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

[pildorman321]

Boo hoo, big meanie NVIDIA won't send me a FE GPU to review so I think I deserve attn from the "community" for such disrespectful treatment as well.

You sr have a bright future as a Nvidia PR guy!

 

[3tavarin3]

Remember when AMD banned bunch of review sites from Fury series? No meltdown Youtube vidoes, no meltdown Twitter posts, no meltdown-editorial articles why AMD is evil.

What gives?

linustechtips . com/topic/443057-updated-the-tech-report-wont-receive-a-r9-fury-nano-for-review/

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well, hell, where do I start? If anyone hasn't seen it yet, I posted a poll about this at:
It seems that nVidia has just blacklisted Steve Walton and Tim Schiesser.

Del Rizzo states the obvious here, that customers "don't get free GPUs, they work hard for their money." Setting aside the fact that HUB's detailed reviews often take several days and weeks to put together, this statement misses the forest for the trees. Yes, most review outlets get units from hardware vendors. But they get these on the understanding that their reviews will reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers, who are looking for trusted information.

So... nVidia thinks that this is just something that you do to fill your hardware cubbyholes, eh? How is it that so many greedy dinks all managed to work at the same company? If nVidia didn't benefit more from tech reviews than the cost of the cards, they wouldn't send any out and they know that. This isn't nVidia being out of touch, this is just them lying through their teeth to try to get some kind of strategic advantage.

It'd be hard to assess exactly how many people purchased an RTX 3080 graphics card after watching one of HUB's several RTX reviews -- between TechSpot and HUB combined, we estimate in the thousands -- but it's certainly worth more than the cost of a single graphics card. But, ultimately, that's not what's at play here...

Clearly it's enough that they think it's worth it to not only supply you with sample cards, but hundreds of other outlets as well. As usual, Hardware Unboxed subscribes to the Jean-Luc Picard school of diplomacy. They're as polite, locigal and articulate as ever.

Attacking press freedom is always a lose-lose-lose scenario: reviewers, customers, and businesses are all impacted negatively. Shortly after Steve went public with Nvidia's email, he's seen overwhelming support from the tech community. Not just fans of Hardware Unboxed, or viewers and readers, but numerous tech outlets who understand that this is not just about Steve or Hardware Unboxed, but it's about principle.

Clearly, reviewers know this is no isolated incidence, but it was very arrogant of Nvidia to write an entire email explaining you could either get in line with their views, or else. This could have happened to any other outlet. In fact, it has happened to many of them already, but either to a lesser extent or handled in a way that Nvidia (or any other big tech company) simply played the part of ignoring the reviewer without ever giving them any explanation.

Many people haven't been around long enough to know this but this isn't the first time that nVidia has attempted to subjugate the tech press. They tried this exact same thing back in 2008 by threatening to stop sending samples to reviewers who didn't use the gaming suite that they wanted. Then they started threatening the same thing if anyone mentioned that the GTS 250 was really just a re-branded 9800 GTX+. Over at (what was) theinquirer.net, a certain (now famous) investigative tech journalist named Charlie Demerjian completely went off on them and waged a personal war (that continues to this day) against nVidia because of their repeated attempts to subjugate the tech press. He was a real fire-breather and had no fear of nVidia whatsoever. It was Charlie who pointed out the "wood screws" on the fake Fermi GTX 480 card that Jensen presented to his stockholders at the Fermi unveiling event. Some may remember that wonderful debacle.

Less than 48 hours later, Steve received the good news.
Nvidia apologized and walked everything back.

This isn't something that you can apologise for and "walk back". This is something that proves what a piece of garbage you are for even saying. Obviously nVidia was "testing the waters" as they do with pricing to see what they could get away with. They're not sorry, they're pissed off that the entire tech press told them to shove it up their rectal cavities. Their "apology" here is completely worthless, especially considering just how specific their original email to HU was.

This isn't nVidia regretting what they did, this is corporate damage control. They hope that enough of us are stupid enough to believe them and are willing to let this egregious transgression blow over. I am not one of those stupid people.

