AMD, Roy Taylor, the Nano, and the Press @ [H]

Priller said:
"Quite frankly, I do not even care that HardOCP is not getting a Nano card for review. I really do not."

I don't care about import cars so I couldn't tell you anything about them, yet you "really don't care" and wrote an editorial about it. You do care atleast to some degree and you do come off as butt hurt because typed words carry no tone.

As far as the asshole comment, that's fine, I'm an asshole too but was that really needed to be thrown in there?

To further support my theory that you do care and what others may have taken as whining
"A "bitch" move by Antal Tungler at AMD, but OK nonetheless."

Could have have rephrased to "An unprofessional move by Antal Tungler at AMD in my opinion."


"I would go so far as to point out that AMD sampled a Nano card to HardForum member (Elmy) so that he could post the build in our own forums! (Which I have since removed. Given that our community does not have a Nano focus.)"

So yes by someone from the outside looking in, you do appear butt hurt you didn't get a Nano for one reason or another and even removed the Nano thread, which you seem to have put back. Had you just moved it I would've believed you but removing it completely is more along childish behavior that if you can't have one then you don't want one on your forum.

It was a bad choice that several review sites didn't get one and could they have handled it better. But you could you have handled it better as well with alittle more professionalism.
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I bet they would left well enough alone, but when Roy who is a corp VP at AMD comes out on twitter and said what he did (linked in below). He pretty much called you and your work as biased and unprofessional. Something like that where he is slandering your job as a unbiased tester and reviewer of hardware. They have every right to respond and call Roy out on that BS. First one was about TPU, 2nd one just left a link don't need img to load was refering to Techreport. Even in the story Kyle talked to Roy directly and he said same thing in Email(quoted below the images). When someone in position of Roy being a VP at AMD, calls you journalistic integrity that is something you can't let slide.

1441821752sp4vnIyBH5_2_4.png

http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1441821752sp4vnIyBH5_2_2_l.png

I was responding to a user who asked me about reviews. Antal isn’t being difficult, he’s telling the truth. I stand by the statement that the world needs fair reviews, I am sure you agree, pretty strongly I’d have thought!
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"Kyle, my position is that we need fair reviews. I doubt there is anyone in our entire industry who would disagree. That's the beginning and the end of this."
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Relayer said:
You might need to apologize to the sites that do get one after this post.
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Why would he need to apologize for agreeing that AMD is cherry-picking review sites and rightfully getting called out for it?

The same people that are being willfully ignorant to and defending AMD for doing this underhanded bullshit are amongst the same that threw rocks at Intel for their bullshit past processor fiascos that hindered AMD. But this time it's OK, because it's AMD doing it...right?
 
I'd be curious to know what Roy's testing requirements/resulting metrics are in order for a review to qualify as "fair."
 
I've been reading HardOCP for an awful long time and in that time it's been one of the very few sites where BS has been called for what it is. This is a BS move by AMD and I'm glad you guys are calling them out for it.
 
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Arbit3r said:
When a fool starts saying things like "fair review" in his comments, that is pretty serious slander he used to claim a site has been biased. He pretty much said 3 very large sites haven't been giving them favorable reviews on products they think they should got when well they didn't.
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I think amd should give review cards to the entire tech press, whether the reviews are fair or not. People will sort the misrepresentations out.


That said, I DO think amd had reason to believe that some members at HARD were openly hostile to the nano. It's not just the hanging up, it's the post about what Kyle thought of the nano at the given price. Let me summarize his views on the nano.

overpriced garbage


I have never seen him this angry and hostile to a card before, not even when the titan cards were pushing 3000 dollars, but the nano REALLY pisses him off. It's not crazy to think the site might give an openly hostile review to the part and work to actively convince people it's a terrible product.


Now I am ok with a site doing that, it's incumbent on people as consumers to weed out whether or not other peoples opinions are worth anything. But the deletion of the elmy post of the nano was an example of pure vindictiveness. He did say he was an asshole, so there it is. But Kyle was unhappy with how amd handled the nano rollout, and took it out on one of the avenues they did engage with, case modders. Again, CLEAR signs of open hostility to the product at the given price.

I agree the card is a terrible buy for most people, there is zero reason to put that card in a standard case based on what else is out there. But I am getting a little tired of this shit show people are throwing when AMD decides to charge up the ass for what is presumably the most powerful gpu part in the mini case category. As if AMD is not worthy of charging up the ass, only nvidia can get away with that. Why? Don't think its worth it, don't buy it. I sure as hell won't. And that argument wins the day when nvidia does it, but amd?

