All graphic card reviews paid?

[Dropmachine]

Well the AT review didn't make much sense in the benchmark test. Due to the ftw input. It left me thinking why bother with new gen when i can get it old gen cheaper and has same performance.

Never ceases to amaze me how ridiculous people on a forum can be.

the FTW card was put in because its still comparable due to its current pricing. Are you telling me that as a computer enthusiast, you aren't bright enough to simply ignore that card if the results are bugging you so much? Really?



From my experience running a bike site that reviews products that are sent in I can say that the bigger you get, the more honest you can be. When you're a smaller site, you have to kiss ass to ensure that you get more product to test later. You don't have to bend right over, but you have to temper how you deliver bad reviews.

As you get bigger though, you get more clout. You can be dead honest, and you will have enough traffic to force the supplying companies to continue working with you. As long as youre' HONEST, you can write whatever needs to be written. You will actually gain more readers with honest reviews than you will with biased ones.

Now, when the chequebook comes out, thats a whole different story. 😀

 

[Voo]

the FTW card was put in because its still comparable due to its current pricing. Are you telling me that as a computer enthusiast, you aren't bright enough to simply ignore that card if the results are bugging you so much? Really?

What? You expect us to be able to recognize that there's a OCed 460 and a normal one? And that only after several spoilers and annotated graphs? Come on who should be capable of this tremendous challenge. Honestly I was shocked that they included even more cards - I mean how should I judge the 6850 vs. 460 if they include a 480 as well, who needs all that extra confusing information?

 

[apoppin]

Hook, line, and sinker. Nvidia marketing ftw.

is that all you can say?

What about AMD marketing? They did *exactly* the same thing that Nvidia did - back in April by sending me an overclocked HD 5870 to spoil thE GTX 480 launch.

They play by the same rules.
🙄

It was up to me as reviewer to make it very clear to my readers.
😎

 

[Arkadrel]

Apoppin did you use that overclocked 5870 against the 480 at launch date review?

If not what made you change your ways? I remember you said something about the 460 EVGA FTW costing as much as the 6870 or slightly more so it was okay.... did the 5870 oc cost more than the 480 back then?

 

[Vesku]

Apoppin, I am also curious as to the reasons you changed between GTX 480 and Radeon 6850/70. I went back in your site archive and see the GTX 480 reviewed in the same way many AMD tinged people are saying the 6800 series should have been handled. That is GTX 480 reviewed against stock retail 5870 with a review a couple of weeks later comparing OC results. With you saying AMD provided an OC 5870 why was it not used then in the initial review but it now seems reasonable to first review with OC GTX 460?

 

[apoppin]

Apoppin did you use that overclocked 5870 against the 480 at launch date review?

If not what made you change your ways? I remember you said something about the 460 EVGA FTW costing as much as the 6870 or slightly more so it was okay.... did the 5870 oc cost more than the 480 back then?

My GTX 480 vs 5870 review was in 3 parts.

As is *usual* i set the stock parts against the stock parts, then the overclocked parts vs the overclocked parts. That is what i did with GTX 480 and with GTX 460 and with HD 6870/6850.

In my own review i made it very clear that the FTW EVGA card was *highly* overclocked. AND then to be FAIR, i overclocked the competing Radeons (and i got a great OC with my HD 6850). BTW, i am reviewing the FTW EVGA card against the SOC Galaxy GTX 460 and am going into more OC'ing with HD 68x0.

But first, i have another really big review due next week that takes precedence over everything else that i was planning. All other benching has stopped as i work on this new review :whiste:


😵

 

[Vesku]

So why not the Radeon 6800 series review in stock and OC parts? Especially when the 6800 cards only arrived about a week before launch? The methods have changed and that's the very reason Anandtech had to address the issue in such a direct manner, kudos there.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Speaking of the 460 FTW, some people here claimed it being out of stock at Newegg just after the AT review was proof that it was a fake, limited-edition part that would only exist long enough to spoil the 68xx launch.

Well, both models are back in stock at Newegg, same $230/240 prices as before.

It's a real choice for buyers, and one they should consider if they want 6870 speed but prefer nvidia over AMD.

(As I posted earlier, a 6850 met my current needs so that's what I've ordered.)