Great news indeed, but let's be clear this wouldn't have happened if not for the support of the community at large and key people in the tech space that have such an enormous influence that it was too much for Nvidia to ignore. <a href="

">Linus from LinusTechTips</a> (his angry rant on the WAN Show embedded above is pure gold) and <a href="

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1337300582785282049

">Steve from Gamers Nexus</a>, were two of those persons.</p>

<p>Our own Steve Walton (HUB) was the one living this whole situation close to his chest for the past few days and he's expected to upload a video soon with his recount.</p>

Exactly. This "apology and walk back" isn't because nVidia genuinely feels sorry, but because, like all bullies, they're a bunch of honourless cowards.

On a side note, Steve's right, watching Linus go off like that was awesome to see. I'd never seen him so livid in my life and it was great! It was heartwarming to see the TechTuber community line up to stand beside Steve and Tim without a second thought. Keep in mind though that the moment we stop being vigilant, nVidia WILL try this again. This is why I won't support them, they have too much power in the industry and they abuse that power on the daily. Going forward, I don't see that changing because it's been their M.O. since they started up.

It's funny you know, now BOTH of the famous Linuses in tech have told nVidia to go..."love" themselves.

Things really don't need to be this hard. At the end of the day, reviewers, customers (and "the rest of the industry") all want the same things. We want Nvidia, AMD, Intel (and heck, even Apple!) to produce great hardware that can do justice to the next generation of games and computing. There is so much to look forward to in the coming years.

Unfortunately they do have to be this hard because that's the result of a corporation like nVidia who is willing to do ANYTHING and hurt ANYONE if there's a few extra bucks in it for them. Of all the people to go after though, why the hell did they pick Steve? He's easily the most unbiased and fair benchmarker I've ever seen. His numbers are so trusted that OTHER people use them, like Chris at "The Good Ol' Gamer".

As Nvidia said, consumers work hard for their money. We just want to make sure you know what you're spending it on.

If nVidia gave even half a turd about how hard consumers work for their money, they wouldn't have such a history of price-gouging the very consumers that they claim to have concern for.

I swear, nVidia is so damn slimy that green is DEFINITELY the most appropriate colour imaginable.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Just seen all this. I mean I do think Techspot does gloss over the RT stuff a bit too much. But then again I’m an enthusiast willing to spend lots of money on graphics cards and we aren’t popular amongst the community for this apparently and Steve is catering to his audience. It is frustrating to read a 3080 review and be left wondering how it performs in the one area that really needs a performance upgrade - RT. But then they did follow that up with another article dedicated to it. Nvidia definitely overreacted, they can cut off any reviewer at their discretion but they definitely should have tried to have a discussion first out of decency.

Nvidias marketing team can do one, who makes threats like that? What I don’t understand is if they didn’t give any reason and cut off Hardware Unboxed with no reason then the outrage wouldn’t have been there. It would have made Hardware unboxed looked like crying babies for not getting free hardware. And there isn’t anything stopping Nvidia from doing that in the future. So really this is all about that nasty email to Steve.

The sad thing is this is I see a lot of people saying there will be a backlash against Nvidia for this. But I don’t see how? I think this is a **** move but am I going to buy from AMD next time because of it? No! I may buy from AMD next time but it won’t be because of Nvidias nasty email to Steve! I care less for a single reviewer than I do my own wallet and my GPU upgrade.

 

[Puiu]

I think NVIDIA should stop giving out cards to anyone with a YouTube channel, period. Let the people who want to review it go out and purchase it. I'm far more inclined to believe someone that has to spend their own hard earned money on a game/hardware review than I am someone with a literal room full of free hardware.

That's just... wow.
You think NVIDIA is sending review samples out of goodwill? No dude, HU and other reviews have huge audiences and for the low low price of a single GPU they get more marketing than millions of $$$ could accomplish. But hey, please tell us more how "generous" NVIDIA is. Enlighten us, don't hesitate to respond.

 

[Puiu]

Just seen all this. I mean I do think Techspot does gloss over the RT stuff a bit too much. But then again I’m an enthusiast willing to spend lots of money on graphics cards and we aren’t popular amongst the community for this apparently and Steve is catering to his audience. It is frustrating to read a 3080 review and be left wondering how it performs in the one area that really needs a performance upgrade - RT. But then they did follow that up with another article dedicated to it. Nvidia definitely overreacted, they can cut off any reviewer at their discretion but they definitely should have tried to have a discussion first out of decency.

