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Bofferbrauer2 said:

Captain_Yuri said:

So here is the full email that Hardware Unboxed as gotten:

"Hi Steve,

We've reached a critical juncture in the adoption of raytracing, and it has gained industry-wide support from top titles, developers, game engines, APIs, consoles, and GPUs. As you know, NVIDIA is all-in for raytracing. RT is important and core to the future of gaming, but it's also one part of our focused R&D efforts on revolutionizing video games and creating a better experience for gamers. This philosophy is also reflected in developing technologies such as DLSS, Reflex, and Broadcast that offer immense value to customers that are purchasing a GPU. They don't get free GPUs; they work hard for their money and they keep their GPUs for multiple years.

Despite all this progress, your GPU reviews and recommendations have continued to focus singularly on rasterization performance, and you have largely discounted all of the other technologies we offer gamers. It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do. Our Founder's Edition boards and other NVIDIA products are being allocated to media outlets that recognize the changing landscape of gaming and the features that are important to gamers and anyone buying a GPU today, be it for gaming, content creation, or studio and stream.

Hardware Unboxed should continue to work with our add-in card partners to secure GPUs to review. Of course, you will still have access to obtain pre-release drivers and press materials. That won't change. We are open to revisiting this in the future should your editorial direction change.

Bryan Del Rizzo
Director of Global PR, GeForce"

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/kbijzo/nvidia_might_actually_be_evil_wan_show_december/

Honestly I don't fully disagree with Nvidia's statement as Hardware Unboxed stance on Ray Tracing is pure nonsense. But I do think Nvidia's wording could be better as one could interpret it as they only want Ray Tracing and nothing else. Which to be fair, they obviously do but realistically, they are obviously fine with Mostly Raster and some Ray Tracing instead of All Raster and No Ray Tracing. A reviewer should present all options to the consumer, not just the ones they see fit as that is not what PC gaming is about.

Still, I am expecting Nvidia to back-peddle at some point from all the pressure they are facing right now.

Is it, though?

Raytracing is the future, nobody is denying that. But that's just it, it's the future.

Right now, the performance loss with RT stands in no relation to the increase in visuals it brings. It's like 4x/8xSSAA 20 years ago: It was a much clearer picture, but it absolutely tanked the performance and thus was seldom really used. For me, RT is exactly the same right now. Today's hardware is not yet powerful enough to make RT truly shine, but in a couple years, it will be, and then RT will truly be the game-changer it wants to be right now. To go back to the 8xSSAA, we got that for a while now; 4K is a larger frame than 1024x768 was with 8x Supersampling and actually pretty close to 1440p in size, while 4xSSAA is just slightly more than Full HD. It just took a while for the hardware to be at the level calculating such large frames making sense.

In other words, Rasterisation is still king. Plus, the games with an RT implementation are still few and far between, let alone those with anywhere near a good implementation.

It is because they aren't giving the consumer any choice and instead just pushing their own agenda. Ray Tracing is 110% doable right now. Not to it's full potential sure and there is a large performance hit sure but the visual advantages are very clear and DLSS lessens the performance hit significantly. There is an increasing number of games that can do Ray Tracing just fine with DLSS. Minecraft with Ray Tracing makes a world of difference and Cyberpunk with Ray Tracing on looks noticeably better. Sometimes night and day difference with things such as reflections. Even Hardware Unboxed says so.

No one is saying don't do Raster. No one is also saying do more Ray Tracing than Raster either. But to not include Ray Tracing at all or dismiss it is nonsense. At a minimum, reviewers should be doing what Gamers Nexus is doing where they have mostly raster performances as well as 3 games that show off different levels of ray tracing. Tomb Raider where they show off just shadows, Control that show off hybrid and Minecraft that show off path tracing. A reviewers job should be presenting choices to the consumer, especially in the PC space and especially on $600+ GPUs. Not dictate how consumers should play their games based on nonsense opinions.