Then all of a sudden it's a trash part and the chain of events that leads amd to thinking this is a hostile venue to this particular card (with GOOD REASON btw) commences.
 
Roy comes off as a really sleazy marketing guy. This all stinks of a simple short supply of product and additional fear of unfavorable reviews from a small review sample - hence cherry picking.

Limited supply, sure, that can happen initially.
Cherry picking reviews, that smacks of insecurity & putting out corporate fires.

We can only hope that Gohuri doesn't hit arbitrary walls within the AMD structure and raise the 'ol ATI furnaces. He seemed pretty passionate from the Fury live PR interview.
 
tybert7 said:
I think amd should give review cards to the entire tech press, whether the reviews are fair or not. People will sort the misrepresentations out.


That said, I DO think amd had reason to believe that some members at HARD were openly hostile to the nano. It's not just the hanging up, it's the post about what Kyle thought of the nano at the given price. Let me summarize his views on the nano.

overpriced garbage


I have never seen him this angry and hostile to a card before, not even when the titan cards were pushing 3000 dollars, but the nano REALLY pisses him off. It's not crazy to think the site might give an openly hostile review to the part and work to actively convince people it's a terrible product.


Now I am ok with a site doing that, it's incumbent on people as consumers to weed out whether or not other peoples opinions are worth anything. But the deletion of the elmy post of the nano was an example of pure vindictiveness. He did say he was an asshole, so there it is. But Kyle was unhappy with how amd handled the nano rollout, and took it out on one of the avenues they did engage with, case modders. Again, CLEAR signs of open hostility to the product at the given price.

I agree the card is a terrible buy for most people, there is zero reason to put that card in a standard case based on what else is out there. But I am getting a little tired of this shit show people are throwing when AMD decides to charge up the ass for what is presumably the most powerful gpu part in the mini case category. As if AMD is not worthy of charging up the ass, only nvidia can get away with that. Why? Don't think its worth it, don't buy it. I sure as hell won't. And that argument wins the day when nvidia does it, but amd?

Then all of a sudden it's a trash part and the chain of events that leads amd to thinking this is a hostile venue to this particular card (with GOOD REASON btw) commences.
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The post was deleted AFTER AMD gave him that shitty BS reply and AFTER Roy's bs on Twitter. If a company you generally respected shit on what you spent the last nearly 20 years of your life building I think you'd be a little angry about it to and want to let people know what was going on and you might also take issue with said company advertising on your forum. Elmy's build was an advertisement for the Nano, let's not pretend AMD had any other goals beyond that when they handed out the card to modders.

I don't recall Kyle ever calling the Nano garbage. You'll have to quote that exact statement.
 
@Kyle
I usually stay silent on topics like this one. Btw. I own and run ocaholic.ch so I've had my fair share dealing with AMD as well over here in Europe (Switzerland actually).

Everything at AMD, from top to bottom is a disaster these days and I'm surprised, that the GPUs have been this good for this long. But it looks like they're suffering the same fate as their CPUs have years ago.
And that guy Roy ... I've spent some time reading what he writes on Reddit ... and honestly ... he should stick with twitter. It's better if he goes with only 140 characters and not an entire text. When I read stuff from him, I always get that nasty gut feeling, that someone is trying to play opinions in between the lines.
 
[H] is my go to site for all my PC enthusiast review and forum needs, but I have to admit I think it was a bit too far to remove Elmy's build thread. I feel AMD is in the wrong for denying [H] a review sample, but at the same time I also feel its spiteful and ultimately a bit unprofessional to remove that particular post. After all it was a legitimate discussion topic even if Roy/AMD are being duschy. I respect Kyle's decision on this, however I believe it was the wrong one.

[H] is still my #1 site, but I have to respectfully disagree with this particular decision. I really hope he reconsiders.
 
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Derangel said:
The post was deleted AFTER AMD gave him that shitty BS reply and AFTER Roy's bs on Twitter. If a company you generally respected shit on what you spent the last nearly 20 years of your life building I think you'd be a little angry about it to and want to let people know what was going on and you might also take issue with said company advertising on your forum. Elmy's build was an advertisement for the Nano, let's not pretend AMD had any other goals beyond that when they handed out the card to modders.