Nvidias marketing team can do one, who makes threats like that? What I don’t understand is if they didn’t give any reason and cut off Hardware Unboxed with no reason then the outrage wouldn’t have been there. It would have made Hardware unboxed looked like crying babies for not getting free hardware. And there isn’t anything stopping Nvidia from doing that in the future. So really this is all about that nasty email to Steve.

The sad thing is this is I see a lot of people saying there will be a backlash against Nvidia for this. But I don’t see how? I think this is a **** move but am I going to buy from AMD next time because of it? No! I may buy from AMD next time but it won’t be because of Nvidias nasty email to Steve! I care less for a single reviewer than I do my own wallet and my GPU upgrade.

The backlash needs to happen otherwise you know exactly what would happen in the future: NVIDIA will just double down on this and independent reviews will be left out of day one reviews or be forced to accept NVIDIA's demands ("editorial changes FTW").

Thankfully the backlash did happen and it happened for both the reviewer side of things and from the audience. This in turn created more industry wide unity against crap like this. They had to back-peddle on that email faster than they could say ray-tracing.

Buying what you consider best value for your money is not wrong. But you must understand that, even if you will continue buying their products, you don't have to accept anything they try to do. The gaming/tech community has a voice and can force companies to stop doing certain things. For example, God knows how certain EA games would have looked today if we didn't yell "gambling" this much.

I for one wish NVIDIA would stop with the insane login requirement to freaking use their driver software and maybe one day we'll get them to listen. NVIDIA can bleed too. (the same with the Facebook login and the Quest)

 

[Avro Arrow]

No company should be able to dictate how a product is reviewed.
nVidia has to understand that tech sites are not extensions to their marketing department.
They fully deserved this backlash.
But it's good to see that they went back and corrected their attitude.

They do understand this, they just don't care. This isn't their "first kick at the can" when it comes to their attempts at subjugating the tech press. Also, don't be fooled, they haven't corrected their attitude, they're just regretting how their arrogance allowed their attitude to become so overt. Their attitude hasn't changed in twenty years so why would it change now?

Excellent article Julio and it has been a pleasure working with you and the TechSpot team over all these years now (I've actually lost count it's been that long).

Steve, you've been a class-act since day one. That ignoramus at nVidia should have known better than to put you in nVidia's crosshairs. They pulled something similar for the RTX 2060 Ti didn't they?

Well that's so sad that nVidia is mad at you and now you can't get the Scalper's Edition anymore.....tsk tsk...

And it's preposterous that nVidia, or any manufacturer, can dictate what part and how their product should be reviewed. That's plain pathetic.

Pathetic as it is, it's something that nVidia has been trying to do for well over a decade.

And you can primarily thank Kyle Bennet (HardOCP) and Steve Burke (GamersNexus) because of all the well known reviewers/sites out there these are the two guys that primarily set the table for this type of refusal to simply lick boots to blossom into something able to actually influence the industry.

Agreed but don't ever forget Charlie Demerjian. He was the original defender of the free tech press from nVidia's predations. Jim from AdoredTV has also done wonders to expose nVidia for the pieces of garbage that they are.

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.

What kind of BS is this? DX12 is based on AMD's Mantle API, not nVidia's. Where do you fanboys come up with this turd?

Three comments unrelated to one another.

1. I would far rather have nVidia tell us when the RTX3000-series cards will be available, and not just from scalpers. I need some for a non-graphics project. Is there a chip yield problem here, or some other production problem.

I completely agree. None of the companies have been very transparent or forthcoming with this type of information.

2. This is no different than the meltdown of Microsoft when I reviewed C++ compilers years ago for PC Magazine and they could not accept that I rated their product lower than either Watcom or Borland (I forget which). No matter which market segment, the dominant 500 lb gorilla roars. And then Microsoft went back and rewrote some of its runtimes after ripping my choice of software to compile and run.

