Why Do People Not Like Tom's Hardware?
- Thread starter Caveman
- Start date
Soulkeeper
Diamond Member
- Nov 23, 2001
- 6,731
- 155
- 106
I don't think it's 1 matter of liking the pompus spoiled brat j/k 
...I think it's more of not trusting him and his articles.
...I think it's more of not trusting him and his articles. His site makes statements which appear to be very biased toward nVidia and Intel. In many tests, he (or his "crack" team of testers) makes offhand comments about how a product performs in relation to a competitor - oftentimes drawing a conclusion after unfair testing, ie running FSB/memory speeds async. in AMD tests or claiming the GeForceFX to be a performance king and "clearly superior" when the data does not back him up.
Do a search under "Tom" or just peruse his site, some of the things said there are ridiculous to the point of idiocy.
edit: For poor grammar
Do a search under "Tom" or just peruse his site, some of the things said there are ridiculous to the point of idiocy.
edit: For poor grammar
Because:
1. Tom Pabst is an arrogant and pompous ass
2. The design of the website is awful
3. They are biased (GF4 vs. R9700Pro: R9700 is a "pretender to the throne"
)
4. The whole website is arrogant ("It must be us and us alone that test the new P3 at this speed!")
5. Benchmarks sucks (like the new P4 with 800MHz FSB tests.)
1. Tom Pabst is an arrogant and pompous ass
2. The design of the website is awful
3. They are biased (GF4 vs. R9700Pro: R9700 is a "pretender to the throne"
4. The whole website is arrogant ("It must be us and us alone that test the new P3 at this speed!")
5. Benchmarks sucks (like the new P4 with 800MHz FSB tests.)
I like the benchmarks that he does though. Like comparing a whole bunch of video cards against each other so we can see how much more performance a video card upgrade would give us. And I really do like his new Athlon article. It compares an Athlon 2000+ on multiple platforms. I never realized how much of a difference going from a KT133A to an nForce2 would be. It would give me about 40% improvement. These type of articles are great as it helps consumers like me make smart buys. It's common sense that (usually) the latest is the fastest. But by how much compared to your own system? Is it a worthwhile upgrade? Questions like that. Not all of us enthusiast can or want to buy the latest and greatest just because it's there. Money is the issue, of course
Great sites like AnandTech, when reviewing the latest hardware will compare it against the latest hardware. This doesn't help people like me who have a 1-2 year old hardware and are wondering how much of a performance difference there is with our old hardware compared to the newest hardware. I realize that it would be huge task for AnandTech to do it, but Toms Hardware does it so I appreciate the fact that they do it.
Great sites like AnandTech, when reviewing the latest hardware will compare it against the latest hardware. This doesn't help people like me who have a 1-2 year old hardware and are wondering how much of a performance difference there is with our old hardware compared to the newest hardware. I realize that it would be huge task for AnandTech to do it, but Toms Hardware does it so I appreciate the fact that they do it.
I actually think Tom's reviews are good. Problem is he has become really lazy, and he rarely writes nowadays. He's hired some guys to write for the site, but they aren't all that good. And lately it seems THG is weeks or months behind the other sites.
I like Tom himself, I hate his employees.
As for comments of bias, I disagree... It wasnt so long ago people said the same about Tom being biased towards ATi, and before that it was AMD, and before that it was Intel.
IMHO Tom is not at all biased. He is however extremely judgemental and very vocal about his opinions.
Tom is a vengeful god, he will never let anyone forget when something doesnt meet up to his standards. He still talks about the K6-2's poor FPU performance, and occasionaly he laments upon the 1.13GHz P3 disaster and the Katmai being little more then a P2 w/SSE.
A year from now he will still remind us the Detonator 4's were released just to compete with the R8500, but he will also be reminding us the R8500 was sent out to revievers in a clearly flawed and unfinished state.
Tom is overly critical, and overly judgemental and overly proud. But the last thing I would ever call him is biased.
I don't hate Tom, but I can understand why people do. Tom is very arrogant and has a nasty temper. He can be a very fun person to be around, and has a generous nature... if he likes you. His anger, however, is legendary in the industry, and has made him a number of enemies.
He's extremely intelligent, and very hard working guy with a lot of resources to gather information. He's written some of the most in-depth, through, and complete articles I've ever read.
He's been temendously beneficial to the community in uncovering certain things about Bapco, and the whole P3 1.13GHz debacle, the I820 + MTH recall etc.
His employees.... well, let's just say I don't trust the integrity of many of them.
Half of them are as bad as Overclockers.com's Ed Stroligo... they seem to be out sheerly for the attention and love creating an uproar.
