NVidia, What gives? Seriously?!?

[FinneousPJ]

Storm in a tea cup.
Whining because he wasn't going to get any more free samples.
NOTHING stopped him from buying product and then reviewing.

Way to miss the point. I take it you watched none of the videos.

 

[Valantar]

Let me just say this : There's no mistaking the difference between Xbox One and Xbox 360, regardless of how the screenshot is made. There are a lot of places where Series X and One look almost the same though.And yet these same sites hype up the difference between XBox Series X and PS 5 vs older gen consoles. Yet, it's apparent that this is the smallest jump ever for consoles.

Which of them noted that? None. So my point is, who said these review sites were unbiased? The reviewers themselves, surprise. Why is that taken at face value?

They make money doing this. This is the way the game is played if you make a living doing this. You don't really think these people who make millions doing reviews are entitled and unbiased do you? They act all indignant on these videos, based on responses they have a gullible low IQ audience is all I can think.

Look at car and motorcycle, stereo, TV reviews - early access is given to the privileged few. Piss them off and you get squat. There are reader-sponsored review organizations that have popped up because of these bias'. Consumerreports.org comes to mind.

This industry is not immune. Don't think for a second these guys don't know who pays their bills. Every single one of them. They are absolutely freakin bias, it's human nature, and they're probably laughing all the way to the bank.

A question: was your comparison pic from a game with an actual XSX version, or from a game running an XO(X) game in backwards compatibility? I'm assuming the latter given the severe lack of real current-gen titles, which again undermines your comparison - it's running the same code with largely the same settings, so it stands to reason that the visual differences will be minimal. Frame rates and smoothness? Those are radically improved. And of course in time the graphical fidelity will also show itself to be much improved.

As for peopla "making millions doing reviews" - I don't think anyone outside of Linus is doing that. Please stop presenting tech reviewers as if they are some highly privileged class - it's not only not true, it's disingenuous and makes you come off as either willfully naive or biased as you're presenting an obviously untrue argument to the favor of major corporations.

There is of course reason to be skeptical of the relationship between ad payments, product access and review content, as this type of corruption is still relatively prevalent across the globe in all industries. It is something end users need to be aware of and critical towards when reading reviews, and it is something that sites' and channels' editorial policies need to explicitly account for to maintain any semblance of journalistic integrity. Thankfully there are a decent amount who do, and who even explicitly design their reviews around this (such as going back and re-testing their launch review samples compared to retail samples to check for cherry-picked samples).

But in the end, I think you're going way too far in your arguments here. I can agree with a lot of your base assumptions - the close relations to the industry necessary to produce this kind of review content are indeed a huge risk factor in terms of maintaining journalistic integrity and producing as unbiased content as possible. The massively skewed power dynamics between reviewers and corporations of course makes reviewers vulnerable in myriad ways. However, you are taking this and seemingly concluding that reviewers can't be trusted, period, and that corruption is the norm, not the exception. There's a significant logical disconnect here, and one that entirely ignores the human factors involved in this. Most reviewers are relatively ordinary people, with relatively ordinary morals, and would thus not be comfortable producing consciously biased content over time - that kind of stuff does some seriously nasty shit to your psyche. Nobody likes being a tool for propaganda except for zealots. And among prominent tech 'tubers, how many zealots do you know of? I could name a few, but none are a part of what we're discussing here.

Many review videos on other products are start with "I am not sponsored nor do I receive anything from this company"
It's a slimy move no question but they could just stop the reviews or taking products. Aren't you concerned that these samples are hand selected?

Hand selected how? Silicon binning? I'm not personally worried about cherry-picked samples, no, as it wouldn't make much of a difference at all. If the reviewers' GPUs boost ... let's say 100MHz higher than everyone else's that's still a tiny increase when it comes down to it. And besides, the breadth of reviews out there makes this more or less impossible, especially when you have sites like GN who go out of their way to control for these things by buying further samples and doing comparison reviews at a later point.