I don't recall Kyle ever calling the Nano garbage. You'll have to quote that exact statement.
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The deletion of the nano post was an example clear as day to anyone with an objective mind of a vindictive move. AMD refuses to send hard a card? And one of their guys mentions that reviews need to be fair? Screw AMD. Oh, someone they DID send the card to has a forum post and thinks I'm going to let that post stand and get more attention after they slighted us ?!?!?!?


NOPE !!!! DELETE. Vindictive. You fuck me over, I'll respond in kind. Tit for tat. The thing is that I think the party that took it far more personally was hard, not amd.


Kyle never said the nano was garbage directly, hence me paraphrasing his meaning. His exact words are as follows.

Apparently AMD puts a lot of value in underclocking a GPU, putting it on a smaller PCB, deleting the water cooler, and calling it Nano.


Who thinks that a neutral view of the card? He clearly thinks the card is overpriced garbage, now I AGREE that's it's overpriced. I am not the kind of person willing to pay top dollar for a mini card for a mini case. But I'm sure plenty of others would.

The garbage aspect is entirely determined be the perceived value of the card for the money. I am convinced kyle thinks it's a garbage card at the given price at the presumed performance levels. I do too at that price relative to other cards, people who want the top card for smaller builds? It might not be garbage to them, but Kyle made it clear what he thinks of the card at the price from the get go. This is not hidden people, it's pretty plain as day.
 
tybert7 said:
The deletion of the nano post was an example clear as day to anyone with an objective mind of a vindictive move. AMD refuses to send hard a card? And one of their guys mentions that reviews need to be fair? Screw AMD. Oh, someone they DID send the card to has a forum post and thinks I'm going to let that post stand and get more attention after they slighted us ?!?!?!?


NOPE !!!! DELETE. Vindictive. You fuck me over, I'll respond in kind. Tit for tat. The thing is that I think the party that took it far more personally was hard, not amd.


Kyle never said the nano was garbage directly, hence me paraphrasing his meaning. His exact words are as follows.

Apparently AMD puts a lot of value in underclocking a GPU, putting it on a smaller PCB, deleting the water cooler, and calling it Nano.


Who thinks that a neutral view of the card? He clearly thinks the card is overpriced garbage, now I AGREE that's it's overpriced. I am not the kind of person willing to pay top dollar for a mini card for a mini case. But I'm sure plenty of others would.

The garbage aspect is entirely determined be the perceived value of the card for the money. I am convinced kyle thinks it's a garbage card at the given price at the presumed performance levels. I do too at that price relative to other cards, people who want the top card for smaller builds? It might not be garbage to them, but Kyle made it clear what he thinks of the card at the price from the get go. This is not hidden people, it's pretty plain as day.
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I'm not going to say whether or not I agree with his decision but I can understand why he did it and why he wrote this article. Did you not notice that Kyle let the topic stay when AMD decided not to send them a card? Kyle's posts on the situation between then and Roy's crap didn't appear to be anything other than business as usual. He even tried to get a straight answer from Roy before writing the article to which he received the pr equivalent of a "go fuck yourself". In his shoes I probably would have had a much much stronger reaction to that than Kyle. His reaction may not have been the most professional one but when the professional reaction would be to shut up and accept it I think I'd rather take blunt honesty.

You've been here at least eight years. Do you really think Kyle would have shied away from calling it garbage directly if he thought it was?
 
§kynet;1041846489 said:
Then [H] can try harder. The whole article is downright pathetic and looks to me like it was written in haste and anger. That's my opinion.
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If you think that article was written in "haste and anger" then I can only assume this is your first week using the Internet. There were far too few errors in the article for it to have been written in haste. Actual review articles have more errors in my experience. Heck, I've seen appellate briefs filed in high-stakes court cases that were worse.

As to anger, you seem to base that conclusion on the choice of words. That's not a good criteria. Writers should write for your audience. Express themselves the way the audience does. So who is HardOCP's audience and how do they express themselves? A lot like how Kyle did in that article, I think.

The article was crafted to achieve an effect. And it did. So if it was written in "haste in anger" then Kyle must be a freaking genius at communication.

