nVidia blocks Hardware Unboxed due to rasterization focus. Update: nVidia retracts.

[BFG10K]

Full letter

Spoiler

LTT coverage

My thoughts

I think this is wrong and to be completely fair, I called out this behavior when AMD played similar shenanigans with TPU and Tech Report.

As for the "gamers" comment above, as of right now I don't give a crap about ray tracing, and even less of a crap about DLSS. I own a 2060 Super and never use any of those features by choice, for various reasons. Perhaps in 3-5 years with 2-3 new generations of cards, my opinion might change.

Rasterization is by far the most important feature for me, and I'm not a minority by any stretch of the imagination:

Spoiler

Update: nVidia now retracted

https://twitter.com/x/status/1337885741389471745

I'm not surprised they retracted but I expected it to take longer along with a "it was an internal draft that was never supposed to be released", or similar.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Then this is not a forum, it's a reacted of elitists who think they can control every new user, redacted, i am done here.

Excellent. We don't need more children here.

 

[beginner99]

If you want to be taken seriously with your brand new account, do your best to not look like one of them.

Given his thread about "need new gpu (NV only") that ship has already sailed (no real indication why only NV). This is just as bad as the mail causing this thread. so obvious and so poorly executed.

 

[swilli89]

If they have evidence then fair enough, but to me this place seems like an elitist redacted session in group form.

A bit of narcissism and thinking they can push others around, that's the view point i get.

Then why the hell are you even here if not to push some agenda? You joined this forum 24 hours ago and you're up and down defending one of the most indefensible things most of us has ever seen from any of the Big 3 chi companies.

You called out a poster for having registered THIS YEAR yet you registered a day ago! You're using terms like narcissism and posting screen grabs from reddit like you can actually prove something that way.

Is this some keyboard warriors listless attempt at gaslighting? Or are you the nvidia PR guy trying to do damage control?

You're putting out really bad vibes and I'm surprised you haven't been banned yet.

To other posters, I suggest people stop responding/replying to his absurd posts.

 

[Heartbreaker]

(Waits for quibbling about what counts as an employee or contractor)

People routinely accuse people of being paid shills. I have seen that endlessly on multiple forums. What I have never seen in decades online, is verified proof of that in any forum I have been on, and I spend a lot of time on tech forums.

(Waits for anything approaching actual evidence...)

 

[Mopetar]

Really, we have somehow verified, multiple times that paid NVidia employees/contractors were posting here?

I'd be curious to see that evidence.

There have been a few cases (many of that quite old) where this was the case. Rollo was probably the most infamous that I can remember, but that was way back when I was just lurking here. In his case he did have a business relationship with Nvidia and I believe that they specifically asked the forum staff to unban him at one point.

It wasn't completely unusual for companies to have PR people that would post on these forums, but a lot of them were more open regarding their employment with a company or that they were a part of the marketing team. This was back when forums generally had a much bigger reach and with the rise of popularity of YouTube a lot more of the effort towards any kind of astroturfing or native advertising has gone into those platforms.

Go read up about the old AEG / Nvidia fiasco which caused quite a stir on many different forums back in the day. The AT forums weren't the only place where it was happening either.

 

[WelshBloke]

People routinely accuse people of being paid shills. I have seen that endlessly on multiple forums. What I have never seen in decades online, is verified proof of that in any forum I have been on, and I spend a lot of time on tech forums.

(Waits for anything approaching actual evidence...)

You missed the whole Rollo thing?
And the main issue that caused a fuss there was he was an arse not that he was a shill. If he'd been more reasonable about stuff he'd still be posting now.

 

[Heartbreaker]

It wasn't completely unusual for companies to have PR people that would post on these forums, but a lot of them were more open regarding their employment with a company or that they were a part of the marketing team.

Not what I think we were talking about. I don't see any issue with those open about their company affiliation. Company reps tend to welcomed when they provide an additional avenue of communication with companies, like Reddit AMA, or support reps that answer questions on forums. I remember these happening.

What we seems to be discussion is the idea that secret paid shills are posting Pro company messages, and this has been then outed, multiple times. I have never seen anything like this.

