This week, the company reportedly attempted to delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, which would normally be its bestselling GPU of the generation. Nvidia has repeatedly and publicly said the budget 60-series cards are its most popular, and this year it reportedly tried to ensure it by withholding access and pressuring reviewers to paint them in the best light possible.
Here are the tactics that Nvidia reportedly just used to throw us off the 5060’s true scent, as individually described by GamersNexus, VideoCardz, Hardware Unboxed, GameStar.de, Digital Foundry, and more:
- Nvidia decided to launch its RTX 5060 on May 19th, when most reviewers would be at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, rather than at their test beds at home.
- Even if reviewers already had a GPU in hand before then, Nvidia cut off most reviewers’ ability to test the RTX 5060 before May 19th by refusing to provide drivers until the card went on sale. (Gaming GPUs don’t really work without them.)
- And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.
- In some cases, Nvidia threatened to withhold future access unless reviewers published apples-to-oranges benchmark charts showing how the RTX 5060’s “fake frames” MFG tech can produce more frames than earlier GPUs without it.
Please name and shame reviewers who accepted these conditions.
against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.
IIRC they also insisted multi-frame generation be used, which the 3060 and 2060 Super don’t support. That’s why the 4060 isn’t allowed, it does support MFG and it’d sink the plan to inflate 5060 benchmark results with fake frames.
The specific games using specific settings at 1080p bit is because in 2025 they have to carefully choose scenarios that won’t overflow the tiny VRAM of the cards and tank performance to below the level of the 3060 12GB.
Shout out to Hardware Unboxed for getting a 5060 review done at Computex with some amazing B-roll
Disgusting.
This would be sad and highly unethical if coming from some small, relatively new company, struggling to keep up. But since it’s coming from a large, monopolistic and 30yo old corporation it becomes way worse.
I’m glad I stopped buying their cards. My last one is an AMD, and I’m going Chinese for the next one (a decade or so from now).
Love my 9070. Nvidia can get bent their prices are fucking nuts. Absolutely do not understand why anyone would pay $1000+ for their cards
To some extent it comes down to nvidia’s software. Like, some people like their upscaling, and I’ve heard from streamers that they need them for NVENC.
On the other hand, their Linux drivers are an pain and they’ve been less than cooperative on that front in the past.
and they’ve been less than cooperative on that front in the past.
They’ve been getting a lot better after hiring that one guy to work on their open source drivers. I’m curious how good they’re going to be in a year or so.
I just can’t justify the cost for what I’d get. You have to spend basically what I spent on my entire computer just to get a half decent Nvidia.
Oh yah, for sure 90% of people shouldn’t be wasting the money on Nvidia cards at this point. There are very few situations where they make sense.
Intel and AMD both have way better price to performance cards.
My 9070 with a 9800x3d cost me $1150 all in, it’s just a no brainer. I’m pulling 70-80fps at 3440x1440p on all max settings with Expedition 33. I really can’t imagine the improvements ever being worth it lol
In my honest opinion: Everyone that’s not “woken up” by now, and already years earlier, is most likely metaphorically dead.
“Reviewers” need to understand that, unless they paid their own money, from a bog-standard store, on or after release day, they are not reviewers, they are hired spokespeople.
You realize basically every reviewer for anything is receiving the stuff they are reviewing for free, right? Movies, video games, doesn’t matter.
Just because someone gives it to you for free doesn’t mean you owe them something. The whole point is that Nvidia is trying to strong arm reviewers into a dishonest review. I imagine most of them would’ve given a perfectly honest review had they just been given the card and been allowed to do their thing. If that weren’t the case then Nvidia wouldn’t be engaging in said strong arm-ing.
In the case of gamers nexus, who paid for their own, they were still pressured by nvidia
Often times reviewers will get cards before release day without going through the manufacturer, as cards will ship to wear-houses and stores in preparation for launch day, and reviewers can get access to buy the cards early through contacts at those places.
One of the things nvidia did this time was they blocked reviewer’s access to drivers until release day, despite them having the cards through third parties.
People accused MKBHD for “killing” products with his reviews. Both cannot be true
Yup. Customers gotta note and avoid the untrustworthy spokes people, otherwise there is no downside for the spokesperson.
