Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]

[Cappuccino]

So as for your question, I do think hardware companies have discretion over the samples they give out. I think companies doing business with other companies can negotiate whatever terms they want with each other.

Okay, so I hope you realize this defeats the purpose of hardware reviews entirely. If the IHV can dictate what the reviewer says with their sample, what exactly is the point? It's just an ad at that point.

I'll ask you this, do you think these content creators you are referring to are working for or running a for profit business or non profits doing a public service?

Obviously for profit, but this is irrelevant. I am talking about impartiality and final editorial discretion. If Nvidia/AMD only gives out samples to people writing glorified ads for their products then there's no point to reviewing anymore, I'll just read the ad copy right from the source.

 

[Potato Head]

First that was a settlement and not a successful lawsuit. Secondly saying the legal action was just because of Llano's being delayed is very misleading.

The plaintiffs received restitution, that’s a successful lawsuit. Fractions of a percentage of these go to trial.

Llano was delayed for two years. And once it did ship it was in tiny quantities, while AMD was saying everything is fine. I remember the press release with the picture of a pallet of chips on the dock. Turns out it was a lie, there was nothing to ship.

I'm not even sure why there would be questions here? Games are delayed all the time, there isn't an investor lawsuit every single game delaying.

It’s about setting expectations. If you are advising the owners of the company the game is going ship for revenue in quarter X, and it ships in quarter Y instead, without sufficient advanced notice that is a breach of duty. Whether incompetence or dereliction doesn’t matter. Either you knew about the adverse event and failed to notify shareholders, or you didn’t know about the adverse event when you should have. Either will get you sued. It happens all the time.

 

[Potato Head]

Okay, so I hope you realize this defeats the purpose of hardware reviews entirely. If the IHV can dictate what the reviewer says with their sample, what exactly is the point? It's just an ad at that point.

Obviously for profit, but this is irrelevant. I am talking about impartiality and final editorial discretion. If Nvidia/AMD only gives out samples to people writing glorified ads for their products then there's no point to reviewing anymore, I'll just read the ad copy right from the source.

Remember when reviewers bought their own hardware to prove their independence? There’s nothing stopping them from doing the same today. Wizard at TPU has a 5060 Ti 8GB on order. It will get thoroughly reviewed regardless of Nvidia sampling it or not.

“Free” review hardware has always come with strings attached. Just Google “reviewers guide”.

Also, since when is profit besides the point? It literally IS the point. Do you work for free?

 

[Cappuccino]

“Free” review hardware has always come with strings attached. Just Google “reviewers guide”.

This is why I don't trust essentially anyone in reviewing lol. No integrity whatsoever.

Also, since when is profit besides the point? It literally IS the point. Do you work for free?

What? Making profit on a video doesn't mean you can't be impartial.

 

[Potato Head]

This is why I don't trust essentially anyone in reviewing lol. No integrity whatsoever.

Then what are you throwing such a hissy about?

Someone you think has no integrity did something you think is untrustworthy. Ok, we saw your first post, don’t agree with it and would like to move on. Sound good?

 

[tuna]

If a reviewer has to spend money they can’t otherwise get without becoming an ad channel, they shouldn’t spent that money. I’d rather them be a smaller scale operation with integrity than a large one without.

DF is not really a "reviewer". You can keep your integrity and make more contacts and grow as a business.

 

[Kaotik]

If a reviewer has to spend money they can’t otherwise get without becoming an ad channel, they shouldn’t spent that money. I’d rather them be a smaller scale operation with integrity than a large one without.

This is why I stopped paying attention to large outlets btw, like IGN, who now owns them I guess. They scaled up and sacrificed being impartial.

Doing sponsored content does nothing to reviewers integrity, as long as that content is clearly marked as advertisement by the sponsor, not a review.

 

[Cappuccino]

Then what are you throwing such a hissy about?

Someone you think has no integrity did something you think is untrustworthy. Ok, we saw your first post, don’t agree with it and would like to move on. Sound good?

Well, once upon a time I actually did trust DF on this. There are some outlets I do still trust on this as well.

DF is not really a "reviewer". You can keep your integrity and make more contacts and grow as a business.

Interesting, could have sworn I watched many a graphics card review from them!

Doing sponsored content does nothing to reviewers integrity, as long as that content is clearly marked as advertisement by the sponsor, not a review.

I disagree

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Doing sponsored content does nothing to reviewers integrity, as long as that content is clearly marked as advertisement by the sponsor, not a review.

It of course can have an impact, as it's providing a financial incentive for largely favourable -or at least, more genteel overage from reviewers. If you're highly critical of an OEM's product, whether in a sponsored review of any other, they are of course not going to be chomping at the bit to provide you with funding just so you can trash them with their own money.

By their very nature, sponsored videos are likely going to be more...even-tempered. That doesn't mean there won't be any criticism of the product, and that doesn't mean the sponsor is telling the reviewer specifically what to say - but it should be common sense to understand that these are essentially, promotional vehicles. You're not going to be offered the opportunity if the manufacturer thinks you're going to be highly critical, doesn't make any sense for them otherwise. Saying "well they gotta make money", while true, doesn't really help as a defense of perhaps questionable practices, as that just says to me "Well shit then, if they will literally go out of business unless they get sponsorship offers, then that's a pretty powerful incentive to ensure you keep getting sponsored video offers then, isn't it?"?