 

[Mopetar]

What we seems to be discussion is the idea that secret paid shills are posting Pro company messages, and this has been then outed, multiple times. I have never seen anything like this.

That's basically what the whole Rollo thing was about. He was receiving free hardware from Nvidia as part of what was being called a focus group and eventually admitted to it himself. Were he or any of the others doing this on some kind of corporate payroll and getting 401k contributions or anything like that? Of course not, but it isn't as though members of some kind of organized crime group are on the books as paid employees either.

If you're looking for beyond shadow of a doubt levels as the burden of proof standards, I don't think there's ever going to be anything that will be able to satisfy your requirements. No one at Nvidia or any of the other companies that have done it would ever just come out admitting to it and have documented records of all of it being approved by some kind of upper level management.

It's also something that was far more pervasive in the past and I doubt any company would invest very much money in doing it now when there are probably enough people who are enough of a brand loyalist to carry water for a company without receiving any kind of compensation. I do remember a few years ago some big scandal in the YouTube community about dishonest relationships with CS gambling sites where that information wasn't being disclosed to viewers.

This stuff is happening all of the time and predates the internet. Some of the older posters here probably remember the payola scandals from when record companies were paying off DJs to play certain records in an effort to boost sales or fabricate the production of a hit song / album. I suspect if you go back far enough Grog paid Ogg to tell other cavemen that "Grog has best rocks!"

 

[KompuKare]

AMD vs Intel 2005 (Settled in favor of AMD for 1.25 Billion in 2009, and EU fined them another 1.45 Billion).

That was 10+ years ago, and this is still brought up all the time.

I can think of two reasons it is still brought up all the time
1.) When people ask and redicule AMD for not being able to compete with Intel (until recently), it is helpful to remind them about how Intel got into its present dominant position, and that tech had little to do with it.
2.) To point out that if a company with deep enough pockets does something illegal (although Intel was smart enough to settle out of court leaving no legal precedent), by the time a settlement is made the damage is long gone. We will never know what difference it would have made if Intel hadn't done what they did back in 2002-2005 or so, but by 2009 the damage was long done, and Intel continues to drag out the process until this day (although ironically there's a theory that Intel now might be better served lossing as the Intel vs Qualcomm case - where the roles were eseentially reversed - would be harder for Intel to in EU if the Commision lost the case).
Point being that 18 years for any wrong-doing to be punished doesn't exactly discourage a dominent player from engaging in anything for which the might subsequently be found to have been in the wrong.

 

[Heartbreaker]

That's basically what the whole Rollo thing was about. He was receiving free hardware from Nvidia as part of what was being called a focus group and eventually admitted to it himself.

So we have gone from:
"Multiple times in the past we have had people from or hired by Nvidia make accounts here to pretend to be normal users and post FUD."

To one guy who received some NVidia promo gear.

I really think most of these kinds of posts are just overzealous fans. I have seen the over zealous fan supporting everything from every company. Just today I was looking at Audio Gear and notices a video titled: "Why Are Audiophiles & Home Theater Enthusiasts so Tribal?" I didn't click because I know the answer. Humans are tribal.

In reality these overzealous fans almost never do a brand any good, and usually alienate people, and not too rarely, to the point, where they get banned.

 

[Mopetar]

So we have gone from:
"Multiple times in the past we have had people from or hired by Nvidia make accounts here to pretend to be normal users and post FUD."

To one guy who received some NVidia promo gear.

I really think most of these kinds of posts are just overzealous fans. I have seen the over zealous fan supporting everything from every company. Just today I was looking at Audio Gear and notices a video titled: "Why Are Audiophiles & Home Theater Enthusiasts so Tribal?" I didn't click because I know the answer. Humans are tribal.

In reality these overzealous fans almost never do a brand any good, and usually alienate people, and not too rarely, to the point, where they get banned.

