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How good is Tom's Hardware Guide at testing....

B

Birger

Member
How good is Tom's Hardware Guide at testing CPU coolers?

To me it seems like that site doesn?t know how to REALLY test a CPU cooler, what's your experience and thoughts about that? Am I right or wrong?

The reason that I'm thinking like this is because on one page at that site they have tested 34 coolers and on one of those pages have they written this.

""Our" Athlon-XP 2400+ scored a maximum power loss of 57 Watts. According to the data sheet, however, the Athlon-XP 2400+ can devour up to 68 Watts."

And since they only have managed to get an Athlon XP 2400+ to produce a maximum power loss of 57 watts I believe (maybe stupidly?) that the program CPUburn manage to produce a higher power loss on an Athlon XP 2400+ CPU than what they have managed to get.

So, should we really care about the values as that site gets and show us when they make a judgement about what cooler is good and bad or is it only me that is completely stupid and don't understand how things are now?
 
Well, you got a point there.

The first time I visited that site were around 94 or 95 and at that time I thought that site were really good, but since 97-98 I have had trouble agreeing with him.

All (not only some, but ALL) tests he and I have done on the same hardware and using the same programs we got different results from each other.
Sometimes the differences had been so big that I have thought that he must have "corrupt" hardware, since the differences between his and my values had been so big so that?s IMPOSSIBLE to explain it with "Margin of error between different runs".

I'm really glad that we have Anand, because this site and I always get results that agree with each other.

Anand, I love you, keep up the good work. Without you I would be sad.
 
I don't believe Tom's Hardware existed in 1994, but yeah, they were pretty decent when they first started up. It was one of the first sites I relied on when the internet was just getting off the ground, besides Anandtech. I was a reader here for many years before the first time I ever came to the forums, and I was a reader of the forums for quite awhile before I thought maybe I knew enough to actually post, you know? But old Tom has definitely sold out completely now. That site isn't really good for anything besides a good laugh now.
 
I still read Tom's site. It has some unique views on materials and does some reviews no one else thinks of. For example, I have not seen many other sites talk about dead pixels and the warranty coverage for such.

I am not sure I agree that the test is flawed though. AMD stated that that was max. That does not necessarily mean that you would achieve max in some test. You do not know what AMD did to calculate it. It still does not invalid the test either. If they are using their tested thermal power and the Ta and Td, the calculation would be correct. If they achieved max wattage, the temp should have adjusted accordingly. Since none of the materials are changing state, we can assume that the thermal resistance would be consistent.

 
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