Many of them work for multiple sites at the same time, which in my mind makes them of very dubious character.
None of them seem to be terribly knowledgeable, though they'll write in a style that makes them seem all knowing... they know just enough to convince the average person their extremely knowledgeable, but post statements of fact that are blatantly false at times.
I have no respect for his employees. His past choices in employees have been terrible, and it's continues thus.
As for comments of bias, I disagree... It wasnt so long ago people said the same about Tom being biased towards ATi, and before that it was AMD, and before that it was Intel.
IMHO Tom is not at all biased. He is however extremely judgemental and very vocal about his opinions.
Tom is a vengeful god, he will never let anyone forget when something doesnt meet up to his standards. He still talks about the K6-2's poor FPU performance, and occasionaly he laments upon the 1.13GHz P3 disaster and the Katmai being little more then a P2 w/SSE.
A year from now he will still remind us the Detonator 4's were released just to compete with the R8500, but he will also be reminding us the R8500 was sent out to revievers in a clearly flawed and unfinished state.
Tom is overly critical, and overly judgemental and overly proud. But the last thing I would ever call him is biased.
I don't hate Tom, but I can understand why people do. Tom is very arrogant and has a nasty temper. He can be a very fun person to be around, and has a generous nature... if he likes you. His anger, however, is legendary in the industry, and has made him a number of enemies.
He's extremely intelligent, and very hard working guy with a lot of resources to gather information. He's written some of the most in-depth, through, and complete articles I've ever read.
He's been temendously beneficial to the community in uncovering certain things about Bapco, and the whole P3 1.13GHz debacle, the I820 + MTH recall etc.
His employees.... well, let's just say I don't trust the integrity of many of them.
Half of them are as bad as Overclockers.com's Ed Stroligo... they seem to be out sheerly for the attention and love creating an uproar.
Many of them work for multiple sites at the same time, which in my mind makes them of very dubious character.
None of them seem to be terribly knowledgeable, though they'll write in a style that makes them seem all knowing... they know just enough to convince the average person their extremely knowledgeable, but post statements of fact that are blatantly false at times.
I have no respect for his employees. His past choices in employees have been terrible, and it's continues thus.
I like tom's because of the range of articles it has. The site design annoys me but there's enough content to keep me happy. I'm generally more interested in the benchmarks and product specs than the editorials anyway...
Thanks Rand for doing all the typing for me.
Oh and if it wasn't clear that means I agree with Rand
Oh and if it wasn't clear that means I agree with Rand
No one remembers a few years ago when he was bashing America? :Q
There were some interesting wars here when this was a ubb forum. That convinced me he is low life and will always be a low life.
There were some interesting wars here when this was a ubb forum. That convinced me he is low life and will always be a low life.
What I like about Tom's is that he (and his employees) are very vocal about a products shortcomings. They don't try to fluff up everything to keep from pissing the fan boys off. I think they state their honest opinion, and you can take it as that.
A lot of review sites can't make one negative comment about a product without making 10 fluffy positive comments about it, just so the fanatics won't be screaming "bias!" How many reviews have you read that sound something like this: "The XYZ chipset was somewhat unstable, and unable to complete 3 out of 10 of the tests, but it was loaded with features and XYZ company has come a long way the past few years. And their engineers are really nice and gave us a lot of insight as to why their product failed the tests."
What really matters is that the product fails. Who cares how nice their engineers are? I don't care how far they've come, I care about where they are now. Tell us what is good, what is bad, and if that makes you an opiniated a-hole to the fan boys, then it won't bother me...
Toms also has a lot of good and frequent articles about things other than motherboards and video cards. He has a lot of networking articles that are of good use to me in the IT industry. I still read other sites when something new comes out, Anand's especially, but I consider Toms a valuable resoure.
A lot of review sites can't make one negative comment about a product without making 10 fluffy positive comments about it, just so the fanatics won't be screaming "bias!" How many reviews have you read that sound something like this: "The XYZ chipset was somewhat unstable, and unable to complete 3 out of 10 of the tests, but it was loaded with features and XYZ company has come a long way the past few years. And their engineers are really nice and gave us a lot of insight as to why their product failed the tests."
What really matters is that the product fails. Who cares how nice their engineers are? I don't care how far they've come, I care about where they are now. Tell us what is good, what is bad, and if that makes you an opiniated a-hole to the fan boys, then it won't bother me...
Toms also has a lot of good and frequent articles about things other than motherboards and video cards. He has a lot of networking articles that are of good use to me in the IT industry. I still read other sites when something new comes out, Anand's especially, but I consider Toms a valuable resoure.
Of course I do
Remember Harvey's arguments with him?
Was kinda funny actually.