I don't think it's anything that's widespread, particularly today, and I didn't have an account here back when a lot of the Rollo stuff went down. Rollo was just the most infamous poster here that I recall, but there was a forum mod that stepped down here as well do to an association with some other similar company program, so it wasn't as though it was just one poster in the whole of the internet or even this website. Some of the other posters that have been around for a lot longer probably remember it all in more detail than I do and if you wanted you could probably go dig through the old posts about it here yourself.

But like I said, you're never going to find someone who's job position included a description to "impersonate regular users and spread FUD" or anything like that because companies won't directly hire anyone to do that. At best they work with a marketing firm that seemed to have done some unscrupulous things that don't represent company values and as a result the company is no longer doing business with them.

If that's the burden of proof you require, then what you ask is simply impossible to satisfy. Is the escort who accepts an expensive gift that was purchased with cash from a store where it can easily be returned engaging in prostitution or not? No money exchanged hands and there's plenty of plausible deniability where nothing can be proven, and no one will admit to any wrongdoing or illegal acts, but I think it's fairly obvious that everyone understands the relationship that exists in this example.

It has certainly happened here and at other forums, but I think you're just arguing over the definition of words. I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved. Perhaps they would have done what they did for free, but they seemed to be happy to receive compensation for it. Would everyone in those relationships have acted exactly as they did by providing free cards or making favorable posts without the actions of the other side?

 

[Panino Manino]

I'm with the people that believes that now the demon is out of the box and there's not way to put him back.
The target of something like this is psychological.
The harm is done, we'll feel it's effects no matter what Nvidia does to apologizes and regains "trust".

 

[Heartbreaker]

I don't think it's anything that's widespread, particularly today, and I didn't have an account here back when a lot of the Rollo stuff went down. Rollo was just the most infamous poster here that I recall, but there was a forum mod that stepped down here as well do to an association with some other similar company program, so it wasn't as though it was just one poster in the whole of the internet or even this website. Some of the other posters that have been around for a lot longer probably remember it all in more detail than I do and if you wanted you could probably go dig through the old posts about it here yourself.

But like I said, you're never going to find someone who's job position included a description to "impersonate regular users and spread FUD" or anything like that because companies won't directly hire anyone to do that. At best they work with a marketing firm that seemed to have done some unscrupulous things that don't represent company values and as a result the company is no longer doing business with them.

If that's the burden of proof you require, then what you ask is simply impossible to satisfy. Is the escort who accepts an expensive gift that was purchased with cash from a store where it can easily be returned engaging in prostitution or not? No money exchanged hands and there's plenty of plausible deniability where nothing can be proven, and no one will admit to any wrongdoing or illegal acts, but I think it's fairly obvious that everyone understands the relationship that exists in this example.

It has certainly happened here and at other forums, but I think you're just arguing over the definition of words. I can't speak to the motivation of the people involved. Perhaps they would have done what they did for free, but they seemed to be happy to receive compensation for it. Would everyone in those relationships have acted exactly as they did by providing free cards or making favorable posts without the actions of the other side?

I'm not just arguing over the definition of words. The claim was NVidia hired multiple people to make accounts HERE, and post FUD. That is a rather specific claim.

So far there is ZERO evidence of that.

I think it a LOT more likely that in the VAST majority of cases, it's just, as in the latest instance, an overzealous fan.

People these days see conspiracies everywhere, when there are more simple and likely explanations.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I'm not just arguing over the definition of words. The claim was NVidia hired multiple people to make accounts HERE, and post FUD. That is a rather specific claim.

So far there is ZERO evidence of that.

I think it a LOT more likely that in the VAST majority of cases, it's just, as in the latest instance, an overzealous fan.

People these days see conspiracies everywhere, when there are more simple and likely explanations.

You sound like a holocaust denier.

Edit: Sorry, that came across as an attack and I didn't mean it to be.

You clearly missed the period where we had massive issues here. I don't have hours to sift through decade+ old forums posts, especially given how slow the forum search/loading gets when you go back that far.

I was not trying to definitively state this occured, but rather to point out the forum history and explain why our new user was being treated with skepticism.

Cue skinner "It's not me who is wrong, it's everyone else" meme.