If the review sites were trying to serve the needs of their viewers, then why aren't they running benchmarks on games that are most popular?

Why do the big review sites all run the same benchmarks?

One of the biggest things I like on TPU is that they link to little seen reviews. From that, one can sometimes see performance comparisons that are constantly missing in these cookie cutter review sites.

Here's a couple of charts I bet like <1% of folks here have seen, from recently linked reviews from TPU's home page.

These challenge popular notions. Those big sites never point this stuff out, which in my view makes them quite dubious if you think about it.

Edit: There are two tales being told here. One is how good Zen 3 is for gaming, even on lesser cards. The other tale is how bad Zen 2 was and is, even on older/slower cards. One of these tales got told, the other got a pass. That is bias in play.

Team fortress on a 1080 Ti. Who says you can't see a difference between CPUs with an older card? GPU limited? Maybe not.

TF 2 is one of the most popular games on the planet for many years.

Here's Dota 2, again one of the most popular games in existence for many years. At 4K, with a 3070. Who says you can't tell a difference between CPUs at 4k again?

View attachment 179606

Wait, was Zen 2's disadvantage in gaming somehow undercommunicated? To me it was plenty clear that they performed notably behind Intel in gaming, and especially in lightly threaded and latency-intensive workloads such as esports titles. I can't think of any review that hasn't highlighted this - but most of that was overshadowed by the superior value proposition and superior performance in a wide array of tasks, sure. That every reviewer was suddenly a video editor is ... again, this looks like an attempt at making a fair point, but you're taking it too far. CPU reviews have always focused on - and by necessity must focus on - a wide array of tasks. Video editing and 3D rendering has risen in popularity as benchmarks as those workloads have become far more common over the past decade. Does that make them the main workload of most PC enthusiasts? Of course not. Nor have I seen many reviews saying as such - most are pretty clear that if all you care about is gaming, the 9600K or 9700K were better than the 3600 or 3700X. Highlighting that the latter are superior for other workloads or mixed workloads (such as gaming while CPU encoding video) is the type of nuance a review needs, as it should cover the needs of as many readers as possible. So unless you can give examples of reviews actually arguing that the gaming performance deficit shouldn't matter to people who only game, or that rendering/video editing is more important and common a workload than gaming, then you're taking this way, way too far.

Storm in a tea cup.
Whining because he wasn't going to get any more free samples.
NOTHING stopped him from buying product and then reviewing.

Sorry, who is whining here? The person saying "no, I won't compromise my editorial policies in order to get early access to review products", or the massive corporation throwing a hissy-fit over some imagined slight by a relatively small product review channel?

Imagine Tesla sent HUB a Model X,
Steve: "yeah I don't give a rat ass about electric car, 99.9% of cars out there are running fossil fuel"

This dude is just a stubborn coot who is living in the past anyways, Tim on the other hand is a fantastic tech reviewer who has been doing all the DXR/DLSS in-depth reviews.

... they work for the same channel, no? Under the same review policies? Do you honestly believe that they work entirely independently from each other? Don't be daft. Stop reading distribution of work as if it says anything about the values of the person doing the work - there are hundreds of possible reasons why work is distributed the way it is, and none of them add up to "reviewer A thinks feature X is shit, reviewer B thinks it's cool, so reviewer B does that content". That's a bad-faith argument which assumes the reviewers have an agenda beyond investigating the performance and properties of the products they review, and it utterly ignores the facts of the degree of planning and cooperation involved in even low-level media production.

And besides, your analogy is wildly inaccurate. An electric car can't run on fossil fuels; an RTX GPU can still do rasterization - and it's still the main workload of the GPU. A more accurate analogy would be if Toyota sent out a Prius hybrid (not the plug-in type) to a reviewer and demanded that they prioritize covering the electric operation of the car in the review, rather than the main fossil fuel powered operation of the car, as "that is what the industry and drivers are interested in".

