Gamer Nexus and Hardware Unboxed say NVIDIA is 'paying' for favorable RTX 5060 coverage

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Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed have released new videos outlining NVIDIA's attempted manipulation of coverage for its GeForce RTX GPUs based on their experiences with the company. This comes to a head with this week's release of the GeForce RTX 5060, where media weren't given access to pre-release drivers for the mainstream RTX Blackwell graphics card.

And with the GeForce RTX 5060 launch and drivers becoming available during Computex 2025, when most media cannot benchmark and complete testing, it's not a good look for NVIDIA's approach to the latest RTX 50 Series launch. I can confirm the latter, as I've had a GeForce RTX 5060 in my possession for over a week with no drivers to complete a review for TweakTown ahead of the show.

Gamers Nexus's 'NVIDIA's Dirty Manipulation of Reviews' video highlights their detailed experiences with NVIDIA. It outlines how the company wanted to see coverage of DLSS 4 technologies, like Multi Frame Generation, to gain access to certain engineers or employees for its highly technical, in-depth coverage.

As seen in Hardware Unboxed's 'Don't Buy The RTX 5060' video below, it believes select media got access to GeForce RTX 5060 drivers for "manipulated" previews featuring "inflated" Multi Frame Generation benchmark results compared to cards that do not have MFG support - like the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060.

Like others, I agree. This is not a like-for-like comparison, so it's a misleading representation of the RTX 5060's performance, like the RTX 5070 being an RTX 4090 competitor. However, it's worth noting that previews focusing on one specific thing to showcase a product is not unusual, and it's not the same thing as a review.

Neither video outright says that money has exchanged hands. Instead, Hardware Unboxed's stance is that exclusive access like this can be viewed as manipulating or influencing public perception, especially when there aren't any independent reviews for the public to read or view.

For reference, I include a section on Multi Frame Generation performance in my GeForce RTX 50 Series reviews, focusing on how it looks and feels. Any comparisons are like-for-like, with raw performance included. This section is separate from the primary performance analysis and comparisons, which are sorted by raw performance. The same is true for my Radeon RX 9000 Series reviews, which include a similar section for FSR 4 and AMD Frame Generation.

These sections are included because the technologies are impressive, and these are features of the GPUs. Path Tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077 is only possible because of Frame Generation and other AI technologies like Ray Reconstruction.

Also, NVIDIA has not asked me to include Multi Frame Generation results in reviews or focus on specific games or benchmark scenarios, nor has it offered incentives or threatened to remove access for not including specific tests or comparisons. The same is true for previous TweakTown GPU reviewers like Anthony Garreffa.

When it comes to the RTX 5060, like others, I'm concerned that the RTX 5060's 8GB VRAM limitation will be a problem. Naturally, I will include my results and conclusions in my review; however, that won't arrive until sometime after Computex 2025 wraps. In the meantime, watch both videos to gain the full picture and history of the claims against NVIDIA and its handling of GeForce RTX coverage from the perspective of two of the most prominent video outlets for GPU coverage.