Was around the same time as he posted in his own forums under some name, wasn't it?
Exactly. I remember that vividly. Screw him and the rest of his anti-American Euro-crash. BIAS in his articles? I wouldn't know. I won't even give his arrogant ass the satisfaction of counter hit.
dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
- 25,759
- 4,281
- 126
Am I the only one who just looks at the benchmarks performed, the test setup, and the results (but skips the conclusions)? I never have time to read a rambling conclusion that may or may not be biased. If you do that, then you get the data you need, and any site is fine. It isn't like they make up the benchmark numbers and are purposely lying about them. The numbers (with the exception of an occasional typo) are perfectly accurate. Tom's Hardware gives the most numbers of any website I've ever seen. He compares the most processors, the most motherboards, etc. in each review. Thus you can get so much good data there before making a decision on what to buy. His tests on power supplies and how they frequently provide 100W less than they are marked explains so much troubles that people have on these forums. I've never seen ANY other site do a test like that. He also tries his best to provide estimates of what future products will run like. Sure they are just estimates, since we don't know the final specs, but they often are damn close when the final product comes out. For these reasons, I love Tom's reviews. I don't ever read the conclusion, and I don't care if he is biased or not, since I don't read that part. I don't read his April fools pages which are full of crap, etc.
Note: While I said all major sites are honest with their benchmark numbers, you still have to put some thought into the test setup. A website that compares the 3000+ Barton on a nForce2 motherboard to the 3.06 GHz P4 with PC66 SDRAM is probably not the best source of information. Sure the numbers are accurate, but who would castrate the P4 that much in real life?
Note: While I said all major sites are honest with their benchmark numbers, you still have to put some thought into the test setup. A website that compares the 3000+ Barton on a nForce2 motherboard to the 3.06 GHz P4 with PC66 SDRAM is probably not the best source of information. Sure the numbers are accurate, but who would castrate the P4 that much in real life?
GTaudiophile
Lifer
- Oct 24, 2000
- 29,767
- 33
- 81
I like Tom's site because I've been reading up on it since the days of K62 and P2's at 450. He has articles up almost every day, unlike a certain site where the "latest" article is a price guide and was posted on the 24th of last month
Seriously.. AT to me is for the forums, I'll check out and article here and there.
Tom can be biased (just like every other site) Also Tom has many other versions of the website. I usually read it in French and Turkish (because of time zones, articles are posted earlier when compared to EST)
He also has a wide range of products not even covered in most other sites.
Tom can be biased (just like every other site) Also Tom has many other versions of the website. I usually read it in French and Turkish (because of time zones, articles are posted earlier when compared to EST)
He also has a wide range of products not even covered in most other sites.
- Aug 22, 2001
- 31,109
- 29,376
- 146
Tom thinks of himself as Übermensch and his propensity for self-aggrandizing is infamous. For myself, in the final analysis his lack of character and tendency to be one overshadows the content of his site to the extent that I like Brian will not support him even indirectly by adding to the traffic@his site.
In addition to Tom's tendency to inflate his reputation, his articles are just so sensationalist I can't stomach them. If they're not exalting Tom or his cronies as the Grand-Almighty Poo-Bah of Reviewing, they're explaining how one company is either Triumphant over its Enemies or it is a Catastropic Failure, each and every product, and it can change from review to review. Tom used to hump AMD's leg when he broke the whole Rambus deal, then with the overclocked P3 scenario. Now he wants to make sweet love to intel.
If I want clear, concise writing with a bare minimum of useless commentary, I write it myself. Otherwise I read anandtech's articles (when they come out).
If I want clear, concise writing with a bare minimum of useless commentary, I write it myself. Otherwise I read anandtech's articles (when they come out).
Originally posted by: Nemesis77
Because:
1. Tom Pabst is an arrogant and pompous ass
2. The design of the website is awful
3. They are biased (GF4 vs. R9700Pro: R9700 is a "pretender to the throne")
4. The whole website is arrogant ("It must be us and us alone that test the new P3 at this speed!")
5. Benchmarks sucks (like the new P4 with 800MHz FSB tests.)
What he said.
One more note about tom being biased: He is VERY biased and will spout his personal opinion as if it's fact. The thing that throws people off is that his opinions change. He'll be Intel's biatch one day and AMD's the next...just depends on who has the market lead sometimes. I also ver much question his benchmarks. They have often been found to contradict others and they are oftentimes completely useless (who the fuk is gonna run a liquid nitrogen based pc on a day to day basis...but gee, that's real special that you pulled it off tom)
AND...
tom pabst is an arrogant pompous ass.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 24K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 19K
-
-
-
Facebook
Twitter