Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today's video is one I wish I didn't have to make but at this point we're pretty well fed up with what's going on the heaps of you have been asking why we don't have a Geforce r-tx 2060 review and since it's not coming today tomorrow or even in a few days time I thought I'd explain why that is and touch on a few other things as well so firstly let's get the art X 2060 review out of the way or the lack of review and we were all well aware the RT X 2060 was going to be announced at CES weeks out it was really no secret to the public and we were told was more than a month in advance by quite a few industry contacts so that being the case it was well and truly on our radar but week and a half before CES I reached out to my own video contact and asked when samples would be available I actually did this because prior to emailing them I was told by quite a few of the us-based reviewers that they already had access to the review guide that a sample in hand and they even had the drivers and had begun testing so I was a little puzzled as to why we heard absolutely nothing typically Nvidia and AMD Intel they all seem to ship samples to all the diverse media outlets around the world pretty much at the same time anyway my contact replied later that day with well with basically nothing we were told that headquarters so Nvidia HQ had a strict guideline this time and my contact was not able to comment on unannounced products concluding that you're always on the top of our list and I will fill you in as soon as I can so what can I say to that I was basically telling them that I knew other reviewers had r-tx 20 60 samples from Nvidia they had them in hand that I knew that the review guide was out in the wild and that I knew the drivers were available of course none of these things had been enabled on my press account and I knew good and well that they were withholding our sample then after four days of nothing from Nvidia I received another email asking me to sign an NDA so they could rush out sample so that seemed like things were moving in the right direction the NDA didn't mention a release date so at that point I had no idea when the reviews could go alive it was just one of those sort of blanket NDA's it was to cover all products and announcements for 2019 a similar to that one not that long ago that created a heap of fuss anyway I run over the entire thing there was nothing unusual there these things literally have zero impact and how we review products anyway so I just played ball and signed it that same day a few board partners reached out to us with their own NDA's for upcoming r-tx 2016 models so I signed away and these NDA stand at the embargo I would be lifted on the 14th of January so great I finally knew and reviews were going live also I thought three days later the day in video was set to host their CES keynote I received a da child tracking number from Nvidia for my art x26 TFE sample it had been sent from overseas using the standard DHL service which meant it wasn't expected to be delivered for seven days which would land it on my doorstep on the 15th a day after the AIB reviews go live that's certainly annoying but I thought to myself well at least I have some AIB models to review for you guys so there's that on the 7th I watched the keynote covered it and provided a video on the channel detailing the r-tx 2060 announcement I'm sure many of you have seen that after that I went to bed because it was quite late and then the next day I woke up except I woke up to an Internet littered with hunty X 2060 reviews at this point it was pretty clear Nvidia had screwed us and unfortunately not for the first time Nvidia seemed very reluctant to include us in their initial round of r-tx 20 80 and 20 atti reviews they only provided us with a 20 80 at first while others got both we didn't get the 20 80 TI in time for testing so we were forced to use an AIB model which we were able to source last minute Nvidia also held back on giving us access to the driver again I had to get this from another source Nvidia did eventually give us access but it was so delayed that without sourcing it ourselves a review would have been severely compromised the exact same thing happened for the RT X 27 t release we've got ofE model a day after reviews went live thankfully once again we were able to source a bored partner model in time so we could present you guys with a detailed day 1 review but it was a massive runaround that almost didn't work out it seems in video wasn't that impressed with our lukewarm reception of the r-tx range because back when were raving about the value performance and efficiency of Pascal they were throwing the things at us left right and center we even got a pair of Titan X cards though they decided not to send the Titan XP version after we mocked the value of the Titan hmm perhaps it was around that time that the relationship started to fall apart whatever the case in video is more than willing to work with us when we were providing positive g-force 10 series coverage and for the 10 to 15 years prior to that we also seemed to get along pretty well anyway jumping back to the RT X 2060 situation yesterday I fired off a rather irate email to my own video contact and in return I got a fairly typical response they understood our frustration and they said it was definitely not their intention to block us from reviewing the r-tx 2060 they went on to say that the first round of reviews or the first round of samples were very limited they didn't have very many boards on hand and HQ tried to send us one as soon as possible that was pretty much the entire response at this point there's probably a few of you watching this video thinking that I'm being all salty because I didn't get a sample and well to you I'd say yeah yeah I'm pretty pissed off are we entitled to a review sample no not really that said we have a long working history with Nvidia and they do to assure us that we were on their list and therefore we would be getting a sample I guess you could say we are still getting a sample so they kind of got me on a technicality there obviously I'm frustrated due to the total lack of communication