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How Nvidia blacklists sites like Hardware Secrets

RavenXXX2

RavenXXX2

RavenXXX2

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IT LOOKS LIKE the cracks are starting to spread at Nvidia PR, Hardware Secrets just joined the list of those honest enough to get banned by the company. The real question is how does Nvidia PR decide to blacklist a company? Since you asked, we dug up their internal memos on such things.

Hardware Secrets seems to have done the unthinkable and not bowed to Nvidia PR's requests to, lets not mince words, lie about their products, or at the very least, change things that they didn't like. Some may think just because Nvidia wanted to get stories before publication to editorially 'rightspeak' them, and Hardware Secrets refused, that they were banned. Not so, and that is reported from personal experience.

Nvidia has a long checklist of what you should and should not write about. When they send you a new card, they give you a reviewers guide that basically shows what you should test, what benchmarks you should use, and what OSes and drivers are recommended. If you stray too far from those recommendations, or worse yet, don't say that PhysX or CUDA is the greatest thing on earth, you are on dangerous ground.

If you have the gall to say that a card is not absolutely and unquestionably better in every way than the competition, goodbye. Of course they will spin it to any site that questions Nvidia about blacklisting as the person being "unworkable" or funded by ATI/Intel, but the truth is that if anyone is honest, it makes it very hard for them to spin their own curious version of the truth. That makes Dear Leader sad, so it must be torpedoed.

Back to the GTX470 and GTX480 launch. The list of who got cards was very select, and Hardware Secrets was not on it. If you are not big enough or don't meet the suck-up requirements above, you didn't get a card. Those who did, and those who somehow managed to get around the Nvidia AIB blockade, were actively graded by Nvidia.

What did Nvidia want to know about? Here is their list of questions, PR was asked to fill this out for everyone who they sent samples to. That will determine who gets immediately hit with the big green excrement cannon, and then is subsequently badmouthed in the background to the faithful fanbois. In Nvidia's own words......

Did they write that we have an architecture advantage? (Y/N)

GTX 480 Pricing (Good, Too High, Too Low)

GTX 470 Pricing (Good, Too High, Too Low)

Did they complain about power?

Did they complain about noise?

Did they complain about heat?

Design Garage

Supersonic Sled

Water/Hair Testing

Unigine 2.0

MS DX11 SDK

Stone Giant

Folding@Home

Did they test with Catalyst AI On? (Y/N)

Did they call out AMD on their cheat?

If yes, give link

It is pretty clear what Nvidia wants you to hear about, and how they explicitly want sites to attack ATI. The whole 'ATI cheat' thing was manufactured by Nvidia and pushed really hard to sites that Nvidia thought were gullible enough to write it up. They also wanted reviewers to push Unigine and Stone giant really hard, along with the F@H, all projects that Nvidia sponsors. I wonder why?
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http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/05/30/how-nvidia-blacklists-sites-hardware-secrets/

Funny how hawx and farcy 2 have become a couple of the most popular games to bench lately....the fact they run exceptionally well on nivdia hardware has got nothing to do with it of course lol.

Notice how hardocp have no review of the 465 up, Nvidia blacklisted them lol, all review sites are not equal and it's fairly obvious who the once with bias are.
 
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More like Nvidia sucked up when hardware secrets made a big deal over their treatment. ;)

This time we have NVIDIA blacklisting us. After we published a review – without any support from them, N.B. – they complained that we didn’t talk about CUDA or PhysX. I replied saying that we weren’t going to talk about these subjects because we thought they were not relevant to the average user, and we usually don’t re-write reviews.
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After this e-mail exchange they simply put us in their black list and thus we stopped being invited to their latest product presentations, we were dropped from the list of websites that get products before the release date and we stop getting any kind of support from them. Any e-mail I sent to NVIDIA asking for anything is completely ignored.
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Looks like it to me, and now hardocp have not been supplied a 465 to review...
 
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lol, the official review [h] screwed up, Furmark shows incorrect power usage, Furmark is incredibly inconsistant at loading xf'd/sli'd cards. You can see 480gtx in sli uses abotu 100W more, while in their next review 470gtx sli, in a game(not sure which but I think metro, ) the 470gtx showed a 200W increase with reference (or cherry picked maybe?) ones and the Galaxy custom ones showed a 260W increase in SLI.

