The ugly side of Nvidia: A rollercoaster ride that shows when Big Tech doesn't get it

[Cvearl]

It is, and has been, this kind of behaviour by nVidia that my last 3 cards were AMD even when there have been compelling reasons to consider nVidia in their place. I started as an nVidia user from way back in the day and they keep pushing me further and further away.

 

[No Longer Human]

Nvidia states that theirs is the position of the 'gaming community' in the offensive email. Since I game, that must include me.
Thank you Nvidia for speaking for me, especially since I disagree with you!

 

[ShuRugal]

This **** is why I never have and never will trust hardware reviewers. At the end of the day, they are dependent upon free samples to do the reviews, which means that they are beholden to the supplier.

I'll wait for the scores to show up on Passmark and other public-participation benchmarking utilities.

 

[ModularOG]

This is the dark side of capitalism, when it gets so comfortable that pushing like a bully is no big deal initially. Thank goodness the community as a whole does not allow such actions. nVidia does have a history of being bullish in it's sales side of the house. Not to mention, they like to buy up small companies and kill their innovation, which is a loss for the community as a whole. Needless to say, damage has been done, and I for one will build my next machine 100% AMD.

No. This is EXACTLY why free-market capitalism works. A company did something you don't like, so you get to choose what to do with your money and buy from a different company. Let's break out the econ 101 books before we make uninformed, strange, politically motivated comments on a tech site.

Glad you're going AMD. I'm doing the same. Kinda want to return my 3070...but know I can't get another card if I do...

 

[Toju Mikie]

Good. Companies should not bully reviewers into changing their opinion. RTX is only supported on like 40 games anyway. It doesn't make sense to focus a lot on ray tracing yet.

If it happens again, I think Techspot/Hardware Unboxed should just break the relationship with NVIDIA and purchase GPUs on their own, that way they can review without potentially being coerced into saying something different and possibly non-factual.

 

[Nobina]

On a slight upside, this should get Hardware Unboxed some attention.

 

[Irata]

NVidia treated this review in a vacuum, rather than looking at Steve and Tim's entire review history. A poor decision, but certainly understandable. You're acting as if the entire NVidia board convened a three-day summit to discuss this. The reality is one person in marketing --certainly a couple levels below C-Suite, and likely harassed and overworked -- made a snap call.

If this is what happened that would indicate a serious management problem at nVidia which I very much doubt.

Things like these are not supposed to happen in well run larger companies and if an employee goes rogue in that way, it‘s at the minimum instant dismissal.

 

[msl74]

It is, and has been, this kind of behaviour by nVidia that my last 3 cards were AMD even when there have been compelling reasons to consider nVidia in their place. I started as an nVidia user from way back in the day and they keep pushing me further and further away.

So your last three cards were AMD? Even when AMD has done this sort of thing in the past?

 

[Sherwoodnt]

Glad to see that NVidia did the right thing*

*After they got called out for it publicly.

Fun watching them squirm and stumble while facing real competition for the first time in a long while.

 

[EClyde]

Poor Techspot had their feelings hurt....Boo Hoo

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

According to LTT, the sentiments expressed in the damning email were unlike anything previously expressed by Mr DelRizzo, who they have met personally on many occasions.
Looks like the orders came from further up the food-chain. So who is higher up than Global Director of Marketing at Nvidia?
Must've been taking lessons from Donald Trump on the art of the deal.
On second thoughts, it couldn't have been Trump tactics - Because Trump never apologises for the utter mess he creates.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

By their silence ye shall know them. (Nvidia shills)
Take a bow TH etc.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

"These two technologies are game changing."

Yeah. Like PhysX and Hairworks before them

Everyone loves the underdog. AMD needs support because without them we would be stuck standing still like Intel for longer then I can remember. Nvidia is not Intel. Bottom line is Nvidia has invented almost all major graphical enhancements. Dx12ultimate is a perfect example. They could have just called it DX12turing. The bias in the media does a disservice to the consumer. Not all consumers understand the technical details to make an educated decision. They rely on the media for help. AMD does not have an answer for ray tracing and DLSS. These two technologies are game changing. The media's lack of bashing AMD over the head has people thinking a 3080 and a 6800xt are equivalent because they perform some tasks the same. By not holding AMD accountable you are giving them a pass. We need AMD to keep pushing the competition, we need Nvidia to keep innovating.

DirectX was a Microsoft branch off of AMD's Mantle
And I can also remember when PhysX and Hairworks were the Next Big Thing for Nvidia.
RTX and DLSS might be more of the same.
Proprietary tech designed to limit game development in Nvidia's favour.

 

[Beerfloat]

I do feel there are tech sites, Techspot and Steve's reviews among them, that lean a bit too much towards 'grading on a scale' for my tastes. The narrative often focuses strongly on price/performance, and how well AMD is keeping up if you take their limited resources into account.

Another example might be Steve from GamersNexus, who will post a lengthy discourse on just how boring a particular new Nvidia card is, just because it is merely a mild iteration on an existing lineup. But a 5700XT gets credit because it is a novelty, even if it is way late and only catching up.

The way I see it, Nvidia's engineering has both pushed performance forwards many months or even a year ahead of AMD repeatedly, while at the same time bringing significant new features that are at the very least really interesting, even if some will jump up and down to make it known that it's not for them.

I gotta be honest, when I read the day 1 Cyberpunk video card comparison did not even have an RT test, I thought that was a glaring omission. My take being, Cyberpunk without RT, well this information is just not relevant for me at all. Obviously, YMMV.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

See people always call from someone's head and that may happen to satiate the herd mentality, but this is a corporate culture issue that starts from the top. Rather than demanding someone get fired, how about we demand there is accountability from Jensen on down to stop this toxic behavior.