and then the generic sponsors that followed I also write for text button have been doing so for a decade now and in that time in video has enjoyed a lot of positive content at techspot of course some negative content as well but overall mostly positive as their products have been mostly good so should I just accept they weren't enough RTX 20 60 samples to go around and we were just unlucky that we missed out and there was no other real reason for why we missed out it's not because we provide honest content that's in no way sugar-coated at first I thought maybe it was just an issue with the Australian samples we've seen that kind of thing in the past where the Australian samples get delayed just because well where we are located on planet earth so maybe that was the issue but yeah that that theory didn't really pan out because the boys over at week Town who are based in Australia they managed to get their hands on a sample and their review although it was quite brief they did manage to get it out on time so I wonder why a video was able to get a sample after tweak town ahead of their release but not harbour unboxed and techspot well taking a quick look at their r-tx content so far we see that they haven't given a single card less than a 93 percent overall score the r-tx 20 atti for example was given 100 percent so generally they have given the cards extremely positive reviews of course they are 100% entitled to their own opinion and they can review products as they see fit I'm not attacking tweak town here I'm merely trying to work out why own video decided to get them a sample and not us because let's be real for a second there isn't a shortage of these things if they wanted to send us one for a review they certainly would oh and before I forget we do have the same sort of score based conclusion thing at Tech spot not really a fan of it and I'm not in charge of putting it together I just do the benchmarks and give my opinion but I understand why Tech's spot include it because it seems like quite a few readers do appreciate the score on summary anyway the scores meant to be a reflection of my own opinion the 2080 - I was given an 80 out of a hundred which i think is fair enough and the 20 idea was given 70 out of 100 which I also think is fair the 27 he wasn't given a score must have forgotten about the scoring system on that one but if the 2080 was given us 70 then that would seem appropriate for the 2070 anyway this leaves us in a bit of a tough position we provide honest reviews and it seems because of that we're now getting denied samples we just can't compete with reviewers giving over 90% for everything I think our g-force RGX coverage was extremely fair and it seems to be in line with what you'll read and hear from other trusted sources the 2080 Ti is an incredibly impressive product in terms of performance but at an MSRP of $1,000 u.s. and still a current market price of $1,300 u.s. I'm certainly not going to tell you to seriously just buy it I've said it multiple times now the Artie x-series isn't bad it just isn't great either it's a small step forward from what we had over two years ago now the RDX 2080 for example cost the same amount as the twenty atti performance is single digits better overall and thus far in video can shove ray-tracing where you can't see rays cast ray tracing will likely be awesome in a few generations time but paying a ridiculous premium for it now just simply isn't worth it on that note in video recently reached out to Tim after his coverage of rage racing in battlefield 5 and he had a pretty robust hour-long conversation with the team in the u.s. that covered all sorts of things while NVIDIA did want to have their say on RT X and perhaps clarify a few things in our coverage Nvidia repeatedly said that our coverage was fair and reasonable and in general they didn't have any issues with our RT X videos in fact the team over in the u.s. said they were interested in working more closely with harbor unboxed and techspot for future launches they felt as if we were a little out of the loop with necessary information to cover these launches and yet just a few weeks later and video decided not to sample us an RT X 26 T which seems to go completely against one in video we're telling Tim over the phone it's just a bizarre situation so where do we go from here do we persevere with NVIDIA or do we just give up on them and use our patreon funds to buy in video graphics cards in the future and we've managed to grow our patreon account quite substantially over the past year and this has allowed us to buy quite a few Intel CPUs as they don't sample locked parts or low-end models it's not something they do just for us it's something they seem to do for everyone it's been that way for as long as I can remember so yeah we just make do by buying our own and we're now getting to the point where it's feasible to buy in video graphics cards so this is something we will seriously consider without question missing out on day one coverage yeah it'll be disappointing and I know many of you look forward to our day 1 content but waiting a week for in-depth gaming comparisons is I think something that most of you will be willing to do ideally we would like to work closely with in-video to ensure we can provide independent reviews as soon as possible but getting shafted last minute stops being fun real fast anyway that's the story so far it's possible we will have a big RTX 2060 benchmark comparison next week with over 30 games just depends on when we get our sample and obviously we can't buy anything till the 15th of course none of this will impact how we evaluate in video products moving forward it might delay publishing but it won't sway our opinion one way or the other as always we work for you guys and that's never gonna change finally I would just like to personally thank everyone who's left a comment supporting us saying they're missing our review and they'll be holding off with any purchases until we can provide a detailed review it really is touching to read so many positive comments the community support is always amazing and I promise I won't let you guys down thanks for watching I'm your host Steve I catch again soon