Follow-up article to Overclockers.com story bashing websites/ATI/9700

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: SexyK

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: apoppin
His valid point was that Matt may have used his own test system but was NOT allowed to post what a reviewer normally would: FPS comparisons instead of (BS) "percent improvement".

And anyway - I DO intend to buy a R300 if the actual reviews support the previews.

Why are percentages somehow BS? Often times percentages give a better indication of the performance difference among the competing products.

Did you people read the second article or did you skim it and come back to say "my god this guys an idiot!!~!"? The point is, if the 4600 runs the game at 10fps and the R300 pulls 30fps, its "300% the speed" of the 4600, and it will look a lot smoother thanks to the 24fps limit he talks about, but it's still not really playable since it will be dropping below 30fps frequently if thats the average of the test. In that case, its misleading to publish "wow look at this absolute smack down of the 4600!!!" And he points out that Anand himself says that 1600x1200 with AA and AF is still NOT possible, so the scores that are 250-300% higher dont really have much impact on the gaming experience. It's pretty crappy of you guys to bash this guy just because he has a different opinion than you, and because he dared to insinuate that maybe some reviews are *gasp* a little too excited about the card as opposed to objective. Come on, grow up.

Kramer

Personally, my harsher reactions had a lot more to do with the way in which his original article was written, rather than the points he was trying (and failing) to make. I agree with whoever said that if his original article had been written like his second, his second wouldn't have been needed.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: NFS4

Originally posted by: apoppin
He "redeemed" himself in my eyes by that second article. If the first one had been as carefully thought out and explained as the second one, there would have been no need for the second one - nor any controversy. He was rather rude and did resort to 'name-calling' and putdowns in his first.

I have to agree that a profesional reviewer shouldn't show "excitement" for a product (or at least hide it better).

He didn't redeem himself in my eyes. And his Velma comparison lost me after the second sentence. And he is still clueless to the fact that Matt used his own test system and benchmark apps.

Your opinion doesn't change my mind. His "Velma" comparison was his way of "apologizing" for calling fellow reviewers whores.

His valid point was that Matt may have used his own test system but was NOT allowed to post what a reviewer normally would: FPS comparisons instead of (BS) "percent improvement".

And anyway - I DO intend to buy a R300 if the actual reviews support the previews.

BS? are you smoking crack? first off, i'd love to see normalized numbers as well as FPS numbers on a constant unit graph (that starts at 0) so that i can see the actual difference instead of what some reviewer wants me to see. second, those percent improvements were easily made into FPS numbers using the roundup numbers published a week or two earlier here. matt's percent improvement is far more than this whiner has, which is nothing!

 

[Pariah]

"Why are percentages somehow BS? Often times percentages give a better indication of the performance difference among the competing products."

If card X gets 1fps in something and card Y gets 15fps, card Y is 1500% faster which sounds phenomenal but when the raw numbers are given neither one is anywhere near playable so what's the point? It means absolutely nothing how much faster something is vs something else if it is still unusable.

"His "Velma" comparison was his way of "apologizing" for calling fellow reviewers whores."

I don't think he was apologizing for anything just explaining why he said what he said. Basically, he said his overly negative viewpoint was intended to offset the overly glowing viewpoints of the other reviewers which didn't really tell the whole story. There are 2 sides to every story and he was trying to give the other side.

I agree with everything this guy said in his second post. I wish more reviewers would follow the creed he has layed out, it would mean you wouldn't have to skip all the text and just look at the pictures to try and get a slighlty objective viewpoint.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: SexyK
Did you people read the second article or did you skim it and come back to say "my god this guys an idiot!!~!"? The point is, if the 4600 runs the game at 10fps and the R300 pulls 30fps, its "300% the speed" of the 4600, and it will look a lot smoother thanks to the 24fps limit he talks about, but it's still not really playable since it will be dropping below 30fps frequently if thats the average of the test. In that case, its misleading to publish "wow look at this absolute smack down of the 4600!!!" And he points out that Anand himself says that 1600x1200 with AA and AF is still NOT possible, so the scores that are 250-300% higher dont really have much impact on the gaming experience. It's pretty crappy of you guys to bash this guy just because he has a different opinion than you, and because he dared to insinuate that maybe some reviews are *gasp* a little too excited about the card as opposed to objective. Come on, grow up.