 

[Arkadrel]

Appopin if you do test oc version of a 480... could those go into a differnt table, one where there are no stock cards? ^-^

I want to see the 580 smack the 480 around, not have a oc 480 match it.

also please do the same when the 6950-6970s come out 🙂
If not things will look odd <.<'

 

[apoppin]

Appopin if you do test oc version of a 480... could those go into a differnt table, one where there are no stock cards? ^-^

I want to see the 580 smack the 480 around, not have a oc 480 match it.

also please do the same when the 6950-6970s come out 🙂
If not things will look odd <.<'

OK .. let's say .. hypothetically speaking, of course .. that i have a GTX 580 and i am going to review it right now ... here is what my "line up" will look like:

• GTX 580
• GTX 580-OC
• GTX 480
• GTX 480-Galaxy SOC
• HD 5870
• HD 5870-OC
• HD 6870
• HD 6870-OC
• HD 6850
• HD 6850-OC
• GTX 460-EVGA-OC
• GTX 460
• GTX 460-768M

And if i had time, i'd toss in HD 5870 CF
- if i didn't have time, i'd drop some of the OCs below HD 5870

 

[RussianSensation]

Like if the 3fps over $10 less priced "previous gen." graphic cards was good enough to validate another purchase. No site questioning the validity for such graphics over previous generations and why those 3fps would temps anyone into buying these "new products".

HardOCP had me laughing:

"Should you sell your current Radeon HD 58xx series video card for a 68xx series video card? We are going to break this down for you. In regards to the 6870, if you currently own a 5870 then the 6870 is not an upgrade, but if you own a 5850 or below, then the 6870 is an upgrade."

ahha what a load of sh*t!! Let's spend $240 to get 10&#37; more performance from HD5850. Of course you are smart enough to ignore such advice. 😛

 

[taltamir]

HardOCP had me laughing:

"Should you sell your current Radeon HD 58xx series video card for a 68xx series video card? We are going to break this down for you. In regards to the 6870, if you currently own a 5870 then the 6870 is not an upgrade, but if you own a 5850 or below, then the 6870 is an upgrade."

ahha what a load of sh*t!! Let's spend $240 to get 10% more performance from HD5850. Of course you are smart enough to ignore such advice. 😛

they aren't saying to spend 240$ for a 10% upgrade. they are saying that the 6870 is slower than the 5870 and faster than the 5850, assuming that the reader is smart enough to figure out that it is thus a bad prospect to "upgrade".

 

[heflys]

ahha what a load of sh*t!! Let's spend $240 to get 10% more performance from HD5850. Of course you are smart enough to ignore such advice. 😛

He's not saying spend the money on an upgrade, he's saying it's an upgrade in comparison to the 5850.

Damn, got beat to it.

 

[betasub]

So why not say it is x&#37; faster, but not worthy as an upgrade. Or would that be too negative?

 

[Arkadrel]

So why not say it is x&#37; faster, but not worthy as an upgrade. Or would that be too negative?

how much is fast enough to be worthy? is it 1fps more in certain games? \.\ very subjective for review sites to start saying things like that.

Good reviews just show the benchmarking fps in games, so you as a consumer can make up your own mind about such things.

Personally if you have a 5850, I dont think the upg would be worth it (too much cost for to little extra performance). But if you had a 48xx card and wanted cheap good dx11 capable card? sure why not grab a 6870... and start enjoying directx11 aspects of gameing ect.

 

[apoppin]

Apoppin, I am also curious as to the reasons you changed between GTX 480 and Radeon 6850/70. I went back in your site archive and see the GTX 480 reviewed in the same way many AMD tinged people are saying the 6800 series should have been handled. That is GTX 480 reviewed against stock retail 5870 with a review a couple of weeks later comparing OC results. With you saying AMD provided an OC 5870 why was it not used then in the initial review but it now seems reasonable to first review with OC GTX 460?

i missed this one.

AMD was late getting me their overclocked HD 5870; it arrived a day or so before the review was due and i couldn't include its benches. i included it in part two and i also overclocked both cards as far as they would go.

OtOH, Nvidia got me an EVGA GTX 460 in good time for my HD 68x0 review. The GTX 460-768M arrived really late and it was my choice to have my review a day late to include that one. We lost a lot of initial traffic by my being late but i felt my review was more well-rounded with all the GTX 460 variants represented. If i didn't also overclock the HD 68x0 cards, then there would be issues perhaps with my review.

As i said before, as a reviewer i feel a responsibility to my readers to provide as much pertinent information as possible. i really felt (and still do) that the GTX 460-FtW (as well as some of the lesser 460s such as the Galaxy SOC) are good competitors to 68x0.

Sadly i do not have either a HD 5850 nor a GTX 470 .. but as far as i can see, the HD 6870 is really close to a HD 5850 in performance. HD 6870 is NOT a(n) (significant) upgrade for HD 5850.

 

[mfenn]

My fellow partisans, we have been fooled and tricked by the giant conglomerate, almost like a war machine ravaging everything in its path, our brains have been brainwashed into rabid fanboys spreading the word of our puppeteer's.