Ah PC Magazine! I remember the old "Abort, Retry, Fail" funnies on the last page and the pretty great Gateway 2000 ads (like the one parodying Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). Yes, I'm that old, I used to read it in print. LOL

3. I have found Techspot reviews a bit deficient in describing the cooling of the graphics cards reviewed, most important for multi-GPU environments. Clear statements about wattage consumed by graphics cards, clearer than some vendors in fact, need to be provided for system builders who need to user power supplies of sufficient wattage.

Unfortunately, multi-GPU environments for gamers are a thing of the past and are therefore irrelevant in this day and age. I lament this because I used crossfire with my HD 4870s and HD 7970s. With games becoming more and more complex and requiring more and more GPU resources, I believe that the abandonment of Crossfire and SLI is a terrible mistake.

Glad they walked it back. Truly uncalled for. Every player needs to pick the card that's going to play their killer app best. If I was going mainly play Dirt 5 AMD looks better, Control and Cyberpunk (atm) go with Nvidia, etc.

Each reviewer having their own test methodology and conclusion is the best way to have an informed decision.

It doesn't matter that they walked it back. It matters that they did it to begin with.

 

[punctualturn]

This is not new neither surprising on Nvidia's part.

This company has screwed their own customers over and over.

Google Physx blocked via Nvidia driver and blocked VFIO. Those two alone are done to their paying customers.

Then see why Apple, Sony, Microsoft worked with them and then ran away like crazy. Dont worry Nintendo, your time will come.

Then add all their tools (GameWorks,Physx, Hairworks, etc) which magically makes any game using it to run like garbage on anything else.

I honestly wished that HW, LTT and the others would remind the young viewers of all that shady stuff that Nvidia has done, but we know better.

I am waiting with baited breath what Nvidia will do to the industry, once they are cleared to own ARM. Because there is no way in hell that they burned 40 Billions, just to recoup it on license fess (which currently provide ARM a couple of billions a year).

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah right. AMD published Mantle. Then Khronos group adopted it and gave it new name, Vulkan. Around same time Microsoft looked at Mantle and made slightly refined version of it. That was named DirectX 12. After that there was no longer need for Mantle, it had server it's purpose.

So DirectX 12 and Vulkan are both essentially same as AMD Mantle. Nvidia had no role on either one. So much about Nvidia invents everything...

I was about to say the same thing. That clueless NOOB doesn't know a damn thing. There are far too many of those.

For a company looking to secure approval for a buyout of of ARM holdings from various competition authorities across the globe, this is very interesting behaviour.

Gives a real insight into what the thinking is behind closed doors - how they view the media and their customers.

This isn't exactly new. Anyone who's been around long enough knows that they've tried this before.

You think so ? Like for their „only allowed to report positive things“, their video card branding guidelines, Bumpgate, dying 2080Ti. Imo, nobody cares.

They are probably wiping their tears with $1,000 bills.

There will be zero backlash, just like before. Reviewers will probably be more cautious though.

Just look at the statement above the mentions Batman Arkham for cool new tech but not over tessellation that hurt performance on nVidia cards but absolutely killed it on the competition‘s GPU.

Yep, the problem is that most people haven't been around to see the war that Charlie Demerjian waged on them for these things. Remember when he pointed out the "wood screws" on the fake Fermi GTX 480 that Jensen "The Big" Huang was showing his own investors? That was priceless!

I'm an Nvidia shareholder, I'm guessing Nvidia stock might get hit with news like this. Nowadays, alot of investors are millenials (the "retail" investors, aka "Robinhood" investors), and they actually read tech news and are up to date on the gaming news of Nvidia unlike institutional investors. When Nvidia does ridiculous things like this, which causes bad publicity, and makes AMD look good, I'm concerned. Nvidia can't rely on the power of their hardware without resorting to pressuring review sites? That's a huge red flag on their products!

Don't be like Intel and try to win market share through shady tactics like this. That never helped Intel in the end, and this year their stock price got obliterated and never recovered. At the end of the day Intel stopped producing competitive products and consumers bought AMD. Do NOT be like Intel, and let your products do the speaking.

Do you remember the "wood screws" on the fake GTX 480 that Jensen showed investors like you?

Anyone really surprised that Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter's methods of narrative control seeped into Nvidia?

