The world’s largest manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPUs) is facing allegations of review manipulation — and the claims being made are pretty egregious.
According to the GamersNexus blog and others within the PC gaming review industry, Nvidia has allegedly been trading access to its new GeForce RTX 5060 GPU for friendly reviews. Those who haven’t promised such positive coverage for the $300 gaming gadget, meanwhile, claim they’ve been left in the dust.
“NVIDIA has offered certain unqualified media outlets access to drivers which actual qualified reviewers do not have access to, but allegedly only under the premise of publishing ‘preview’ of the RTX 5060 in advance of its launch,” GamersNexus claimed in a recent vlog. “Some outlets were given access to drivers specifically to publish what we believe are puff pieces and marketing while reviewers were blocked.”
Another site, Videocardz.com, went on to report that the German website GamerStar Tech disclosed such an arrangement with Nvidia, detailing that the chip company allowed them to publish a preview of the 5060 but still “dictated” all the settings the reviewer used.
We reached out to Nvidia to ask about these allegations, but a representative declined to comment.
To add insult to injury, Nvidia chose to launch the new graphics card — which, as Boing Boing notes, has less RAM than previous generations — in the middle of Taipei’s Computex conference last weekend, which many would-be reviewers attended.
“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,” The Verge‘s Sean Hollister wrote of the debacle. “Gaming GPUs don’t really work without them.”
Once more reviewers got their hands on the new mid-range chip, all bets were off.
“In our opinion, Nvidia had a clear opportunity to deliver a meaningful upgrade here,” TechSpot wrote in its no-holds-barred review. “Instead, they’ve recycled the same class of GPU for five years, offering incremental discounts with each release.”
It’s especially interesting at a moment when Nvidia’s red-hot commodity is no longer graphics cards at all, but instead powerful chips aimed at powering AI infrastructure, prompting accusations that the company is now snubbing the gamers who kept it going for all these years so far.
One thing’s for sure: for a corporation that was, in 2024, listed as the most ethical companies to invest in by the Insider Monkey finance blog, Nvidia sure seems to be acting sketchily at the exact moment that it’s gaining significant global power.
More on internet ethics: Reddit Threatens to Sue Researchers Who Ran “Dead Internet” AI Experiment on Its Site