Tom is not a teenager hangin' at HardOCP - he holds himself out as a professional. He's supposed to act like a professional, do his homework, ask some questions and not just play shill for the manufacturers. All he had to do when they gave him the dummy board was ask a few pointed questions of the big boys, who if they respected him would have given him some honest answers. Instead, perhaps because he knew it would attract readers, he just ran with it. My point is proven by his flow of articles trying to convince people that he is really working on the issue even day by day.
They didn't give a sucker's board to Anand Shimpi, did they. Or if they did, you certainly didn't see a meaningless test of it.
If something like this happened with an Intel product there'd probably be a soccer riot in these forums.