 

[Sunny and 75]

The way it's meant to be ... Steve guessed it:

 

[Caring1]

1958

Very childish.

 

[Vayra86]

we know why Nvidia are doing it. They invested in AI tensor cores. Gaming is second fiddle. So they have to make up reasons to use them so the gamers will buy their reject A100 chips.

Bullseye

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Imagine Tesla sent HUB a Model X,
Steve: "yeah I don't give a rat ass about electric car, 99.9% of cars out there are running fossil fuel"

This dude is just a stubborn coot who is living in the past anyways, Tim on the other hand is a fantastic tech reviewer who has been doing all the DXR/DLSS in-depth reviews.

Now imagine Tesla sent Steve a Model S when it was new. Steve said the car's excellent. Very good acceleration. Good technology. But it needs more recharge stations.

Then he does a follow up video where he shows the car is perfect and daily-drivable in a place like California where Tesla had invested and propped up charging station and infrastructure.
Analogies are slippery slopes. That's why it's such a good derail topic.

And why should reviewer's opinion and bias matter unless it affects his data or he's primarily selling his opinion? His videos constantly say that if you want ray tracing rather buy Nvidia anyway. I don't think he or anyone recommended RX 6800 cards as alternative for Nvidia in ray-tracing. I think the old guy from Digital Foundry said publicly that he likes Nvidia or such. You don't see him scrutinized because of that. Because Nvidia fans are wearing green-tinted glasses and fortunately his bias doesn't affect his review data.

 

[Vayra86]

Imagine Tesla sent HUB a Model X,
Steve: "yeah I don't give a rat ass about electric car, 99.9% of cars out there are running fossil fuel"

This dude is just a stubborn coot who is living in the past anyways, Tim on the other hand is a fantastic tech reviewer who has been doing all the DXR/DLSS in-depth reviews.

That is the weirdest car analogy ever. Steve never said he wasn't going to review the GPU. And nobody ever managed to run a Tesla off fossil fuel.

TF are you smoking? Or is that the DLSS clouding your vision

Very childish.

Yeah I totally am not following you either, but I guess I"m strange.

I think defending press freedoms is common sense. Whether its a GPU reviewer or an actual journalist under fire - we need these guys. If you have any questions about that, maybe you oughta move to one of the growing number of countries that are actively repressing free press. Its hot right now, Nvidia is playing ball too, along with the likes of Hungary, Poland, China, Turkey... its a great list of heroic strong men who don't lose elections. I suppose the leather jacket belongs there too.

Seriously, people. Wow.

 

[Caring1]

I think defending press freedoms is common sense.

Totally with you there, but I'm against Karens making a public stink to get support for their tantrums based on their beliefs, not the public's interest.

 

[Vayra86]

Totally with you there, but I'm against Karens making a public stink to get support for their tantrums based on their beliefs, not the public's interest.

But that is not what happened or happening every time.

What is happening, and we see it often because it also reaches the actual frontpages, is twisted reporting and one-sided views. How many Toms articles have we seen pro-Nvidia the past few years? One was even stranger than the other. And thats just one example. This shit happens and it colors people's views in disingenuous ways.

I mean, stuff like this

Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money

Some enthusiasts are upset about the price of the Nvidia RTX 2080 / 2070, but the opportunity cost of sticking with old technology is higher.

www.tomshardware.com

In who's interest is this? And that's one outlet. But they do it everywhere and only few can truly resist. How do they resist? By making noise like they do now.

Its going way too fast lately. HardOCP, this, and numerous other events. GPP... All Karens to you?

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

TF are you smoking? Or is that the DLSS clouding your vision

Hey now. DLSS is great (and sharp). It's just that the truth is hidden behind the realistic lighting and shadow. The truth that someone at Nvidia escalated a personal feud into a professional one.

Seriously, people. Wow.

I like heated topics lile these. People show their biases and I can mark people whose opinion I can safely ignore in the future.