AMD should hire Kyle to run their PR department. LOL
 
Derangel said:
I'm not going to say whether or not I agree with his decision but I can understand why he did it and why he wrote this article. Did you not notice that Kyle let the topic stay when AMD decided not to send them a card? Kyle's posts on the situation between then and Roy's crap didn't appear to be anything other than business as usual. He even tried to get a straight answer from Roy before writing the article to which he received the pr equivalent of a "go fuck yourself". In his shoes I probably would have had a much much stronger reaction to that than Kyle. His reaction may not have been the most professional one but when the professional reaction would be to shut up and accept it I think I'd rather take blunt honesty.

You've been here at least eight years. Do you really think Kyle would have shied away from calling it garbage directly if he thought it was?
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Sad part in all of that is what Roy did was question their journalistic integrity as a unbiased independent reviewer. It would be like walking in to a UFC ring and questioning one their fighters man hood then slapping them in the face. AMD didn't want them to do a review to make money off review but expected them to host a PR build for AMD for mostly nothing but a selling stunt for AMD. Yea that is just pissing on them and expecting them to ask for more. No modd'er of a site should got a card before the host site did for review. The whole BS on twitter and the response in email's was last straw in the issue.

That mod build isn't gonna sell more then a handful of cards, a review of the card is more likely to sell a lot more.

to quote movie Avatar:
Dr. Grace Augustine: Ya see, ya see? They're just pissing on us without even giving us the courtesy of calling it rain.
 
pcgeekesq said:
If you think that article was written in "haste and anger" then I can only assume this is your first week using the Internet. There were far too few errors in the article for it to have been written in haste. Actual review articles have more errors in my experience. Heck, I've seen appellate briefs filed in high-stakes court cases that were worse.

As to anger, you seem to base that conclusion on the choice of words. That's not a good criteria. Writers should write for your audience. Express themselves the way the audience does. So who is HardOCP's audience and how do they express themselves? A lot like how Kyle did in that article, I think.

The article was crafted to achieve an effect. And it did. So if it was written in "haste in anger" then Kyle must be a freaking genius at communication.

AMD should hire Kyle to run their PR department. LOL
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I'm trying to picture Kyle doing pr for AMD now...If I fall off my bed in a fit of laughter it's all your fault.
 
Going over the head of the Editor in Chief of a reviewing website to reach their GPU editor.

Acting like a moron in twitter. Using twitter. Acting like a moron. Quoting moronic stats on moronic twitter.

Accusing reviewers of being 'unfair'. Sorry mr GPU maker, it's not up to you, it's up to the real world users to call BS or agree with the review.

Roy:
"That's the beginning and the end of this" holy meth-benzo-pcp-ritalin Batman! "I will stage the reviewer landscape as I please, not thinking that the reviewers themselves know about the backlash they'd receive for clear bias. "

Kyle:
"I have happened across Roy’s path a few times in my HardOCP career. I had lunch with him one time right after AMD had purchased ATI. Roy was working at NVIDIA then. Roy went on to tell me how the ATI brand would immediately fade in less than 12 months and that AMD/ATI would never again produce a "high end GPU." I disagreed with Roy on both these fronts and he argued his case, and even offered to bet me cash that he was right. "

There is no further need for me to comment. I will link tech oriented friends to this so we can all have a chuckle at Roy's ego.

disclaimer:
I like to play with cheap 22nm Pentiums and grin at how capable they are. I love cheap AMD octocores. Roy, you're not 'the one'.
 
tybert7 said:
The deletion of the nano post was an example clear as day to anyone with an objective mind of a vindictive move.
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I call BS. If I invite you to my pool party and you pee in the pool, you should expect that you will no longer be welcome. Nothing vindictive about it.

Here, we had AMD sponsoring a promotional campaign of having someone build a nano system in this website's forums, and then AMD pees in the pool by impugning the integrity of the website. Given that a reputation for integrity is one of the assets this site relies on for its success, I think kicking AMD's promo effort out of the pool was an entirely appropriate response.
 
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pcgeekesq said:
I call BS. If I invite you to my pool party and you pee in the pool, you should expect that you will no longer be welcome. Nothing vindictive about it.

Here, we had AMD sponsoring a promotional campaign of having someone build a nano system in this website's forums, and then AMD pees in the pool by impugning the integrity of the website. Given that a reputation integrity is one of the assets this site relies on for its success, I think kicking AMD's promo effort out of the pool was an entirely appropriate response.
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I think a better analogy would be kicking the messenger into the bottomless pit of death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkWS9PiXekE

Except the elmy guy was more innocent with no back talk, he was literally just posting what he'd gotten from the "poisoned chalice" of being associated AMDs nano marketing. His thread was the thing to lash out against beyond words and a post, and so it was nuked.
 