 

[sandorski]

I'm not just arguing over the definition of words. The claim was NVidia hired multiple people to make accounts HERE, and post FUD. That is a rather specific claim.

So far there is ZERO evidence of that.

I think it a LOT more likely that in the VAST majority of cases, it's just, as in the latest instance, an overzealous fan.

People these days see conspiracies everywhere, when there are more simple and likely explanations.

I was here, it happened. People knew something was happening quite some time before it was exposed. As I recall, some other website did a story on Nvidia directly or on the Marketing technique being used by multiple companies. Those here who were part of the program either got banned or had to include a line in their signature disclosing their affiliation with the program. It was a tumultuous time, more so than now anyway, on the Video forums here.

 

[Kuiva maa]

I recall nvidia focus people in various forums clearly stating their affiliation in their signatures. I also know posters doing this without declaring it. A characteristic example was in oc.net during the G-sync/freesync era. A specific user that had joined few months earlier, akin to a sleeper cell, got activated the moment Freesync was announced and was bombing all relative threads with FUD, that freesync was fake,the fan demo being a video etc. So nvidia was heavy handed with it even when they tried to be stealthy. As for AMD, on this forum, back when BD was brand new and I was just crawling. There were cases of new users popping in, asking for a cpu tailored for their needs that happed to be video editing and high resolution gaming, baiting for a BD answer. Can't think of anything else coming from team red more recently.

 

[DJinPrime]

I hope everyone learn that sending out angry email is usually not the smart thing to do. Before hitting send, walk away think about it and see if there's a better way to handle this. Giving Steve a personal call and talk about the situation would probably have avoided this whole thing. Same could be said about HWUB, why not call up the PR idiot and explain to him how dumb that email was? Posting that email was also not very professional too. All professional relationship will eventually end (let's not kid ourselves if you don't think these reviewers and the manufactures are not in a professional relationship), when that happens I don't think it's right for either party to air that in public especially if it can be embarrassing for one of the party. HWUB might have won this battle, but if I was a business partner of theirs I wouldn't like how that was handled too. The years of relationships between the parties should have been enough for both sides to pick up a phone and have a person to person talk.

 

[Hitman928]

I recall nvidia focus people in various forums clearly stating their affiliation in their signatures. I also know posters doing this without declaring it. A characteristic example was in oc.net during the G-sync/freesync era. A specific user that had joined few months earlier, akin to a sleeper cell, got activated the moment Freesync was announced and was bombing all relative threads with FUD, that freesync was fake,the fan demo being a video etc. So nvidia was heavy handed with it even when they tried to be stealthy. As for AMD, on this forum, back when BD was brand new and I was just crawling. There were cases of new users popping in, asking for a cpu tailored for their needs that happed to be video editing and high resolution gaming, baiting for a BD answer. Can't think of anything else coming from team red more recently.

That same poster denying Freesync was a poster here too. I believe went by the name Maggie or something. Basically showed up just to trash Freesync for a while, saying it would never work and never come to market, etc. etc. Once the first actual monitors were announced with support the poster disappeared.

I'm not going to bother going back several years to a decade to find the posts, but yes, there were Nvidia sponsored posters here. They were essentially the equivalent of today's sponsored 'influencers' who don't disclose they are sponsored. There was a huge internet uproar once it got exposed and the forums here put in a policy that you had to disclose if you were a sponsored poster in your sig or you would be banned. Today, companies get more for their money by sponsoring e-gamers, streamers, youtubers, etc. so it's not nearly as much an issue in forums.

 

[Iron Woode]

I was here, it happened. People knew something was happening quite some time before it was exposed. As I recall, some other website did a story on Nvidia directly or on the Marketing technique being used by multiple companies. Those here who were part of the program either got banned or had to include a line in their signature disclosing their affiliation with the program. It was a tumultuous time, more so than now anyway, on the Video forums here.

I remember it as well. Not just video cards either.

 

[darkswordsman17]

People routinely accuse people of being paid shills. I have seen that endlessly on multiple forums. What I have never seen in decades online, is verified proof of that in any forum I have been on, and I spend a lot of time on tech forums.

