AMD and NVIDIA control which reviewers get samples from AIBs

Posted on Wednesday, August 29 2018 @ 21:26 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
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HardOCP pulls attention to the fact that NVIDIA is no longer allowing its add-in board partners to freely distribute samples to reviewers. In the past, AIBs were free to distribute review samples to whoever, but now they're required to submit lists of reviewers to NVIDIA. The latter than compares this list against its own list of "approved reviewers".

Furthermore, sites wishing to get access to GeForce RTX samples need to sign NVIDIA's new multi-year NDA, which reportedly provides strong control over work product of reporters. HardOCP also notes that pre-launch drivers can only be obtained via NVIDIA, as AIBs are not allowed to distribute drivers with their review cards. This is one of the reasons why we've seen very little GeForce RTX performance leaks, even if you have the card, you can't do anything with it without the driver.
This is where it gets a bit more interesting, and likely should give you concern with any leaked benchmarks you see on the web. NVIDIA is not allowing its AIBs to distribute drivers with their review cards. 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), then he will log into a protected site which is most likely a secured version of GeForce Experience in order to obtain the driver, and download from there into a specific machine with the new RTX card being present. If you are seeing any benchmarks between now and the ~20th (we think the 2080 launch and 2080 Ti launch will be split on different days possibly), you are likely not seeing cards benchmarked with its launch driver. So keep that in the back of your mind as you see performance leaks come forward.
However, the sampling behavior is not unique to NVIDIA and it's curious why HardOCP is specifically focusing on NVIDIA. DSO Gaming picked up comments from both Guru3D and VideoCardz that AMD does the same thing. AMD forces AIBs to send cards to its HQ, so only AMD can seed pre-launch samples.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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