Goty said:
Hands up, who is expecting a completely objective Nano review, now? Anyone?

*crickets chirping*
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I do, thats part of the reason I'd read the review anyway.

I've never seen anything but sensible out of the reviews done by the guys here. Brent, Paul, Kyle, so on and so forth, going way back.

If something is a piece of shit, I'd like to know that. If its awesome, I'd like to know that, if your review sounds like a fucking cut and paste from their marketing material, I want you to hang yourself with your own foreskin.

Are people bothered by this, sure, of course they are. But, I don't think a $600 video card is gonna break the bank here, and if they don't want to supply one, they don't have to, but they also shouldn't be surprised when the review comes out, pro or con, good or bad, its going to be from the viewpoint of someone who just spent $650 for a video card, are they going to get their moneys worth?

Unless we're talking DX12, AMD's cards are getting beat up lately, and even that holds to be seen if its going to be a systemwide improvement or not. As a long time AMD buyer, and Radeon fan, I hope it does. But I was thoroughly upset by the 390 launch, it felt like a relabeled 290 and nothing more.
 
tybert7 said:
I think a better analogy would be kicking the messenger into the bottomless pit of death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkWS9PiXekE

Except the elmy guy was more innocent with no back talk, he was literally just posting what he'd gotten from the "poisoned chalice" of being associated AMDs nano marketing. His thread was the thing to lash out against beyond words and a post, and so it was nuked.
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His thread was an advertisement for a product AMD insists none of us are interested in. Elmy was caught in the crossfire but it's no different than if it were a banner ad for a product and the company behind it said we had no interest in the thing being advertised.
 
atp1916 said:
I'd be curious to know what Roy's testing requirements/resulting metrics are in order for a review to qualify as "fair."
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"Fair" = Kyle guarantees the [H] Editor's Choice Award upfront, Fedex delivers a Nano and couple of free mousepads next morning.
 
So this is all just a matter of reviewers' egos being bruised because actual modders/enthusiasts got samples before them?

I've seen the same kind of tantrum when my 4 year old niece gets a treat after her 14 month old brother does.
 
>we dont care about not getting nano, we trully dont
>now let me in painstaking details describe how people around us got nano and we were excluded and not even told, and how people talked about nano,in several paragraphs
>and how its not fair and most of all its not fair to you

opening paragraph is so cringy in context of to the rest of the rant
 
I've been a long time lurker and poster here. I love this site and the way they review hardware. I use this site as one metric to evaluate hardware and wholeheartedly acknowledge that H throughout the years has helped move the hardware gaming enthusiast community/industry forward in one way or another....but

I think much surrounding the FIJI launch got out of hand here at H and I think a lot of focus has had to do with current AMD pricing and current AMD marketing and less on the hardware aspects itself. I got this feeling after the initial Fury X review;

I read the latest Fury reviews from H and over all I didn't think they were fair. Concentrating its efforts on discrediting the card's marketing more so than concentrating on the card itself in the fury X review must of pissed off a few people at AMD. Also the fact that their gaming review suit is basically all hairworks games, except for BF4 which is also known to favour NV, certainly does not help to make AMD feel that the review was fair.

Giving it no award whatsoever considering its advanced HBM tech, its GCN compute and gaming capabilities, its small form factor, its very capable cooling tech and last but not least its subjectively cool looks is also unfair. Most sites gave it an award. Just the new HBM tech warranted one. Then that cooler that does a marvelous job at keeping the card cool and quiet under load. I mean there were many positives about this card but the review seemed hell bent on proving the over the top PR marketing wrong, that the card wasn't worth 650$ and that it couldn't be a viable 4k card even though it was still, in my view one of the best 4k cards on the market.

You know in the end there are people working on this tech year in and year out. People that have been working on fury and hbm for years. People like you and me that need their jobs. To then have the card seemingly unfairly reviewed by one of the worlds largest review sites by concentrating mostly on proving overhyped marketing wrong(mostly by fanboys and hardware enthusiast news sites) and that the card is over priced has gotta sting. People can lose their jobs. Companies can lose much valued market share with reviews like this. So yes I can understand AMD's viewpoint about wanting fair and professional reviews that don't look like a hit job when you read them.
 