Before Google was big, before Facebook was even a thing and Twitter was just a thought... nVidia was already the way that they are now. They learned the dark art of narrative control from Intel. If anything, nVidia's methods seeped into Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It's pretty bad and wrong comparing a bottom end GPU to a very useful GPU like the Radeon 7, but aside from that the article is spot on and it is good to see that Nvidia came down to admit their misstep.

They may have admitted wrongdoing but they won't stop trying. Don't be so easily fooled. This has been nVidia's MO since the beginning. They're one of these "The world can burn as long as we increase our already obscene profits!" corporations with all the morals of Hannibal Lecter.

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 ..

The easiest answer to that is not to buy an nVidia card. When them showing their true slimy green colours it should be that much easier.

I think that Nvidia's approach to what they are advocating for is wrong, it goes to show how belittling they are of tech reviewers. A simple email suggestive of new benchmarks which clearly bring out the picture of what they want from their product, could do without the threats.

Umm, Steve did say in his presentation during the video in question that a separate video was going to be made that focused completely on ray-tracing and DLSS implementations. That makes a simple email suggesting exactly that kind of redundant.

My appeal to journalists is to always expose these kinds of threats to the public. Sensitisation goes a long way. Water, air, fire and earth are still free resources. I can do without Nvidia. It should stop acting like it owns the world.

I couldn't agree more and this makes me appreciate independent media all the more. Corporate media like Fox, CNN and (insert prefix here)NBC all have their heads up their collective colons and report what their advertisers want. They actually have less to lose by telling their advertisers to go pound sand than independent media does (like YouTubers) but they're a bunch of corrupt psychopaths. They also give these corporations (like nVidia) a feeling of entitlement. I thank my lucky stars for men like Tim and Steve.

 

[Avro Arrow]

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...

Quite the contrary, nVidia got sloppy and was overt about it. Just how many horrible acts do private corporations commit that you never hear about until long after it's too late? This has nothing to do with economics 101 but more to do with politics 101. As you say, let's not be too uninformed here. Political Science was my major in university which is why I see right through this. The economics are all about the numbers but the politics are all about their marketing and how they present themselves as a corporation to the public. This is clearly a political error they made. The consequences however, will be economic.

The real problem is that corporations, by definition, have no morals and must be controlled by the law. The corporations got too big and then Citizens United convinced some judge to give human rights to corporations. This doesn't work because corporations aren't human and therefore have no conscience to keep their actions in check. If a corporation was human, it would be diagnosed as a psychopath because it's not allowed to have empathy or morals. Making more and more money is everything.

Capitalism is good as long as it remains venture captialism. What we have now is a perverse and distorted monster that Adam Smith never envisioned and would certainly condemn.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Remember when AMD banned bunch of review sites from Fury series? No meltdown Youtube vidoes, no meltdown Twitter posts, no meltdown-editorial articles why AMD is evil.

What gives?

linustechtips . com/topic/443057-updated-the-tech-report-wont-receive-a-r9-fury-nano-for-review/

Your point is very accurate. The commenting community tends to be heavily biased towards AMD. But most of the market buys Nvidia. Basically AMD fans are poor and loud! And Nvidia slipped up, they sent a nasty email (probably an employee in an emotional rage) and now the AMD fans have some real ammunition.

The reality is both of these companies are the same, both are multi-billion dollar American corporations that only care about getting as much money out of you as possible and nothing else. And most buyers won’t change their purchase decision over these sort of moves. If you were about to buy an Nvidia GPU would you change your decision because of what’s in this article? I wouldn’t...

 

[Avro Arrow]

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.

I put him on ignore awhile ago because he has this idea that owning an RTX 3090 and an Alienware (that makes me chuckle) monitor means that he's some kind of expert when no real expert would buy either one of those products for gaming because we know better. If nobody replies to him, he'll figure it out eventually.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Honestly, in the age of youtube scandals most people will have forgotten about this within a month (apart from the fanboys, they will take this to their grave). The whole conundrum won't even put a dent in Nvidia's sales.

Only fanboys will remember this? Do you have problems remembering things like this? Oh man, the corporations are going to love you because their favourite people are those who just grin, bend over and take it as hard as the corporations can give it only to forget about it the next day.