Ever heard the story of the Frog and the Scorpion?
It's Nvidia's nature.
They can't help themselves.

 

[Cod3nflame]

That email was ridiculous and executed with a subtlety of a baboon. That being said, I don't agree with HU's decision to place RT on the back burner. Some of us are actually really excited about RT and use it. I currently am with CB2077 and it looks phenomenal. For my next GPU purchase RT will definitely be a point of interest. If you're going to review a product, do it the right way and review all of it's features instead of omitting results that some of us actually find useful.

I have my own tinfoil hat take on this whole thing. HU are biased towards AMD. We all know it. Everytime they review an Intel or Nvidia product there's always some tongue in cheek distaste. They have criticized Intel and NV for things AMD has done as well. No one remembers AMD cherry picking reviewers for the R9 Fury Nano and how Bitwit and a few others were intentionally left out in the cold? No one remembers AMD giving HardOCP the shaft? No? Selective memory is a funny thing. Is it a coincidence that HU decided to dump RT results after reviewing RDNA2 and finding out that the cards are complete trash at ray tracing?

 

[Cod3nflame]

Men , how hard it's for nvidia understand that I dont want ray tracing ,in only play online competitive fps , so ? Nvidia you only must launch gpus without the beautiful and expensive feature and then you will be like always a choice more budget friendly but don't , you choose to frightening the entire community to adopt this , shame ..

Not everyone thinks as you do. I personally think RT is awesome and I can't wait for it to be adopted industry wide.

 

[Cod3nflame]

It's easy to get high and mighty here and claim the reviewer was "only looking out for the little guy". Yet no one on Earth is purchasing 3090s to play games at 1080p in non-raytraced modes. Yet that was the very first benchmark in the review. And, despite the fact that this game was hotly awaited largely over hype for its "next-gen" raytracing, this was left out of the review entirely, with the tacit admission that it was done for reasons of time pressure.

Now, it seems Techspot wishes to rewrite history and say RT performance was omitted because "99% of games on Steam feature raster-only pipelines". How are the pipelines of other games relevant to the performance of this game? I had one question when I first read the article: "what card do I need to purchase to get acceptable RT performance". And, from reading the posted comments, others had the same question.

Certainly NVidia seems to have overreacted somewhat. But even more wrong-headed are comments from the pitchfork-bearing mob claiming they acted because they didn't receive the "review numbers they wanted". They acted because a major feature of their product -- a feature to which they have devoted enormous R&D and a large part of the silicon die of each chip to -- was being ignored entirely. That's a quite different matter. And if -- if -- that ignoration actually was Techspot editorial policy-- a justified decision on NVidia's part.

Thankfully we see that this wasn't editorial policy, and indeed was just a simple matter of time pressure. The issue is over. Time to lay down your pitchforks.

Absolutely agreed. HU is not without fault here.

 

[Fergutor]

OOooh...now that it bites your *** "bit Tech doesn't get it"...
Typical...

 

[Endymio]

Things like these are not supposed to happen in well run larger companies and if an employee goes rogue in that way, it‘s at the minimum instant dismissal.

If you're ever higher in a corporate structure than the level which requires permission to change the amount of salt applied to the french fries, you'll find that executive-grade employees are given a great deal of latitude. That is, in fact, the entire point of the corporate structure itself: if a CEO had the time to make all those necessary executive-level decisions, he wouldn't need the executives in the first place.

According to LTT, the sentiments expressed in the damning email were unlike anything previously expressed by Mr DelRizzo...
Looks like the orders came from further up the food-chain. So who is higher up than Global Director of Marketing at Nvidia?

It's literally astounding how some minds are able to twist facts to support their desired narrative. Firstly, DelRizzo is director of PR, not Marketing. A Director level position is at least three levels of management below the CEO. And your conclusion that this email came from someone other than DelRizzo is based on a chain of reasoning thinner than generic-brand tissue paper.

(edit: comma)

 

[Arbie]

NVidia's behavior here has been shameful. I told them so on the Geforce forum. They quickly deleted my post but it may have added to the count of negatives they saw.

 

[HardReset]

I have my own tinfoil hat take on this whole thing. HU are biased towards AMD. We all know it. Everytime they review an Intel or Nvidia product there's always some tongue in cheek distaste. They have criticized Intel and NV for things AMD has done as well. No one remembers AMD cherry picking reviewers for the R9 Fury Nano and how Bitwit and a few others were intentionally left out in the cold? No one remembers AMD giving HardOCP the shaft? No? Selective memory is a funny thing. Is it a coincidence that HU decided to dump RT results after reviewing RDNA2 and finding out that the cards are complete trash at ray tracing?

Fresh example of "RDNA2 complete trash ray tracing"

It really does seem to suck, yeah ""

 

[bandit8623]

I will say since amd hasn't had a good graphics card for so long.. Nvidia has become bullish. Just like Intel did.. Now look at Intel..

 

[brucek]

higher in a corporate structure than the level which requires permission to change the amount of salt applied to the french fries

If we're talking about McDonald's, I'm pretty sure that is a very high level!

 

[Corncob]

#1 Personally, I played through Quake II RTX and I saw NOTHING about Ray Tracing that couldn't have been accomplished using the same technology I've seen in newer games (Quake is really, really old).

#2 Ray Tracing is basically Nvidia moving the goal post so that they can advertise technology that AMD couldn't catch up with immediately - but it really doesn't make a difference in actual gameplay and barely makes much difference in visuals.

#3 My 3090 FTW3 is turned way up and playing Cyberpunk, I fail to truly see how much "better" RT makes the game. It's easily ignorable.

The consumerist shill who was gargling nVidia's balls mere months ago saying "Gamers want the RTX switch turned on and if a brand can't offer that, they're not worthy of being an option" now says RTX is "easily ignorable"?

Absolutely rich.