(Waits for anything approaching actual evidence...)

Er, there was literally a mod here that was an Nvidia Focus Group member.

When some new driver came out and people reported their 590s literally melting parts off and then dying (with videos of it happening) he declared that the driver wasn't killing cards but that people with 590s should use this driver that Nvidia just pushed out to make sure their cards didn't do the same thing. I want to say he might have even threatened bans if people kept saying the driver was killing the cards. It was one of the most g****** ridiculous things I've ever seen on a forum.

And then the mods wondered why this subforum was and continued to be a cesspit. They acted completely surprised that people were angry when they let Rollo come back (wherein he started doing the exact same stuff that was the problem before, but I guess somehow him openly admitting he was being paid/given stuff to do that made it ok?) and then let one of them be a mod.

I can't even remember now, were they aware the mod was a member (meaning, they knew full well that stuff was happening before it was disclosed)? I remember they tried to be "transparent" by having some higher up go "we're ok with that, you should be too and if you have a problem with it STFU and you'll be banned for calling it out" and the mod would basically goad people to by spouting FUD wherein they of course called it out and then ban. They acted like they couldn't figure out why people were mad or why the video card forum was getting worse despite their "transparency" like they were oblivious. Then after it became especially problematic, they basically prevented that mod from moderating in the video forum like that was going to fix the issue (it of course did not). Then at one point after repeated ridiculous behavior we had another mod defending the site using a mindblowingly f'ed up analogy of Nvidia on this forum and the US government with regards to their internment of Japanese citizens during WW2. I think he also said "why are people mad about the focus group mod, how is that any different from the main site where the reviewers are given hardware", just perpetual cluelessness on a level that I couldn't even fathom.

There were at least 3 Focus Group Members here. The mod, Rollo, and I know there as at least one other that made a new account after the site gave the ok as long as they put they were Focus Group Member in their signature. I believe the third one initially claimed they were a totally new member but then admitted they had been posting here before under a different username (but didn't divulge what it was). I think there were more, although since I believe Rollo used mult accounts its hard to ascertain how many unique ones there actually were. I believe what they were doing is one member would take point at a forum, and would setup multiple accounts and then they'd share the logins with other FGM who would occasionally pop in to post (to try and divert and make it seem like unique people) when necessary.

I'm also pretty certain there's been other ones since. I've seen at least a couple of very pro-Nvidia people on here posting using the exact same usernames on other sites, where they openly gloated about stirring up s*** here (while they'd play stupid that they were doing any such thing here), and also trashed the mods here and claimed the site was actually super biased towards AMD because they'd get banned for their antics from time to time. On here, they also tried to claim they weren't biased towards any certain brand (at least one of them repeatedly claimed they couldn't be, they own and AMD/ATi card! Which I believe was something Rollo did before he was found out as well and was a common trolling tactic of them; it reminds me a lot of the fake "long time Democrats/liberals" that #walked away and became Republicans despite shallow digs into their social media showing how obviously FOS they were), but at the other places they dropped that pretense and they were even more ridiculous than they were on here (which is saying something as they were bonkers on here even).

 

[Glo.]

NVM.

 

[Mopetar]

I'm not just arguing over the definition of words. The claim was NVidia hired multiple people to make accounts HERE, and post FUD. That is a rather specific claim.

So far there is ZERO evidence of that.

I think it a LOT more likely that in the VAST majority of cases, it's just, as in the latest instance, an overzealous fan.

People these days see conspiracies everywhere, when there are more simple and likely explanations.

All of this happened well over a decade ago, so exact details are hazy at best for me and probably lost to time in some cases, but from what I've said, yes the argument comes down to definition of words. Nvidia was giving something of value to people who were engaged in behavior on these or other that could be described as shilling or spreading FUD about competitor products. Some of the people involved admitted that they were receiving things of monetary value from Nvidia. In the particular case of the poster here (Rollo) the forum moderators unbanned him after Nvidia requested it, which I think counts of an acknowledgement of their relationship on their end.