Now, I do think DF has a lesser chance of being influenced by these simply because of the focused nature of their work - they're still going to report frame rate drops and rendering errors in a sponsored video, as they have in the past. They're not going to be commenting on the politics of a company because that's not really what they do, sponsored or not. And as these games and hardware are owned by millions of other players, blatant misinformation can be quickly pointed out. So I think their past work does give them the benefit of the doubt in most cases.

OTOH, we are discussing this right now because we went from DF videos with short ads about power supplies -> ads about products they actually review -> entire sponsored videos from Nvidia -> an outright AD posted on their channel with no DF contributors.

So apparently there is some...flexibility here.

 

[tuna]

Interesting, could have sworn I watched many a graphics card review from them!

I would argue that what DF does regarding graphic cards is more benchmarking instead of reviewing.

 

[Davros]

Do you work for free?

Actually sometimes yes...

 

[see colon]

Okay, so I hope you realize this defeats the purpose of hardware reviews entirely. If the IHV can dictate what the reviewer says with their sample, what exactly is the point? It's just an ad at that point.

Yeah, that's why they provide a review sample. If a graphics card manufacturer wants to drum up interest in their new line, in this modern era, they provide review samples or fly out a bunch of influencers (free flights and lodging), and it's part of their advertising budget. The company and or the influencer will both have some agency over the coverage, of course.

I'm glad you are a bit skeptical, now, though. I think media literacy is sorely lacking today, and I know you say there are still reviewers you trust. But I would caution you from fully trusting anyone. Everyone has their own bias, and even if they buy every game/item they review, that doesn't mean they haven't had contact with representatives from some of those companies, and relationships can affect someone's perspective on anything. I would watch multiple reviews before making a purchase to try to get a fuller picture of what you are getting in to. Also, keep an ear open for commonly used phrases. If all the reviewers tout the same feature in the same way, or gloss over a negative with the same verbiage, they likely read the same review guide, and are being influenced by it even if the talking points aren't required.

 

[Davros]

So I saw this

And thought be interesting if DF compared DLSS ect to upscaling run on the TV and what if some high-end gaming monitors incorporated A.I Upscaling ?
also what would happen if the frame rate was so high the A.I chip couldn't keep up?

* Has the added bonus of allowing someone at DF to buy a shiny new OLED TV and claim it as a business expense

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Actually sometimes yes...

Good. I have some stuff that needs doing....

 

[arandomguy]

And thought be interesting if DF compared DLSS ect to upscaling run on the TV and what if some high-end gaming monitors incorporated A.I Upscaling ?
also what would happen if the frame rate was so high the A.I chip couldn't keep up?

* Has the added bonus of allowing someone at DF to buy a shiny new OLED TV and claim it as a business expense

Those post processing features on TVs aren't designed for real time interactive usage but for fixed video, which means you can have a lot of processing time (dozens to even hundreds of milliseconds) relatively speaking by just delaying the timing of the video/audio. As even something like 1 second or more of a delay on an non-interactive video/audio stream as long as they synced up wouldn't really matter for that type of content.

Game mode on TVs typically disable those features to maintain low latency, as is the case with LG.

 

[chris1515]

 

[snc]

It looks like on pro instead of pushing resolution already high on xsx to 4k it would be more beneficial to improve shadow quality but still solid port

 

[Panino Manino]

It looks like on pro instead of pushing resolution already high on xsx to 4k it would be more beneficial to improve shadow quality but still solid port

Was thinking, can something like this that does the bare minimum of running the code correctly be called "solid work"?
Wish developers would stop caring about parity and fine tune the game to each machine. If the Amateur can run the game 97% identical to the Series X, can't the Series X run with a bit higher settings? And than can the Professional run with even higher settings?
I don't understand why we should praise this port when everything is untouched, even those shameful shadows.

 

[Riddlewire]

Was thinking, can something like this that does the bare minimum of running the code correctly be called "solid work"?
Wish developers would stop caring about parity and fine tune the game to each machine. If the Amateur can run the game 97% identical to the Series X, can't the Series X run with a bit higher settings? And than can the Professional run with even higher settings?
I don't understand why we should praise this port when everything is untouched, even those shameful shadows.

Only Machine Games can answer this, but perhaps the Pro is just running into bandwidth limitations.
If Playstation were the lead platform, possibly they could have engineered the game to fit the hardware better. But they had a completed game that was optimized for the characteristics of Xbox, which they then needed to port to PS5 and Pro as affordably as possible. If sales on Playstation are strong, a reworked Pro version in a future update would seem likely.

 

[QPlayer]

The game runs at a significantly higher resolution on Series X than on PS5, 1800p vs 1400-1500p. In fact, with the sharpening filter enabled in the console menu, there's almost no visual difference between the XSX and PS5pro versions, and it looks like 4K on Xbox too.