Kramer

A couple things:

1) Get the stick out of your ass. I didn't bash the guy's article. In fact, I didn't even read it - I refuse to give his site the hits.

2) My comment was in reaction apoppin's post - not the article.

3) Who gives a crap if 1600x1200 isn't playable? Percentages give a better indication of how two different products compare to each other. If the 4600 gets 10fps and the R300 gets 30fps, people like your chime in, "hey its still not playable!" Who cares? From a performance standpoint, its getting triple the frames per second, and is thus doing triple the work at that given resolution. That is astounding. You're post is the exact reason why normalized graphs should be included with all reviews. You see a 15fps difference and think the card is slow. I see a 15fps difference and see one product doubling the framerate of the other.

 

[Kurupshin]

I'll write like the reviewer.

He's an idiot, and he doesn't deserve to be a part of any website.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: SexyK
Did you people read the second article or did you skim it and come back to say "my god this guys an idiot!!~!"? The point is, if the 4600 runs the game at 10fps and the R300 pulls 30fps, its "300% the speed" of the 4600, and it will look a lot smoother thanks to the 24fps limit he talks about, but it's still not really playable since it will be dropping below 30fps frequently if thats the average of the test. In that case, its misleading to publish "wow look at this absolute smack down of the 4600!!!" And he points out that Anand himself says that 1600x1200 with AA and AF is still NOT possible, so the scores that are 250-300% higher dont really have much impact on the gaming experience. It's pretty crappy of you guys to bash this guy just because he has a different opinion than you, and because he dared to insinuate that maybe some reviews are *gasp* a little too excited about the card as opposed to objective. Come on, grow up.

Kramer

A couple things:

1) Get the stick out of your ass. I didn't bash the guy's article. In fact, I didn't even read it - I refuse to give his site the hits.

2) My comment was in reaction apoppin's post - not the article.

3) Who gives a crap if 1600x1200 isn't playable? Percentages give a better indication of how two different products compare to each other. If the 4600 gets 10fps and the R300 gets 30fps, people like your chime in, "hey its still not playable!" Who cares? From a performance standpoint, its getting triple the frames per second, and is thus doing triple the work at that given resolution. That is astounding. You're post is the exact reason why normalized graphs should be included with all reviews. You see a 15fps difference and think the card is slow. I see a 15fps difference and see one product doubling the framerate of the other.

First of all, my reply was not aimed soley at your comments, but they happend to strike me as accusatory and uninformed. I strongly believe you should read any article that you feel the urge to comment on, otherwise anything you say is obviously based on your opinion and not the facts of the article. Your 1600x1200 arguement is fine, but almost everyone on this board responded that its very important to them to be able to play games at 1600x1200, so to say that you don't care if its playable or not - as long as its faster by a percentage - seems like double talk to me. You think that its good to show 1600x1200 scores because thats where you want to play the games, but you dont care if the FPS numbers show it to be unplayable, after all, its only an indicator. I don't understand how you don't see how saying "250% faster than a Ti4600!" is misleading when neither can break 25fps. To the average consumer, anything thats 250% faster will seem like it wipes the floor, but when they get it home and its impossible to see any difference between it and their GeForce3 at 1024x768 in Quake 3, they'll wonder where the 250% improvement is. You can tell them, "if you want it to be 250% faster, you have to crank everything to the max, it will be unplayable, but it will be a lot faster than a Ti4600 could do it!!!" See how they respond to that after dropping $400 on the card.

Kramer

 

[SexyK]

And for the record, I have absolutely nothing against ATI. I think the 9700 is going to be a sick card, and if i had the cash around i'd defintly pick one up ASAP. As it is i'll probably wait to see NV30 out of curiosity and then decide what to get. I just think it's unfair to come down so hard on this guy, becuase I really do think that ATI has made questionable marketing decisions in the past, and a bit more objectivity could be useful in reviews of everyone's products, not just ATI.

 

[Duvie]

Booo Hooo Hooo...

All this whining about percentages!!! percentages or fps, who cares!!!They both work for me....I am smart enough to figure it out!!!

