Nvidia giving free GPU samples to reviewers that follow procedure

Its generally accepted (even by DF) that NVs ray tracing solution is superior to AMDs. Its an area AMD cant compete, NV is going to shout it off the rooftops. Same for DLSS/tensor hardware). In normal rasterization AMD is close now, and their eager to talk about it.
Their big corporations wanting to sell their products, its nothing out of the ordinary there.

 

I understand that you're comfortable with such practises but many people aren't

 

I think reviewers need to stand their ground and select a variety of titles that they think will give a broad understanding of how the gpu performs. If Nvidia or AMD want particular titles included, the reviewers are free to say yes or no. If they say no and the vendor stops giving them the cards, then they'll have to buy the cards to review them. There's not going to be a one size fits all answer though. Maybe the cards come with condition of benchmarking one particular game, but you have complete freedom to pick all of the other games. That could be fine. I think the problem starts when their demands are obviously designed to skew the results so that they don't show the more broad view of what you're getting for your money.

My problem with the hardware unboxed angle is that their actual 3070 and 3060ti reviews, from a ray tracing angle, were terrible. Benchmarking Shadow of the Tomb Raider alone tells you absolutely nothing. It's actually a pointless endeavour. It's not representative, and not enough information to make any kind of informed decision. So Nvidia is not actually wrong that they've done a poor job of testing ray tracing in the FE reviews for their cards.

 

"Ban"

Nvidia have "banned" HU from receiving free things from .... Nvidia.

Nvidia can be dicks, and I'd prefer they hadn't done this, but they are under no obligation to give reviewers free things.

Oh shit, I've been banned from getting free stuff, that won't benefit Nvidia, by Nvidia too.

 

Comfortable... we have no choice really. Its like Sony shouting of the rooftops with their faster SSD solution over the xbox. If you have an advantage somewhere, your going to advertise about it and want to show it off.
Everyone wants to sell their products as much as possible, it doesnt matter what it is.

I assume HW unboxed can afford their own hardware?

 

Has Nvidia provided a sufficiently large library of ray-tracing enabled games to dictate ray-tracing test methodology though?

 

Where do you draw the line?

Who are Nvidia obliged to give things to, and who are they allowed to not give things to?

 

nVidia is controlling the timeframe of releases and news. So getting banned from a Founders Edition and putting out a review from the start will hurt HBU. Dont they have patreon and co? There should be enough viewers who can spend money...

 

What constitutes an exhaustive review of a product? If I drive a new EV to the tilt to examine driving pleasure is the corporation allowed to blacklist me?

 

Currying favour to obtain review samples has the potential to affect results

 

If by "being a dick" you mean "using their position of power to maintain their near monopoly over the sales of video cards by pressuring supposedly-independent reviewers to focus on the specific features that put their less power-efficient video cards in a better light"... then yes, I guess they are being a dick.

 

Hardware Unboxed does not have to abide by any of the opinions demonstrated on this topic. Those opinions are and will remain your personal opinion of what should or should not be reviewed. No reviewing site has to conform to your values.


What is important is the rigor of the work. That every benchmark is made apples to apples, so that you - the viewer - can have accurate data on what was tested. If you feel insulted that Raytracing or DLSS aren't sufficiently covered, you are free to visit other reviewers that do test them.


Your opinions on what Hardware unboxed values, do not justify the enforcing of rule set by a monopolistic company. This is a totalitarian regime move to manipulate the free market, much alike the Geforce Partner Program whereby Nvidia tried to bully every AIB into giving Nvidia their product trademarks in the exchange of not being axed by Nvidia.


Eyes open, people.

 

You are right, dskneo. But nVidia hasnt to provide them with free hardware, too.

nVidia wants that Raytracing and DLSS gets a bigger part of the review. As a reviewer you can do it or you have to see what the consequences are. I dont see a problem to provide enough informations to the viewer.

 

Are you really going to argue that benchmarking one game per review is actually a good review? They have Tomb Raider, Control, Metro, Battlefield V, Minecraft, Modern Warfare, Black Ops, Fortnite, Watch Dogs Legion and now Cyberpunk, most of which were available at the time of these reviews. Regardless of whatever titles Nvidia was asking for, a single game to reflect ray tracing performance is not good.

 

The "free" part of this argument isn't relevant IMO, HU can obviously buy their own hardware. The issue is preventing them access to hardware early for review.

 

Yes, they're using their market position to pressure reviewers into spending more time on features where they feel they have an advantage. They're being dicks. I thought I was clear on that.

 

Lol, wtf are you talking about. Hardware unboxed can do whatever the fuck they want. They could exclusively CS GO for CS GO players for all I care. If that was the niche they wanted, then they could do that. I'm not interested, so I could just watch/read different reviews. The question is, should that entitle them to free gpus from vendors? Where is the line in terms of what the vendors can ask for when providing free gpus for review. I think if anyone is honest, they can see that Hardware Unboxed did a very very poor job of benchmarking ray tracing for their 3060ti and 3070 reviews. Maybe they don't care about it, maybe their viewers don't care about it. Nvidia doesn't want to provide free cards unless ray tracing is tested more extensively. I can see both sides of this argument.

 

Hardware unboxed favors higher res+fps over more additional graphical features. In recent video they talked about 1440+90fps and only after that enabling more intensive gpu features. That's their preference and it's fine. It's not all that different to car reviews, some sites focus on offroading, some to family sedans etc. To each his own.

 

They offer differing RT quality modes on the same game but also state a general level of performance (3060ti = 2080Super). It's not misrepresentation but insufficiently favorable representation at stake here.

I am surprised how far the PC world has come. I still remember Nvidia trying to force factory overclocked 460s and people demanding standards instead of saying it's their prerogative.

 

Obviously, but so can downplaying the biggest element in DX12U - Ray Tracing.

A big part of Nvidia's hardware is dedicated to RT (and tensor cores, which can assist with things like de-noising). It's very future facing in this regard, and it's a big part of the investment you make when you spend on an Nvidia card. Nvidia obviously want people to see this in addition to everything else.

I absolutely agree, and reviewers are free do hundreds and hundreds of rasteriser focused games. But Nvidia also want them to show what their RT setup can do. Understandable, they dedicate silicon to it and their products are fast.

With a paltry 1 RT game per review, you are arguably not providing enough information to show what these cards can do.