As a consumer I will buy the card that comes closest to my requirements and the amount I am willing to pay and I don't care if it's from bully-boy Nvidia or sweet summer child AMD. The same goes for HUB, they just want to create content to inform people and make money of it.

"As long as I get mine, who cares if the world burns?" - the psychopath's creed

 

[Avro Arrow]

It is informative to learn from these comments why this whole thing happened - due to time pressure, one review from Hardware Unboxed just covered raster performance, and that review in isolation made it look like Nvidia products wouldn't get a fair shake from them. This, to me, is enough to allow me to accept this as a mistake on Nvidia's part and not to see them as "evil".

That's because you've clearly not been around long enough to know that this has happened before and will happen again. The only thing that's new this time is that nVidia was so overt about it. Look at the posts around you and see that this is just how nVidia is and yes, it is evil.

 

[Shadowboxer]

That's because you've clearly not been around long enough to know that this has happened before and will happen again. The only thing that's new this time is that nVidia was so overt about it. Look at the posts around you and see that this is just how nVidia is and yes, it is evil.

Nvidia and AMD are equally as bad as each other.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Thankfully Nvidia apologized and 'walked it back' so the people that have been trying to defend Nvidia's position in the original letter sent to HUB can just stop that nonsense.

They won't stop. Let's be honest here, most of them are trolling to begin with and the rest are either psychopaths or "team green and slimy".

It's not like their arguments had any logic to them in the first place.

 

[punctualturn]

Remember when AMD banned bunch of review sites from Fury series? No meltdown Youtube vidoes, no meltdown Twitter posts, no meltdown-editorial articles why AMD is evil.

What gives?

linustechtips . com/topic/443057-updated-the-tech-report-wont-receive-a-r9-fury-nano-for-review/

Not making excuses for AMD, because that reeks of B.S. on their part, but it looks like their "excuses" are probably valid "not enough review samples"

Remember how bad AMD was on those days, money wise, so maybe they had a budget for this.

But I would agree that those are not valid reasons for their actions.

That said, then because AMD did it, its ok for Nvidia to do so?

And if we go by that logic, then lets check which one of the two has done more harm to the industry, to their customers and to their partners over the years.

Hint, you are not going to like the results.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Remember when AMD banned bunch of review sites from Fury series? No meltdown Youtube vidoes, no meltdown Twitter posts, no meltdown-editorial articles why AMD is evil.

What gives?

linustechtips . com/topic/443057-updated-the-tech-report-wont-receive-a-r9-fury-nano-for-review/

That's odd, because they gave the Tech Report a Fury-X. Along with all of these other outlets.
Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, Guru3D, PC Perspective, HardwareCanucks, Forbes, TechReport, Overclock3D, Hexus, IGN, TechPowerUp, MaximumPC, Bit-tech, HotHardware, LegitReviews.
Maybe nobody went nuts over it because they didn't send such a lovely email to The Tech Report like nVidia did to Hardware Unboxed and AMD DID send the R9 Fury-X to them. A single card denied does not equal a demand for a site to change their methodology to suit a specific vendor if they ever want a first-day review again, no matter how much your fanboy heart wants it to.

EDIT: NeoMorpheus makes a very valid point. I seem to remember an HBM VRAM shortage at the time.

 

[Tom Sunday]

Political Science was my major in university which is why I see right through this.

NVIDIA has other (much bigger) plans and visions. You are however correct "Making more money is everything." Huang (CEO) earned his Master's degree from Stanford University. Sincere congratulations and envy to a USA immigrant. After Stanford he worked for AMD in a 'key executive' position and getting even smarter. Now Huang is drawing down an annual salary of USD$26 million along with stock options doubling this amount. He is a bilionare 6-8 times over. His recent purchase of "Arm Holdings" for a cool USD$40 billion (mostly in cash) is another sign that people like him are in a different stratosphere (and mentally more capable) than us remaining mortals and with no access. Most certainly the entire "RTX 3000" effort is by far not Huang's primary business objective and never will be.

His company went public in 1999, shares priced at $19.69 each. An investment of $2000 and your initial capital with reinvested dividends would now have grown to $291,000. It's really all about the money and power for him and a "devil may care attitude" towards a few gamers or the tech-site commentators standing on the sidelines worried about marketing, corporate behavior, GPU architecture and free samples.

