[Reddit] Hardware Unboxed Banned By Nvidia for lack of RTX Content
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Not surprising at all considering TechSpot is an AMD shill. They are overselling the 16GB of memory in the RX 6800/6900 cards which we've seen doesn't help much. The amount of titles DLSS is in far outweighs the number of titles that benefit from more than 8GB of memory.
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So because a reviewer is critical of a product and offers meaningful feedback, a company hates them? Say it isn't so! 
What ray traced content is there to showoff? Quake 2? MINECRAFT? Wolfenstein Youngblood?
A game that the current generation didn't know existed.
A game where the current playerbase tries to enjoy on a crazy range of hardware, usually bare-minimum spec.
A game that's, allegedly, not really very fun across the board and exceedingly grindy for a Wolfenstein title.
Not lookin' good there Nvidia.
What ray traced content is there to showoff? Quake 2? MINECRAFT? Wolfenstein Youngblood?
A game that the current generation didn't know existed.
A game where the current playerbase tries to enjoy on a crazy range of hardware, usually bare-minimum spec.
A game that's, allegedly, not really very fun across the board and exceedingly grindy for a Wolfenstein title.
Not lookin' good there Nvidia.
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5,953 Posts
Hardware unboxed will still make reviews, they will just have to buy their own cards now.
Their 3080 and 3070 reviews do cover RTX:
Their 3090 review, however, doesn't mention it once:
In their 6900xt review they do benchmark AMD and Nvidia cards with ray tracing:
I don't know what PR person at Nvidia got a stick up their bum, but it seems to me like HWB covered RTX. They don't spend a lot of time on it, and they did bury it deep in the video, but it was covered. If Nvidia makes features for graphics and sends press review units early I think they can insist that they at least mention their marketable features. That makes sense. But HWB maintains their own editorial discretion and independence. If HWB isn't excited about ray tracing then they aren't obligated to spend more time on it then they think is appropriate.
The details are in the reviews guide and whatever terms Nvidia maintains with their press partners, but it seem like Nvidia was really immature about this one.
Their 3080 and 3070 reviews do cover RTX:
Their 3090 review, however, doesn't mention it once:
In their 6900xt review they do benchmark AMD and Nvidia cards with ray tracing:
I don't know what PR person at Nvidia got a stick up their bum, but it seems to me like HWB covered RTX. They don't spend a lot of time on it, and they did bury it deep in the video, but it was covered. If Nvidia makes features for graphics and sends press review units early I think they can insist that they at least mention their marketable features. That makes sense. But HWB maintains their own editorial discretion and independence. If HWB isn't excited about ray tracing then they aren't obligated to spend more time on it then they think is appropriate.
The details are in the reviews guide and whatever terms Nvidia maintains with their press partners, but it seem like Nvidia was really immature about this one.
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DLSS basically exist to make RTX viable on high end GPU. It's a cool review gimmic but I don't think it's much of concern for most gamers out there. Including DLSS/RTX in reviews is misleading for the untrained audience. Proprietary tech is fun when it work but ray tracing isn't even near a mainstream audience right now.
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From what I recall, they gave good reviews to the 3080 and 3070 with similar criticisms that everyone else had and similar praises to what everyone else had.
If you feel that RTX as a feature or ray tracing in the more broader sense is a bigger factor, I agree it will be, but its not there yet.
This just seems like Nvidia getting all hot and bothered by analysis of traditional rendering performance vs the competition, aka what most games still are.
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I saw the meme somewhere online... "Nvidia, the way it's meant to be reviewed".
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Both Nvidia and AMD have to choose who they send review cards to, they can't send out samples to everyone. IMO the mistake was giving a reason why they aren't sending them cards. If they would have just ignored them and not sent a card then there wouldn't be any problems for them.
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I know you've covered it in the rest of your post but that's really not the point. The exposure Nvidia gets from "influencers" can impact profitability. Nvidia will track viewership against purchases and use that data to forecast sales / financials for their internal use and ultimately, for investors.
My guess is that someone in the PR department (maybe Aussie side?) thought they could steer it and dangle the carrot. But that's not how it should work. The wording is very specific "editorial direction change". It's not just a warning "please include a min. ray tracing data in upcoming reviews". It's a strong statement that goes beyond just "ray tracing" being excluded. They're effectively trying to steer the entire review with the verbiage.
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1) They are probably summarizing something much more substantial to make their temper tangent more effective. Why did you need to tell the world this? oh yea to get revenge and make them look bad
2) GN is the last one to talk. His review of the 3090 was very unprofessional. He was so hung up with the 8k thing that he spent the whole time trying to prove 8k performance was bad. Maybe i wanted to see, you know, an actual review. Not only did he NOT review the card, but he spent the entire time bashing it. Imagine being a company and spending money sending out a card to a reviewer and having them pull that publicity stunt? GN is now the last place I go to see reviews
3) There is no obligation to send out free cards to ppl. You send out cards to promote your product.
When you feel the person is bias against you why would you honor them with free samples
This also will make him irrelevant during launches as even if he pays for his own cards, there will simply be none available. He can try to buy a launch day card but whats the point of reviewing something 2 weeks later. Major hit to the channel
They send out guidelines with their reviews. if you dont want to cover the aspects you need to cover then you dont deserve to get a free card. simple as that
2) GN is the last one to talk. His review of the 3090 was very unprofessional. He was so hung up with the 8k thing that he spent the whole time trying to prove 8k performance was bad. Maybe i wanted to see, you know, an actual review. Not only did he NOT review the card, but he spent the entire time bashing it. Imagine being a company and spending money sending out a card to a reviewer and having them pull that publicity stunt? GN is now the last place I go to see reviews
3) There is no obligation to send out free cards to ppl. You send out cards to promote your product.