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Lorien said:
So this is all just a matter of reviewers' egos being bruised because actual modders/enthusiasts got samples before them?
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This is about the fact AMD claimed wasn't enough review samples to go around, then on twitter said it was about getting "fair review" making the assertion that sites that didn't get one weren't gonna give them a fair review in their eye's. Aka attack their integrity as unbiased reviews. Can't let someone question your manhood in front of the world and let it slide. Only ones that have bruised ego's is AMD, and this is the response they got for pissing on the people that help sell their products.
How many cards would that modder sell vs a reviewer? its not even comparable. On top of it that said modder is directly working for AMD. I agree with not hosting the mod since its free bandwidth and hosting for a company that making claim you are biased and unfair reviewer.


pcgeekesq said:
I call BS. If I invite you to my pool party and you pee in the pool, you should expect that you will no longer be welcome. Nothing vindictive about it.

Here, we had AMD sponsoring a promotional campaign of having someone build a nano system in this website's forums, and then AMD pees in the pool by impugning the integrity of the website. Given that a reputation for integrity is one of the assets this site relies on for its success, I think kicking AMD's promo effort out of the pool was an entirely appropriate response.
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^ explains it well.
 
Lorien said:
So this is all just a matter of reviewers' egos being bruised because actual modders/enthusiasts got samples before them?

I've seen the same kind of tantrum when my 4 year old niece gets a treat after her 14 month old brother does.
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Because [H], Techreport, Techpowerup are all sites that don't review cards like the nano. Oh wait... they especially review high end cards. It's okay anandtech gots it covered...
 
cageymaru said:
AMD is picking review websites that will bow to them and give them a favorable review at this time.
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That's absolute BS, frankly. Linus, Nvidia fanboy-in-chief, is one of the people they've sent a sample to. A man who recently basically called AMD irrelevant when he excluded them from a video about graphics card drivers, saying that he was "reaching 80% of his audience" by focusing on Nvidia. Guru3D have a Nano and I've always found Hilbert to be extremely impartial and one of the best graphics card reviewers out there. Other sites like TweakTown that I've never seen accused of bias have one. Apparently AMD are really, really bad at choosing their shills. :rolleyes:

This article is cringeworthy. It's hilarious how "journalists" like this start stamping their feet and spit the dummy when they don't get their free swag. I own a 980 Ti and have no great love for AMD any more, but this assassination piece made me delete HardOCP from my bookmarks. It's just incredibly unprofessional.
 
Aretak said:
That's absolute BS, frankly. Linus, Nvidia fanboy-in-chief, is one of the people they've sent a sample to. A man who recently basically called AMD irrelevant when he excluded them from a video about graphics card drivers, saying that he was "reaching 80% of his audience" by focusing on Nvidia. Guru3D have a Nano and I've always found Hilbert to be extremely impartial and one of the best graphics card reviewers out there. Other sites like TweakTown that I've never seen accused of bias have one. Apparently AMD are really, really bad at choosing their shills. :rolleyes:

This article is cringeworthy. It's hilarious how "journalists" like this start stamping their feet and spit the dummy when they don't get their free swag. I own a 980 Ti and have no great love for AMD any more, but this assassination piece made me delete HardOCP from my bookmarks. It's just incredibly unprofessional.
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So AMD should be allowed to question unjustly the reputation and integrity of a sites reviews with no proof what so ever in such a public forum as twitter and be allowed to get away with it? Not just same AMD worker, its a VP at AMD that did it, what he did was pretty much slander and piss on them. Sorry words like that deserve and get valid retaliation. Funny you say what HardOCP did was unprofessional but what VP of a company did was?

Not only here but also Techpowerup and Techreport that had their name slandered as well had articles about this as well. Pointing out what AMD did to everyone. They have a right to defend their brand.
 
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Dear people who question why Kyle brought this to our attention:

I, for one, am very interested to know that AMD is apparently cherry-picking review sites for those they think will give them a positive review. This tells me several things:

  1. They know their card isn't the best, but they want to hide it. This demonstrates, at very best, complete disdain and disrespect for their own customers.
  2. They have a complete lack of understanding of how people would react to this. How they could possibly, POSSIBLY, think that this would come out as a positive is beyond me. How someone who is a social media marketer could respond the way he has beggars belief.
  3. They're getting very, very desperate. Unfortunately for them, things like this are going to hurt them far more than a possible negative review would have.