So you're saying that you want to be given the information to decide on your own? Sounds good to me! :thumbsup:

no knowledge to be gained, just random numbers and a strange text bellow the numbers describing the results in the image

Wait, wut? D:

 

[blastingcap]

Bit-Tech, Anandtech, and HardOCP are beyond accusation in my book. None of them used Far Cry 2 (an old, infrequently-played game you don't find benched much anymore, not when there are DX11 and other stressful games like Crysis to bench instead, and note that when AT and HardOCP asked readers about which games readers would like to see benched, FC2 didn't make the cut by a long shot) when benching GTS 450s despite NV putting it in the reviewer guide. I know a certain person here likes to say that AMD has validated FC2 for use as a benchmark so it's not a big deal, but note that almost no reviewer used it when benching the 68xx cards, indicating to me that AMD probably did not put it in THEIR reviewer's guide. (Is this surprising, given that FC2 is heavily skewed in favor of NV?) Thus that demonstrates to me that NV was the one pushing for it, and got its way with everyone except BT, AT, and [H]. (And TR too but I dislike that site for unrelated reasons.)

I'd like to repeat for the nth time though that just because a site is not BT, AT, [H], or TR does NOT mean that they are bought and paid for or biased, it just means that I haven't seen any proof either way, and I think they should be innocent until proven guilty. (For instance, maybe a very thorough reviewer will bench like 30 games and among them will be FC2. That's clearly not a case of bias, just thoroughness, i.e., they would have benched FC2 whether or not NV asked them to.)

Also, even if you are unbiased, that doesn't mean you can't be wrong sometimes. E.g., HardOCP somehow gave a Gold award to the 5830?!

As someone said earlier in the thread (about bike reviews), the bigger of a review site you are, the harder it is to push you around. If you're big enough like BT/AT/HardOCP, then you don't live in fear of offending a company and having that company cut you off. It doesn't mean that a smaller reviewer is necessarily biased, though.

Edited to add quote re: bike reviews:

From my experience running a bike site that reviews products that are sent in I can say that the bigger you get, the more honest you can be. When you're a smaller site, you have to kiss ass to ensure that you get more product to test later. You don't have to bend right over, but you have to temper how you deliver bad reviews.

As you get bigger though, you get more clout. You can be dead honest, and you will have enough traffic to force the supplying companies to continue working with you. As long as youre' HONEST, you can write whatever needs to be written. You will actually gain more readers with honest reviews than you will with biased ones.

Now, when the chequebook comes out, thats a whole different story. 😀

 

[apoppin]

Well, in my experience i have never had Nvidia tell me or ask me to do anything.
- i don't know where you get that from.

i could have just kept the EVGA FTW card and sold it unopened. Or not reviewed it at all versus HD 68x0 and (do what i am doing now) review it against the Galaxy GTX 460 OC'd card (810/2000MHz; it also overclocks to 850/2000MHz)

As to FC2, i like the game and its graphics. That is why i include it. i don't really care that one card runs it faster that the other ... i just report the numbers. 😛

 

[blastingcap]

As to FC2, i like the game and its graphics. That is why i include it. i don't really care that one card runs it faster that the other ... i just report the numbers. 😛

Let me quote myself, with bold highlight:

"I'd like to repeat for the nth time though that just because a site is not BT, AT, [H], or TR does NOT mean that they are bought and paid for or biased, it just means that I haven't seen any proof either way, and I think they should be innocent until proven guilty. (For instance, maybe a very thorough reviewer will bench like 30 games and among them will be FC2. That's clearly not a case of bias, just thoroughness, i.e., they would have benched FC2 whether or not NV asked them to.)"

 

[apoppin]

Let me quote myself one more time also and i will use bold as you do

i have never had Nvidia tell me or ask me to do anything

:

... and yet like a broken record you keep bringing it up along with Far Cry 2

😵

 

[SlickR12345]

So you're saying that you want to be given the information to decide on your own? Sounds good to me! :thumbsup:



Wait, wut? D:

Okay, tell that to the millions of people that go crazy if someone says "GTX 460 is better than 6870, and vice versa) they are almost out to start a fight for it.
So please, don't state such ignorant and blatant things.

And I've said it well, read again if you can't understand from 1 or 2 Readings don't make my post out of context. That's not what I wrote at all.

I think they should be innocent until proven guilty. (For instance, maybe a very thorough reviewer will bench like 30 games and among them will be FC2. That's clearly not a case of bias, just thoroughness, i.e., they would have benched FC2 whether or not NV asked them to.)"

Did you understand when the Ubisoft partnership was done with Nvidia? Years ago, that doesn't mean FC2 was build by some magical Nvidia standards.
Each company AMD or Nvidia gives devs some guidelines, but they are broad enough and are actually not even required or something, its more of a advertisement thing.