Do the f^cking math and convert them yourselves....Read anand's review on the ti4600 then now what the boost constitutes....CRY BABIES

Also this is based on really early drivers and who knows what performace gains can be made with optimizations...can we see possible 50fps in a few months???

ATI or NVIDIA, I can care less...I have jumped back and forth the last 4 cards.

This guy just seems to be looking for something to whine about. I definitely think he is anti ati...

He should have just stated like anandtech did on the playability at that level at current state and leave it alone.

 

[mrman3k]

Okay, 1600X1200 is great for benchmarking, but in reality, who plays at those resolution. I would have to agree with the article in that not a lot of people play at 1600. For example, myself, even though I have a TI4400 and 20" monitor, I don't like playing at above 1280X1024 because things become to small and do not look right. Same thing with all my friends who have similar setups, we dont like how everything becomes really small.

Plus, by the time Doom 3 comes out there will be like the Radeon 20,000; Geforce 6, etc. The hardcore hardware community will have the newest cards by then and the current R9700 will not be top of the line by then. But I do hope that ATI does succeed in giving Nvidia a run for its money as to foster more competition which is better for us.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: SexyK
First of all, my reply was not aimed soley at your comments, but they happend to strike me as accusatory and uninformed. I strongly believe you should read any article that you feel the urge to comment on, otherwise anything you say is obviously based on your opinion and not the facts of the article. Your 1600x1200 arguement is fine, but almost everyone on this board responded that its very important to them to be able to play games at 1600x1200, so to say that you don't care if its playable or not - as long as its faster by a percentage - seems like double talk to me. You think that its good to show 1600x1200 scores because thats where you want to play the games, but you dont care if the FPS numbers show it to be unplayable, after all, its only an indicator. I don't understand how you don't see how saying "250% faster than a Ti4600!" is misleading when neither can break 25fps. To the average consumer, anything thats 250% faster will seem like it wipes the floor, but when they get it home and its impossible to see any difference between it and their GeForce3 at 1024x768 in Quake 3, they'll wonder where the 250% improvement is. You can tell them, "if you want it to be 250% faster, you have to crank everything to the max, it will be unplayable, but it will be a lot faster than a Ti4600 could do it!!!" See how they respond to that after dropping $400 on the card.

Kramer

Accusatory and uninformed? That's a baseless comment if I've ever heard one. You came to this conclusion based on a single line of text - a line that I felt was quite obviously directed to apoppin's comment, not the article? I understand your point of view, and from a PR perspective, I agree entirely. I'd be upset if ATi were to advertise the 9700 as some rediculously high percentage faster than its competitors when it still can't be construed as "playable," but that's the nature of marketing.

I feel I should stress my point: If card X is running at 10fps, and card Y is running at 20fps at quality settings Z, one can derive that card Y has more headroom in terms of performance than card X, especially since card Y is executing twice the operations in the same amount of time.

EDIT: Typo.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: NFS4

Originally posted by: apoppin
He "redeemed" himself in my eyes by that second article. If the first one had been as carefully thought out and explained as the second one, there would have been no need for the second one - nor any controversy. He was rather rude and did resort to 'name-calling' and putdowns in his first.

I have to agree that a profesional reviewer shouldn't show "excitement" for a product (or at least hide it better).

He didn't redeem himself in my eyes. And his Velma comparison lost me after the second sentence. And he is still clueless to the fact that Matt used his own test system and benchmark apps.

Your opinion doesn't change my mind. His "Velma" comparison was his way of "apologizing" for calling fellow reviewers whores.

His valid point was that Matt may have used his own test system but was NOT allowed to post what a reviewer normally would: FPS comparisons instead of (BS) "percent improvement".

And anyway - I DO intend to buy a R300 if the actual reviews support the previews.

BS? are you smoking crack? first off, i'd love to see normalized numbers as well as FPS numbers on a constant unit graph (that starts at 0) so that i can see the actual difference instead of what some reviewer wants me to see. second, those percent improvements were easily made into FPS numbers using the roundup numbers published a week or two earlier here. matt's percent improvement is far more than this whiner has, which is nothing!

As usual, you don't need crack for an incoherant reply.