Nvidia Apologizes

BuRzMaLy writes: "Read out the next round in Nvidia ethic story. The guy at Hypothermia does an interview with Nvidia where they in fact admit to all the charges against them, and they apologize to Hypothermia as well." This is a followup to a recent story where Nvidia was accused of trying to bully around various Web sites.

Comments

Talking so much without saying anything...

[Silverpike]

I can only shake my head after reading Hypothermia's summary. Did he have the same conversation he posted on his site? Are the Slashdot posters reading the same thing I read? This is what I saw in that conversation:

Here at NVIDIA we have over 60 people in marketing and unfortunately, someone who thought he was doing the correct thing was not. The contract that is on Hypothermia (sp?) is a document that we use for corporate to corporate promotions.
Translation: Someone here really f**cked up. (Note lack of apology).

Let's say if and OEM would like to do a banner for a show this agreement assures us that we have top billing with that promotion.
Then why is there all this text in the agreement about web sites? What does this have to do with a show?

Whatever you review is whatever you review...we've never asked anyone to pull a review for competitive reasons.
Yeah, but you guys sure have no problem pressuring reviewers into biasing for your card's strengths.

I feel really bad in your situation, because for the last 7 months you have been misled by a non-NVIDIA employee (intern, contractor, etc...). To Hypothermia, who had thought that this was an accurate PR rep, I apologize and for all of the grief/headache this has caused I apologize for that too.
What kind of company allows this to happen? Is NVIDIA such a loose operation as to allow non-NVIDIA employees to use their corporate email? Note that this does not satisfactorily explain Hypothermia's situation, because in the evolution of this whole ordeal Hypothermia clearly states that he spoke to at least two different people.

So this apology means nothing to me because none of Derek's explanations hold water. The apology I see only really applies to allowing someone to impersonate an NVIDIA employee.

All the opinions expressed above do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

It can and should be avoided

[konstant]

An insightful poster recently remarked that the only way to ensure true independence from the companies you review is to:

1) purchase your own, off-the-shelf copy of the product - to ensure you experience what customers experience
2) politely return all unsolicited "gifts"

Consumer Reports does it, and their reputation is unimpugnable. Regrettably, in the hardware and software business, prices for off-the-shelf products often exceed the budget of enthusiasts. We're talking $100's to $1000's of dollars in most cases, especially for hardware.

The solution I would suggest is this. Establish a "blind" company that federates reviewers. This company accepts contributions from its members, pools them, purchases a sample product at the lowest price it can find, then allows the reviewers to share the sample product for their reviews. When all reviews are complete, the product can be auctioned off or resold in some other fashion. The companies bacing the reviewed products will never have contact directly with the reviewers, and the monetary issue is alleviated.

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

Stil doesn't stop there

[11223]

Is nVidia actually sorry about not being fair, or about being caught doing this? I have a feeling this is a "hand caught in the cookie jar" incident, and that they're only sorry for being caught.

nVidia was one of the worst offendors in telling review sites to downplay 16-bit color benchmarks on games... even on ones where the textures were in 16-bit color (so no benifit to 32 bit!) for the sole benifit of making 3dfx's faster card look worse. (ATI was particuarly bad, as well).

nVidia also "wants" reviewers to focus on speed instead of quality now - and encourages them to benchmark FSAA, because nVidia's approach is faster (and less good-looking) than 3dfx's.

nVidia has gotten used to playing a little bit dirty - that's how they managed to overthrow 3dfx. But now is the time that they need to step back and let fair reviews be fair reviews. If your card is fairly the best in the market, then you don't need to play Microsoft.

Re:Stil doesn't stop there

[tc]

nVidia was one of the worst offendors in telling review sites to downplay 16-bit color benchmarks on games... even on ones where the textures were in 16-bit color (so no benifit to 32 bit!) for the sole benifit of making 3dfx's faster card look worse. (ATI was particuarly bad, as well).

Actually, even when you have 16-bit source textures, the end result can look a lot better when rendered to a 32-bit framebuffer. The reason is that you don't just do a plain copy of the texture, but you typically modulate it with an interpolated lighting value and possibly apply multipass effects as well. With a 16-bit framebuffer its quite easy to start to see banding and/or dithering artefacts that wouldn't be there with a 32-bit framebuffer, regardless of the bitdepth of the source artwork.

Hrm

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't realized that Nvidia was responsible for hypothermia. Wow, they're more powerful than I previously thought.

That's just great

[Moridineas]

Seriously, how nice that Derek Perez apologized. Anyone who seriously follows 3d stuff knows that Derek Perez is one of the loudest, abrasive, and derogatory. He'll be back to his usual antics within no time. He represents Nvidia's attitude, and I'm surprised that so many people at slashdot just let slide.

You don't see 3dfx pulling any crap like this. You don't see Nvidia opening their specs or giving free open source technology like FXT1 away. That's why I support 3dfx.

I honestly believe, and actions speak louder than words (well..maybe not in Derek Perez's case!), that 3dfx is a good corporation. They really care about the community.

Scott