doomtrooper]

Ever thought it possible that there's a lot more discussion and facts revealed under NDA then ever show up in these interviews?

Nah, couldn't be.

Yes I'm sure Nvidia would release highly confidential technical information to just anyone..I know how this works in the Mechanical Engineering field so I assume it would be no different in the electrical field..the only thing Kristof could learn from this interview is how well NV PR works

 

[demalion]

I think it would have been fine except for the request for questions only by private email.

Also, no assurance was made in the initial post that credit would be given to Beyond3D forums for the questions, and I don't see why it is reasonable to expect people to have assumed that based on the wording of the post.

Perhaps your intentions as present in your heart and mind may not have warranted the response here, but for the text visible to all, from my perspective, the response seems fair and even-handed.

I voted "no" due to my perception of the concern of the B3d staff, but note my first paragraph.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Maybe we should do a second poll: "Should Kristof leave his official position with B3D ?".

No - the only question is do you still wish to have your position at B3D (I assume yes seeing as you've given me no hint otherwise) and do I feel you are more of a benefit than a liability (see previous reply).

WRT to the actual thread topic - would VE readers want to read a bunch of questions written by people from B3D?