 

[GamerGuy]

If I give you a supercar to review, and you drive it like a grandma, don't expect to get more cars in the future.

Or, if I give you a supercar that blazes in a straight road (RT, DLSS), but you live in the real world which it's mostly >95% city streets/roads aka Rasterization (should be higher than 95%, but keeping it conservative)...am I right to insist you drive only on highways and straight roads and ignore city streets and roads?

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Totally with you there, but I'm against Karens making a public stink to get support for their tantrums based on their beliefs, not the public's interest.

I hate to bring analogues back into the topic after criticising it myself. But are you perhaps one of those people that think the whole #MeToo and subsequent scandals that leaked should've just been resolved privately or dealt via HR dept.? Was the whole thing a mega-karen extravaganza to you?

 

[Vayra86]

Or, if I give you a supercar that blazes in a straight road (RT, DLSS), but you live in the real world which it's mostly >95% city streets/roads aka Rasterization (should be higher than 95%, but keeping it conservative)...am I right to insist you drive only on highways and straight roads and ignore city streets and roads?

Best car analogy ever because Car Emission testing was long done exactly like that. Goes to show how far off reality you can get if you let the lobby and company give direction instead of common sense.

The test for smoking cigarettes by the way... same shit We're still fighting to get a more honest test as the norm.

So here we have a topic with numerous people advocating we go that way too for GPU reviewing. Yeah, you guys really got the memo...

 

[Caring1]

I hate to bring analogues back into the topic after criticising it myself. But are you perhaps one of those people that think the whole #MeToo and subsequent scandals that leaked should've just been resolved privately or dealt via HR dept.? Was the whole thing a mega-karen extravaganza to you?

The original concept had merit, then like anything else it gets hijacked.

 

[TheUn4seen]

I can see the problem, but ho cares? Don't you guys have your own minds as consumers? For me ray tracing is years from being useful. If some reviewers start focusing on things I don't care about, I'll just stop reading their reviews, it's simple as that.

 

[evernessince]

Bullseye

This cannot be understated. Nvidia did a fantastic job selling customers on tech that was designed for the professional space. It was a calculated risk by Nvidia as AMD was very unlikely to be competitive within turing's life-span. They even managed to get people to pay jacked up prices for the privilege. I almost feel like elevated prices are here to stay as AMD is also milking it for all it can but I don't feel like the current GPU pricing structure is sustainable for the market long term. Not having improvements in performance per dollar at the lower price brackets means a majority of the market is not seeing any improvements in performance. PC gaming needs to be affordable or the market will shrink, plain and simple.

 

[Valantar]

Very childish.

Wait, this is more childish than Nvidia throwing a hissy fit over imagined slights from a reviewer?

Totally with you there, but I'm against Karens making a public stink to get support for their tantrums based on their beliefs, not the public's interest.

Who was throwing a tantrum here besides Nvidia?

The original concept had merit, then like anything else it gets hijacked.

What "original concept"? The one of calling out Nvidia for trying this BS? How, exactly, has the development of this from the parties involved (i.e. tech reviewers) changed from that?

I can see the problem, but ho cares? Don't you guys have your own minds as consumers? For me ray tracing is years from being useful. If some reviewers start focusing on things I don't care about, I'll just stop reading their reviews, it's simple as that.

Who cares? People who want the world to have some semblance of fairness to it. Also, how is one to have one's own mind as a consumer without an unbiased and free press reporting things? Do we conjure information out of thin air? (This of course ignores the fact that "conscientous consumers" or "voting with your wallet" hardly ever amounts to anything; calling out bad behaviour and making it into bad PR is the most effective tactic.)

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

What "original concept"? The one of calling out Nvidia for trying this BS? How, exactly, has the development of this from the parties involved (i.e. tech reviewers) changed from that?

He's talking explicitly about the #MeToo. While I'm of the same opinion, he bypassed my analogue.

 

[Valantar]

He's talking explicitly about the #MeToo. While I'm of the same opinion, he bypassed my analogue.