When you feel the person is bias against you why would you honor them with free samples
This also will make him irrelevant during launches as even if he pays for his own cards, there will simply be none available. He can try to buy a launch day card but whats the point of reviewing something 2 weeks later. Major hit to the channel
They send out guidelines with their reviews. if you dont want to cover the aspects you need to cover then you dont deserve to get a free card. simple as that
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I'm sure it's more than just rasterization against ray tracing. They're techspot reviews are positive about AMD's RX 6800/6900 cards with 16GB of VRAM being useful in 2 years while we have 24+ currently available ray tracing titles and 19 games currently using DLSS, after 2 years we're going to be at 40+ ray tracing titles. We already have 15 confirmed Nvidia sponsored ray tracing titles and I'm sure we'll see more AMD sponsored titles as well.
I can count the number of titles that are VRAM limited on one hand. With new technologies like virtualized geometry in game engines VRAM usage is going to be reduced by a significant amount and introduction of DirectStorage next year 16GB of VRAM for gaming will be useless.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review
The Radeon RX 6800 XT is AMD's new high-end gaming graphics card targeting the GeForce RTX 3080. We've had the card in our labs for a while,...
www.techspot.com
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I'll read the review to see what your point about 16GB AMD cards has to do with Nvidia revoking FE product samples over ray tracing coverage in a review. Right now I fail to see what your point is in the context of this discussion except to call anyone who like anything about the new AMD cards "shills". Again I'll read this to see, but seems irrelevant to this discussion.I'm sure it's more than just rasterization against ray tracing. They're techspot reviews are positive about AMD's RX 6800/6900 cards with 16GB of VRAM being useful in 2 years while we have 24+ currently available ray tracing titles and 19 games currently using DLSS, after 2 years we're going to be at 40+ ray tracing titles. We already have 15 confirmed Nvidia sponsored ray tracing titles and I'm sure we'll see more AMD sponsored titles as well.
I can count the number of titles that are VRAM limited on one hand and with new technologies like virtualized geometry in game engines VRAM usage is going to be reduced by a significant amount.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Review
The Radeon RX 6800 XT is AMD's new high-end gaming graphics card targeting the GeForce RTX 3080. We've had the card in our labs for a while,...
I don't see the problem here. Ampere ray tracing performance isn't going to magically increase outside of DLSS 2.0 implementations and in a couple years time we'll be talking 40-series RTX performance instead so in my opinion long-term analysis of Ampere ray tracing is kinda pointless. Evaluate based on what we have now (not much), and may have over the next year or two. I guess we still talk Turing in some of these reviews but Turing is all on the lower end of RTX performance last I checked vs Ampere so to me isn't all that relevant of a discussion to have. It seems if you are all about Ray Tracing, you will be a buying a new RTX card every generation. It's growing and will continue to grow for sure. As it exists now, they are absolutely right in not calling it a mainstream feature yet. Nvidia seems to be butthurt about that, hence this.
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RTX been reserved to most titles that nobody really played or unpopular games not to mention selection being small.
Its litterally only recently now that cyberpunk or cold war there actually something people are playing with RTX features. For the last 2 years its been nothing.
I always see control being mentioned as a good example of RTX in the pass but who actually bought it and played it through? Seemed more like a cool tech demo then an actual popular game for the masses.
Nvidia keeps acting like RTX is super popular the last 2 years when it has not been.
Reviewers only treated this as such.
Its litterally only recently now that cyberpunk or cold war there actually something people are playing with RTX features. For the last 2 years its been nothing.
I always see control being mentioned as a good example of RTX in the pass but who actually bought it and played it through? Seemed more like a cool tech demo then an actual popular game for the masses.
Nvidia keeps acting like RTX is super popular the last 2 years when it has not been.
Reviewers only treated this as such.
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Reviewers are right to say Ray Tracing isn't relevant to the overall gaming market yet.
No doubt Cyberpunk with RT will be on everyone's review benchmarks from now on, but that wasn't possible during the launch of Ampere.
Nvidia is splitting hairs at the worst moment, they should have delayed the 3060Ti to after Cyberpunk came out if they really wanted people to showcase the RT performance.
No doubt Cyberpunk with RT will be on everyone's review benchmarks from now on, but that wasn't possible during the launch of Ampere.
Nvidia is splitting hairs at the worst moment, they should have delayed the 3060Ti to after Cyberpunk came out if they really wanted people to showcase the RT performance.
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I can see where Nvidia may be coming from when they say that techspot/HWB doesn't cover RTX enough, but here is a fine line and a slippery slope between editorial discretion and a lack of good faith. I don't think HWB engaged with Nvidia's products in bad faith - IE to undersell them and make them look bad on purpose. Nvidia pulling support to get the kind of coverage they want is definitely not a good look, and they need to knock it off.
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It is very clear that Nvidia is expecting individuals who sign their nda 2.0 to be influencers not reviewers. Who are complacent and docile then be objective and even handed.
Therefore, any criticism of their precious rtx ampere will not be tolerate.
Therefore, any criticism of their precious rtx ampere will not be tolerate.
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