FC2 actually changed mid development to go from large textures to small texture in ORDER to INCREASE the performance of the game across the board, as otherwise it would have been to hard for systems and not many copies sold.
FC2 and Dirt 2 lend itself to Nvidia, but does it mean they should not be reviewed? Heck even Heaven bench lend itself to nvidia, but remember its like that because nvidia has better tessellation technology than amd, simple as that.

Originally Posted by OILFIELDTRASH
Hook, line, and sinker. Nvidia marketing ftw.

+1 for AMD, +1 for rabid fanboy.
See what I'm talking about?
To some who take my post out of contest, either because can't understand or don't, I have no trouble interpreting the numbers at all, but when those numbers are, here is an example: 6870 vs 460 site1: 42, 39; site2: 50, 41; site3: 44, 48; site4: 34, 33 for the same benchmark. This is just an example, does not contain real info, but if you go check all sites you can you'll see what I'm talking about.
Now how can I decide from such numbers and how do I really know that the 6870 is actually faster than the 460? It may actually be slower.
So I went and saw older reviews on most sites on the same benchs with the same graphics and what do you know, it all varies, the numbers aren't same and aren't even similar.
I'd expect maybe 1-2fps difference depending on try. But again the biggest problem is the purchase part/replace/buy part of it and read some reviews you'd know, don't go reading 2 reviews and maybe catching the only 2 that didn't "recommend" getting it.

 

[Vesku]

Apoppin, your review methodology definitely falls into the "30" games category. In other words, I don't think you are his unnamed reviewer he is criticizing. I find no fault in your methodology and your explanation for review discrepancies seems reasonable if not consistent. However, I don't think every review site has a good reason for their GTX 480 reviews having been plainer.

 

[apoppin]

Apoppin, your review methodology definitely falls into the "30" games category. In other words, I don't think you are his unnamed reviewer he is criticizing. I find no fault in your methodology and your explanation for review discrepancies seems reasonable if not consistent. However, I don't think every review site has a good reason for their GTX 480 reviews having been plainer.

i agree. However, i keep hearing, "Nvidia tells this reviewer to do this or that".

i don't think so. Not in my experience. You would think i would have heard it by now if they were that kind of company to pull a stunt like that.😉

Not from AMD neither. They are both first rate companies to deal with. Sometimes there is a snag or a personality conflict but that is normal for any business. Overall, each company is very proud of their individual accomplishments and they are eager to get their product out for review.

They are also very competitive. But from what i have seen, they play by the same set of rules.

Each reviewer chooses what he wants to review (or what his site wants reviewed) based on what he thinks his audience wants to see. Reviewing is an art when it is done well. It paints a picture of a moment in time so that the viewer can make decisions based on that snapshot of what he sees regarding performance and video card comparisons. And my own personal philosophy is "more is better" .. so i am right now going back to benchmarking and i will be up for the next 4 nights until 4 AM so that i can get a good grasp of what i will be writing in ten thousand or so words for next week.
😎

here is an example: 6870 vs 460 site1: 42, 39; site2: 50, 41; site3: 44, 48; site4: 34, 33 for the same benchmark. This is just an example, does not contain real info, but if you go check all sites you can you'll see what I'm talking about.

This is completely meaningless unless you know that test PCs were identical and the settings were identical. Everything varies from reviewer to reviewer. When i do tests, i generally over-max the card with the highest settings. Some reviewers such as HardOCP do "playable settings" what is what they call "real world"

Taking all of the reviews together we can see that the OC'd GTX 460 is pretty close to HD 6870 performance - and it will often come down to specific games running faster on one that the other.
.. as an example, in AvP, 4xAA seems to favor Nvidia a bit whereas 1xAA favors AMD .. and i am now testing with 2xAA; which is pretty reasonable for performance anyway.
😀

 

[blastingcap]

Let me quote myself one more time also and i will use bold as you do
:

... and yet like a broken record you keep bringing it up along with Far Cry 2

😵

NV reviewers guide is not an animate object so of course it can't "tell" you anything. In any case, most reviewers of the GTS450 did bench FC2 and I've seen shots of the reviewer's guide so let's just drop the pretense and agree that NV put it in their reviewer's guide. And most reviewers went along with it. It doesn't mean they were biased or did not think for themselves (I've made this disclaimer like 10 times now). But the fact that AT, BT, and HardOCP did not follow along means they went their own way which to me is evidence that they think for themselves and aren't afraid to deviate from the script.

I think what the other poster wrote about big reviewers vs. little ones, in the context of bike companies, probably holds true for PC hardware too.