Ah. Can't say I agree on that, but that's not quite the topic here.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

This cannot be understated. Nvidia did a fantastic job selling customers on tech that was designed for the professional space. It was a calculated risk by Nvidia as AMD was very unlikely to be competitive within turing's life-span. They even managed to get people to pay jacked up prices for the privilege. I almost feel like elevated prices are here to stay as AMD is also milking it for all it can but I don't feel like the current GPU pricing structure is sustainable for the market long term. Not having improvements in performance per dollar at the lower price brackets means a majority of the market is not seeing any improvements in performance. PC gaming needs to be affordable or the market will shrink, plain and simple.

Nobody's putting much emphasis on it but Nvidia tried to rile up against HWUB with two points.
First is that ray tracing is the future and HWUB is "supposedly" slighting this future. Slandering HWUB as supposed red team reviewer.
Second is reviewers are given cards for free while buyers can't get their hands on them. So they should check their privilege.

The second attack vector is so heinous, my evil lizard brain is tipping his hats off to the guy who wrote that email. The writer tried to use the recent albeit tongue in cheek sentiment of the community (be it twitter, reddit or whatever) that reviewers are getting all the cards to gain empathy beforehand. Nothing works like riling up those who have nots against those who haves or some such.

Oh no. I don't meant that the phenomena should've been kept hush hush. But tbh it has been used by multiple people in mudslinging. But that's a topic for another time another forum.

Ah. Can't say I agree on that, but that's not quite the topic here.

 

[Vayra86]

The original concept had merit, then like anything else it gets hijacked.

Being 'hijacked' is a very effective way to talk an issue away like it never existed too. I wonder who benefits most from that

Information is like spy games these days, isn't it. Hard to discern relevant from irrelevant. And that is exactly what has already happened to us, and how deep down that rabbit hole we've gone already. FUD is the name of the game and its enough to get people to move in any direction it so seems.

 

[PerfectWave]

nvidia history is full of this kind bullshit. Not to mention their cheating in color compression and image quality.

 

[Sunny and 75]

I almost feel like elevated prices are here to stay

I fear this is indeed the case going forward. I honestly don't know what to say but I'm actually considering quitting PC gaming all together. I mean this business is getting nastier year after year. ~850 for a 3070, ~1200 for a 3080!!! 1200 is gonna be the MSRP of the yet to be released 3080 Ti for sanity's sake!

Is Ray Tracing really worth all these price hikes?! I'm literally stunned (I think shocked is the proper word here) and where is this gonna go next, huh?! 1200 for a 4070 and 1500 for a 5070 .......

 

[TheUn4seen]

People who want the world to have some semblance of fairness to it.

Wait, what? We're talking about a corporation. You know, guys who would kidnap your children and sell you back their organs if there was a long term profit to be had.

The problem with that is our mind doesn't work entirely like that. We think we can make autonomous choices, but we never truly do.

You seem to be overthinking the issue. We're talking about graphics cards, you know, toys. Not a dystopian future towards which the society happily marches. I want a graphics card, find a review or two which show what I care about. If a review is focused on aspects I don't care for, like ray tracing, I just discard it and find another.

 

[Vayra86]

You seem to be overthinking the issue. We're talking about graphics cards, you know, toys. Not a dystopian future towards which the society happily marches. I want a graphics card, find a review or two which shows what I care about. If a review is focused on aspects I don't care for, like ray tracing, I just discard it and find another.

I am indeed, maybe too much for your taste, but at the same time, you may wake up in a world where all reviews are ray traced to death tomorrow.

So far, one by one they seem to fall out of the sky. The list was going to grow if HWUB hadn't made noise. Although maybe the market can clean itself up proper from that, that is still somewhat plausible. But that requires an audience like yourself looking for it! And what do the youngsters learn today, what do they get fed every day? Yep... and do they have the correct historical framework to place that in perspective? I think we know the answer...