W1zzard leaving Techpowerup?

[MarcVenice]

I'm sorry, but if I were to have done my review with ATI's 9.12-drivers, our readers would have completely burned down my review. Heck, they are still critical, although it's one of the most detailed gpu-reviews we've ever done

I think it's either an april's fools joke, or he's just overreacting...

 

[Rebel44]

I'm sorry, but if I were to have done my review with ATI's 9.12-drivers, our readers would have completely burned down my review. Heck, they are still critical, although it's one of the most detailed gpu-reviews we've ever done

I agree - when sites which have reputation of making good reviews make mistakes like that they should expect angry reaction from their readers.

 

[shangshang]

Linus Torvalds is still lead project coordinator for the Linux Kernal.

well he's the father of linux, so they ain't gonna take his name off unless he requested it! But last I checked a few years back, he was with Transmeta which didn't do too well and not sure what's he's up to these days... but once he got a taste of corporate money... it's safe to say his days of writing freebie codes to save humanity from M$ are over.

It always happen like this with all things. Guy doing a new innovative thing as a hobby... then he sells it for money or goes somewhere else to make money because he has made a name for himself. Money speaks very loud in this world. It's only the fools who are left behind cyring "oh noooo he left us". blah blah

But perhaps a little potentially positive thing about Wiz leaving is that maybe RBE editor will stop developing... and guys won't be having to RMA dead vid card anymore because they thought they could out smart the manufacturers by flashing and tweaking their own home cooked bioses.

 

[1h4x4s3x]

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=119159

 

[ArchAngel777]

I guess "most" just means most of the people posting in enthusiast forums. I know a lot of gamers in the area LAN party community who are total PC gamers, but who also never update their drivers. Heck, I'm one of them! My test rigs at work get updated, but my computers at home just runs on whatever drivers I installed them with. Basically whenever I install Windows I use the latest drivers, and then never touch 'em.

Just checked and I'm on 186.18. This is the main computer I use at home. The games I currently play (L4D, L4D2, TF2, BFBC2, COD4, CODWAW, WoW) all work fine, so I don't feel it necessary to "fix" what is not broken.

Same here. Unless I happen to install a new game and it has some game-breaking issue that a driver has a known fix for... Other than that, I do the exact same thing. Of course, I do happen to reinstall Windows more than most people. It seems to get done every 6 - 12 months.

 

[bryanW1995]

I guess "most" just means most of the people posting in enthusiast forums. I know a lot of gamers in the area LAN party community who are total PC gamers, but who also never update their drivers. Heck, I'm one of them! My test rigs at work get updated, but my computers at home just runs on whatever drivers I installed them with. Basically whenever I install Windows I use the latest drivers, and then never touch 'em.

Just checked and I'm on 186.18. This is the main computer I use at home. The games I currently play (L4D, L4D2, TF2, BFBC2, COD4, CODWAW, WoW) all work fine, so I don't feel it necessary to "fix" what is not broken.

That is great, but why would you compare one card with 6 month old drivers to another card with brand new drivers? at least compare them with drivers from the same time frame.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I can understand waiting a week or two to update video drivers. But being lazy is not a defense for not upgrading. ATI includes performance & profile updates in their drivers that improve over all game quality.

 

[thilanliyan]

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=119159

Damn.

 

[Madcatatlas]

i dont like april 1 jokes.. especially not ones that are done mars 31 or april 2.
whatever

 

[Voo]

Well at least we know now, that he thinks that a good 2.5% performance boost is completely uninteresting and nothing to write about.

Ah that's the perfect attitude for a reviewer that wants to be taken serious. "Now with an extra 5% inaccuracy!"

PS: And we're ignoring the fact here that the arithmetic mean is really not the best way to compare such numbers..

 

[SHAQ]

I dunno. Why not compare release driver with release driver? Six months from now the 480 may beat the 5870 even more with driver maturity.

 

[MarcVenice]

Well at least we know now, that he thinks that a good 2.5% performance boost is completely uninteresting and nothing to write about.

Ah that's the perfect attitude for a reviewer that wants to be taken serious. "Now with an extra 5% inaccuracy!"

PS: And we're ignoring the fact here that the arithmetic mean is really not the best way to compare such numbers..

I'm pretty sure the 10.3 drivers give much more of a boost then just 2.5%. It depends on the game. I saw a big boost in Crysis Warhead and Dirt 2, but none in Far Cry 2. Averages also went up in HAWX. All in all, without the 10.3 drivers, the GTX 480 would have looked a fair bit better.

 

[Voo]

I'm pretty sure the 10.3 drivers give much more of a boost then just 2.5%.

He benched again with the 10.3 drivers and got a average 2.5% performance gain by the arithmetic mean - there were some games where the performance boosts were much bigger, but others where it stayed the same.. like always and as we all know the arithmetic mean is perfect to hide that stuff, so yeah really bad practice ~

@SHAQ: Yeah that's an intelligent benchmark idea, I mean we're all interested in outdated drivers, because after all who'd install new drivers when he buys a 400$ GPU?