Does the fact that this happened at some point in history mean that any person who supports or likes a company is some kind of paid shill? Of course not, that's equally ridiculous and we both agree on that. However, just because most people fall into that camp doesn't mean that it never once happened in the history of the internet. If someone wants to accuse some specifically that's their own business and the onus is on them to provide evidence and in today's world it probably is just some brand zealot. There are plenty of people who will act like billboards for zero pay and there just isn't enough audience on most forums to make it worth a company paying someone, particularly when there are YouTube influences that will gladly take money and push marketing on a much larger audience.

Just like my previous example of the nice lady who has a romantic evening with a man who graciously gives her an expensive gift (along with the receipt) that was purchased in cash, we can argue about whether anyone was hired for anything. I think it's pretty obvious what was happening in much the same way it's pretty obvious that a politician was bought off when a company gives a cushy no-work position to that politicians spouse after some legislation that just happens to benefit the company goes through. The man and the company aren't quite so gracious with anyone else and the whore and politician (am I being redundant?) don't seem to give just anyone the same treatment.

You can put two and two together or argue over words. If you you're willing to admit what the situation looks like but just don't think that's a good enough standard of proof, that's perfectly fine. In that case I'm afraid that I certainly can't satisfy your standards and I doubt that anyone else will be capable of doing so either. You'd practically need writing confessions from both parties that neither would be foolish enough to write and the other would deny if only one side claimed it. Otherwise it is just a pointless argument over definitions and I've seen enough videos of sovereign citizens trying to convince a cop or a judge they they weren't driving, they were "traveling" to know the futility in that.

If this is a discussion you really want to have I think you need to establish up front what you would consider acceptable proof of this happening or it's just going to be pages and pages of back and forth arguing that never has a shot of going anywhere.

 

[MrTeal]

Keysplayer?

 

[DaaQ]

They forgot to include the 3060Ti in the cost-per-frame graphs for their most recent GPU review(6900XT) even though the 5700 and 5700XT were included. They have the widest gap (over 20%) between the RX 5700XT and RTX 2060 Super in their testing while the other reviews have the gap at around 10%. They use this "fact" to dismiss the RTX 2060 Super in the $400-category even though it used to be cheaper than the 5700XT. They also forgot to include the i5-10400/F in the cost-per-frame graphs in their 5600X review, even though the former costs half that of the latter.

They are not overtly pro-AMD by any stretch, just by omission of crucial information they present themselves as such.

So I will end up not reading the whole thread first to comment on this ridiculous comment.

3060Ti launched days before 690XT, yes or no?
But you are complaining that a what 400 dollar card released days before a 1000 dollar card did not include some crucial information you deem SHOULD have been included, because of days between launches?
Wouldn't the 3060Ti get it's own review just as the 6900XT got it's own?

You really are conflating things here. why? only you know. Apples and Oranges. Several tiers of performance difference, launched DAYS apart.

Really, not a good look.

Thanks for making me go back to finish thread, to see if anyone else noticed this ridiculous comparison.

 

[nurturedhate]

Three pages of blaming the victim. Just wow...

Funny you should say that. They did a poll asking what frame rates are acceptable in an open-world game - the context was CP2077 - and this was the result:

View attachment 35586

Let's see, "acceptable" vs "minimum acceptable"

There were at least 3 Focus Group Members here. The mod, Rollo, and I know there as at least one other that made a new account after the site gave the ok as long as they put they were Focus Group Member in their signature. I believe the third one initially claimed they were a totally new member but then admitted they had been posting here before under a different username (but didn't divulge what it was). I think there were more, although since I believe Rollo used mult accounts its hard to ascertain how many unique ones there actually were. I believe what they were doing is one member would take point at a forum, and would setup multiple accounts and then they'd share the logins with other FGM who would occasionally pop in to post (to try and divert and make it seem like unique people) when necessary.

The third guys posts were nearly the same thing every time."I was a loyal red soldier for SO MANY YEARS and now the gf and I use..." Over and over and over and over.

This hasn't been a tech forum in a long time. It is a fantastic video card soap opera forum though. It satisfies when viewed as that.