Nvidia Controlling AIBs and Review Drivers (HardOCP)

Community Tech Policy & News
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Courtesy of @alphazero1990 for the link

Continuing the discussion from The Lounge - 2018/08 August [Actual Shitposting Edition]:

REMINDER: This is one source on this topic, it does not mean it is definitive proof.

Picking some quotes out of the brief article…

now it is pushing back on its AIBs in order to control the AIB’s actions with reviewers.

Already starting off great, essentially state that Nvidia can control who a board partner can and cannot do business with in terms of review products. If it was Nvidia directly sending product from their own warehouse to a reviewer I would accept that since a company should be able to do business with whoever they want. Controlling where a product goes once it has been assembled or otherwise transformed by a different business makes me sad.

First and foremost, NVIDIA has demanded that its AIBs tell NVIDIA who will be reviewing the AIB’s custom RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards. We were forwarded emails from other reviewers, from the AIBs that were asking specifically, at NVIDIA’s direction, “Who will be performing the review content?” “What is that person’s phone number and email address?” […] From these lists of reviewers submitted to NVIDIA by the AIBs, NVIDIA has put together its own list of “approved reviewers,” and sent their approved list back to the AIBs in order to let them know who they are allowed to sample review cards to.

It’s like Santa Claus, except actually his ugly cousin.
♫♫ “They’re making a list, and checking it twice; gonna find out who’s been naughty or nice. Nvidia is coming to town.” ♫♫

NVIDIA is not allowing its AIBs to distribute drivers with their review cards.

Oh here we go

For a reviewer to have access, he must first sign NVIDIA’s multi-year NDA (which is fine if you are “just” a card reviewer)

lolno.png
If it’s an NDA like their recent one that caused a debacle, that’s not really a good thing. Essentially the NDA would only allow reviews IF they matched what Nvidia wanted. I’m sure we can all see where that could end up going.

Caveat emptor, except with reviews :thinking:

The article also seems to have a lot of opinion mixed in from how it comes across to me.

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2 things in my head.

  1. Hardocp had some issues with Nvidia before and they honestly don’t like each other much, so whatever Hardocp sais about Nvidia I don’t trust it 100%.
  2. I will be very curious to see EVGA doing AMD cards… Just one generation, alongside Palit, just so Nvidia can actually poop it’s pants…
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This happens every new release. NVidia is very aggressive. Folk who rely on free “samples” from NVidia to generate food and rent are often best off not saying anything negative no matter what they think.

This can probably be said about most manufacturers but NVidia is in our spot light right now.

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While Nvidia is very pushy with reviews and they become more paranoid with every leak (thinking leather jacket guy claiming “all leaks are wrong”), this is a new hight (or low).

Especially the making a list of personal data (GDPR notice anyone?) and then following up with AIBs so the review pool is as controlled as possible. For example GN would not be one to get sampled due to the very realistic view on stuff.

The “not distribute drivers” is kind of a good idea. It will make people get up to date drivers.

The problems are that Nvidias drivers are essentially bloatware packages. Last time I handled one (friend built new and had to have a 1080), it was email registration, click link, tick box for agreement acceptance, then get the whole “ngreedia experience” of all the software in 1008MB of download. Not fond of forced download…

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1gb download for drivers ? I think the Linux binary is 89mb.

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It was the whole package. Driver, controll panel, the other thing what does video capture and some other bit.
1008MB downloaded in a little over 30 minutes.
IIRC AMDs latest is at 390MB

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two days

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I think the naughty and nice list is my biggest sticking point (if true). If Nvidia or an AIB withholds cards that they themselves made from reviewers that be one thing, it’s their own potential business that they are losing, but Nvidia telling an AIB who they can an cannot send product to I don’t like as much.

The drivers are a double edged sword. On one it’s good because the reviewer would be using the latest drivers for the card, just like you said. On the other hand if the person, reviewer or whoever, did not sign Nvidia’s NDA they aren’t getting any drivers for the card. Accept the terms or have a gimped card.

Yeah, the GeForce Experience software is pretty bloated. The driver itself is a much more reasonable size if the user doesn’t need all the extra junk.

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I just recently got a 1080 and didn’t have to do any of this.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3192/~/can-geforce-drivers-be-downloaded-without-geforce-experience%3F

Just don’t get the auto driver installer, and select your GPU manually.

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HardOCP definitely seems to dislike Nvidia, so that’s why I stuck a reminder right under the article.

If more information comes out from other sources in support of what HardOCP says then we can remove the “rumors” tag.

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Nvidia is just digging them selves a nice little PR nightmare hole that only the blind and dumb ignore. at least we can now say if we do not see launch day review from anyone we can assume that no NDA was signed and that they were not given the product.( honestly helps with honest review )

and i still and will forever say that Nvidia is a shit company for consumer rights and stand by it.

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325MB for Adrenalin 18.8.2, but interestingly enough 18.7.1 was 488MB, so these can vary a lot, although I’m not sure why so much.

1GB is massively bizarre.

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Its worth saying that Kyle from hardocp has a history of not holding back. I remember years ago where they exposed ati tweaking drivers for certain games which effected benchmarks. It caused a bit of a stir at the time(from memory ati didn’t say they were doing this until they got caught). He has been dragged into court at least a few times for stating his opinion and has won. The guys behind phantom were the worst. I remember he somehow got one of their prototypes and smashed it on a quakecon stage as an FU to them.

I’m not saying he is correct here, just that he has a long history of being right on things like this.

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Was already not going to buy Nvidia, this just re(re(re))-confirms that decision.

If i was a reviewer i’d be telling nvidia to get fucked, then publishing “we told nvidia to get fucked because of their business practices” as the review. :+1:

edit:
actually serious on that. Nvidia are only getting away with this because the big review sites are rolling over and taking it because they need/have to be seen to be in the loop and review these things on day one.

If only there was the will amongst the industry to NOT do reviews prior to day 1 and hold off until hardware is on shelves and review it. Unfortunately it costs money, i get it, but in a utopian world this would happen and the review guys would make enough money to pay for it, even the smaller ones.

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Do it then, you just have to buy their product to review because no one will give you a product when you’re that edgy :thinking:

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I don’t understand why reviewers don’t make more of a point of doing so. It makes them legitimately independent and honestly if they aren’t making that $500 back in a review many times over… what’s the point at all?

GN has made this point before as well in fact, almost as a challenge: don’t sample us, we’ll buy it anyway and still tell our audience what we think.

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No one here does, we are all users

Even Wendell has to buy products some times unless stuff like this happens
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/the-lounge-2018-08-august-actual-shitposting-edition/130017/24591?u=kewldude007

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I don’t work as a product reviewer.

But, for my comprehensive review of the GTX20xx series, see the above post.

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You aren’t helping your case

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Yes, and I’m glad to see it! I am giving money after all (and yes I get that it takes time which equals money for creating content, but I’m perfectly happy seeing my money go towards products to cover, especially given that Wendell covers things not often covered elsewhere).