Both AMD and Intel will be in for ride of their lives coming soon to this theater thanks to Mr. Huang. His USD$40 billion investment and his interlect will go a long way. His early impressionable top-spot and senior executive work at AMD tought him well and how to move in a USA based corporate world.

Meanwhile however I will be back riding my forklift at Walmart on the third shift trying to making ends meet. I never went to college but will surely read again "Atlas Shrugged" and who is "John Galt" to figure out capitalism and thereafter be sure to study the remnant 200-year old historic life of our friend Mr. Adam Smith.

 

[Gypsygib]

If Herr Nvidia wants free positive press they should pay for a sponsored product/feature overview. You can't intimidate your way to free positive press as that press outlet then loses all value to its viewers as a reliable source of information. You have to pay for positive press or earn it via great products.

Edit: Also, in what world does Nvidia think that mid-high end GPU customers (visiting a tech youtuber page) aren't looking at the FPS numbers anyways? They already know the performance of raytracing and rasterization prior to purchase. Focusing more on raytracing won't change the perception of the massive FPS hit. In the end, it's just a graphical setting, users will decide if it's worth the FPS hit similar to any other setting.

 

[WolfMonster]

No company should be able to dictate how a product is reviewed.
nVidia has to understand that tech sites are not extensions to their marketing department.
They fully deserved this backlash.
But it's good to see that they went back and corrected their attitude.

Sadly... Almost every industry is this way. They want reviewers to just be that extension of marketing you refer to. Look at how many "reviews" are just a regurgitation of the same materials found on the brand's website.... practically verbatim. As you noted, reviewers who are willing, and refuse to not tell it like it is, get removed from the list of their, usually cherry picked, review samples. This forces the reviewers to pay out of pocket to get a device for review if they wish to not look like they play favorites. (which isn't hard for fanboys to do anyway.)

This is still enough, even after they felt the backlash and retraced their steps, to make me want to go Team Red over Team Green... or maybe Team Blue if Intel can produce something solid with its poached talent... after all, the GTX1080 is, at best now, mid to lower-mid tier.

 

[No Longer Human]

The real problem is that corporations, by definition, have no morals and must be controlled by the law. The corporations got too big and then Citizens United convinced some judge to give human rights to corporations. This doesn't work because corporations aren't human and therefore have no conscience to keep their actions in check. If a corporation was human, it would be diagnosed as a psychopath because it's not allowed to have empathy or morals. Making more and more money is everything.

I completely agree. This reminds me of the movie "The Corporation (2003)". Apparently it has won 26 International Awards and is based on the book
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

 

[urbanman2004]

A few of you who decided to "quote" me regarding the sarcastic tone I made a/b not receiving a review sample (which is essentially a free GPU) are as toxic as NVIDIA b/c you want to prop up this entitlement attitude as if everyone owes you something or you expect things to be handed out. I don't care who was right or wrong, so if you don't like NVIDIA's sentiment then you're welcome to take Gamers Nexus' approach and buy it yourself or bum it off another one of your tech reviewer friends, but don't get mad at me b/c you can't handle the truth. There are more important pressing issues going on in the world that need no explanation that you should worry a/b than getting all flustered b/c your instant gratification for a GPU hasn't been satisfied.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I completely agree. This reminds me of the movie "The Corporation (2003)". Apparently it has won 26 International Awards and is based on the book
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

Yep, that's unfortunately just how it is. Once, someone asked me if I'd like to be a billionaire and I told them that it would be impossible for me to be a billionaire. They asked me why and I said "Because I would have retired as soon as I had $5,000,000 to my name. You can't buy time."

The look on their faces made it clear that they hadn't really thought it through.

 

[Salty0624]

I am actually rather pleased to see the focus move towards Ray Tracing. Early 90's that was THE way to program an engine. It produced great results. But, with increased resolutions the performance took a hit. So, they went to Raster. Raster was Faster, but lost that crisp definition from Ray Trace slivers ...

Hold onto your hats. Old school engine basics may prove to be the thing of the future ...