But its more the conclusion, I don't think I'd be surprised that most people skip most of the nitty gritty, check their favourite games and check the conclusion, neither which showed the 480gtx in great light, a not very happy conclusion and not apples for apples comparisons(IIRC higher AA on the 480gtx giving same performance roughly as the 5870) which maybe showed the 480gtx not as far ahead in some games as an apples to apples comparison would.

Noise video's probably didn't help, even though some other stuff which was incorrect actually made the 480gtx look good, like 100W extra in sli in furmark, which looks great but is clearly wrong :p
 
Yeah furmark sux, regarding hardocp, I think Nvidia did not take to kindly to the ocp fermi review, they did not use the games/benchmarks Nvidia would have liked to have seen benched and as such it made the 470/480 look no better than the 5850/5870, they also pointed out in great detail how power hungry, hot and noisy they are, which IMO is a spot-on review.
 
funny i had a 5870 loved it had one since release, read all the pro's and con's good reviews bad reviews used my own judgment and bought a gtx 480.

i love it !

get over it some people like ati some like nvidia some both just turn your pc on load your fave game and have fun theres to many bs sories floating around and back stabbing going on.

IMO
 
/OT
I work in the games business and the thing that narks me off hearing about expensive video cards is that people spend hundreds of pounds on a card to pay the latest games...yet pirate the games since they don't want to part with the cash!
Ah, I'm off to bed!
 
Avatar if you look few if any people have much of a problem with nvidia hardware it is the way the company operates that grates on so many of us. you can dismiss it if you want as business but for some of us this kind of petty vindictive business is not something we want to support. That being said like them or not the clear fact is right now we need nvidia and can only hope some sanity and common sense appears in the company soon to get them back on track and concentrating on what really makes a good company.
 
While you are correct about the way Nvidia may operate, comments like this amuse me. Do you look in to Sony's buisness ethics when you buy a TV, Kenwood's when you buy a blender ?
It is unfortunate, but it is common practice for companys to behave this way, Nvidia just seem to get caught more, Because it will go on in some form or another with ATI somewhere down the line.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Funny how hawx and farcy 2 have become a couple of the most popular games to bench lately....the fact they run exceptionally well on nivdia hardware has got nothing to do with it of course lol.
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I agree with most of what you've said dude but I think HAWX and Farcry 2 being a pair of kick ass DX10 games has something to do with it too, I agree that they favour Nvidia but so did Doom 3/Quake 4/Quakewars, UT3, Flight Simulator X and many more.

HAWX and WoW (another game that favours Nvidia) are my two favourite games so when choosing upgrades I (like a few people I think) am actually interested to see what Nvidia can do with the deck in their favour

Not trying to bash your points just wanted to share another perspective :)
 
Stanners if any company acted the way nvidia does i wouoldn't buy their stuff simple as and i would apply it to any company in any area. It may well go on elsewhere but as you said yourself the others that may be doing it are not that stupid to get so easily caught doing it :). I think review sites are in a lousy position if they get on nvidias bad side they are no longer able to claim to be able to review all components so some of them have undoubtedly given into nvidia in order to be able to give the widest possible reviews in any given component sector. Blame the company that makes it so hard not the sites that have to adhere to the rules or be sidelined.
 
Cooper said:
Now we know why Guru3d has turned into such a waste of space kiss ass site.......
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+1 to this.
used to love that site, now its the biggest pile of poo ever, along with most of its forum members who are so up their own arses.
and hilbert or whatever his name is (site owner) is a complete ass, i remember about a year ago he did a mass ban because loads of people were taking the **** out of this guy that constantly posted oblivion pics pretty much daily , so a few went along and did the same but with pong etc....lol.
now i only go on that site to see if theres any good member bargins.
 
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Don't think there is a link, but they must have had a ding dong with someone at some point over something that can be seen as underhand. In a industry that is full of it, i can not believe ATI have not done something.

Do not get me wrong, i am not knocking anyone for having principles, i am all for it.

By the way what O/S, CPU are you people with high moralistic values all running your machines on because with such strong principles it can not be Microsoft or intel, Or dont tell me, thats different.
 
Use an intel cpu as you know well and fine from my sig and also vista because i play games please highlight to me the alternatives i could use as if there are viable one's out i will switch to them but of course there isn't. Don't say linux because games play a big part for me and we all know how well gaming does on linux. Where i had a choice in the gfx area i have bought an alternative see how it works :).
 
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