I just dunno what to say about this. We need AMD - to provide competition, to compete with nVidia - thereby causing both of them to push the envelope on technology and prices. As much as I love my 970 GTX, I don't want to see a world without competition for nVidia. AMD needs to be there. But this? this is something else... something incredibly foolish and juvenile. AMD have a hell of a lot to prove to me as a consumer before I'd ever consider looking at them again, and they just keep on driving themselves as hard as humanly possible to dig that hole deeper and deeper and deeper.

Personally speaking, I really appreciate Kyle and [H] bringing this to my attention.

Now, I could be wrong in this... The Nano could be a fantastic card and the reasons alluded to by AMD could be completely above board,and I could be completely in error. This quote from Kyle comes back to mind though:

"But if the hardware is so awesome why don’t you let it stand on its own?"

Sorry AMD, this is a monumental fail on every level imaginable.
 
One more thing... if it had been nVidia who had done this instead of AMD, every single one of the people who are jumping up in defense of AMD would be tearing nVidia a new asshole. Anyone who can't see this for what it is needs to stop drinking the kool-aid. Seriously.
 
Spyhawk said:
I've been a long time lurker and poster here. I love this site and the way they review hardware. I use this site as one metric to evaluate hardware and wholeheartedly acknowledge that H throughout the years has helped move the hardware gaming enthusiast community/industry forward in one way or another....but

I think much surrounding the FIJI launch got out of hand here at H and I think a lot of focus has had to do with current AMD pricing and current AMD marketing and less on the hardware aspects itself. I got this feeling after the initial Fury X review;

I read the latest Fury reviews from H and over all I didn't think they were fair. Concentrating its efforts on discrediting the card's marketing more so than concentrating on the card itself in the fury X review must of pissed off a few people at AMD. Also the fact that their gaming review suit is basically all hairworks games, except for BF4 which is also known to favour NV, certainly does not help to make AMD feel that the review was fair.

Giving it no award whatsoever considering its advanced HBM tech, its GCN compute and gaming capabilities, its small form factor, its very capable cooling tech and last but not least its subjectively cool looks is also unfair. Most sites gave it an award. Just the new HBM tech warranted one. Then that cooler that does a marvelous job at keeping the card cool and quiet under load. I mean there were many positives about this card but the review seemed hell bent on proving the over the top PR marketing wrong, that the card wasn't worth 650$ and that it couldn't be a viable 4k card even though it was still, in my view one of the best 4k cards on the market.

You know in the end there are people working on this tech year in and year out. People that have been working on fury and hbm for years. People like you and me that need their jobs. To then have the card seemingly unfairly reviewed by one of the worlds largest review sites by concentrating mostly on proving overhyped marketing wrong(mostly by fanboys and hardware enthusiast news sites) and that the card is over priced has gotta sting. People can lose their jobs. Companies can lose much valued market share with reviews like this. So yes I can understand AMD's viewpoint about wanting fair and professional reviews that don't look like a hit job when you read them.
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This is basically my thoughts. Though I believe AMD is handling this horribly, I just cannot bring myself to ignore all the bullshit around the Fury line at HardOCP. The Nano thread just blew me away. Constant putdowns of pretty cool tech that as far as we know performs well enough to fit some niche given its extremely small size (don't give me the crap of "the fury X is the same but better, totally! everyone has space for the rad and fan, duh!"). Just because it doesn't super-wow them.

I get that FuryX and Fury didn't exactly live up to hype, and aren't exactly leaders in the price per fps lineup, but holy shit.

It's one thing to say "meh, overhyped" and move on. It's another to say "I don't know who is going to buy this card, someone tell me?" and "I guess you really have to pay a premium for lower power, cool running, quiet video cards these days." Then, after not being given one of the cards THEY DISPARAGED ON THEIR OWN SITE, create a whiny-sounding (even if justified!) public front-page 3-page rant saying "totally not whining, really guys, man we didn't get one, so unfair, and look at this dick". It's just so damn childish.

Of course AMD didn't think you're impartial when you spewed that kind of vitriol. And I'm certain they don't think so now, regardless of how they might "apologize" later. Neutral? NO!

I'm not saying AMD's not at fault either. This whole "legit review" thing is stupid and almost seems planned to blow up in their face, and the PR guys sounds like a dick. It was stupid of them to not just say "supply issues" regardless of their intentions, and a major PR fuckup.

I'm just more disappointed with HardOCP in this case.

It's one of the reasons I've rarely read the opening/final comments in [H] reviews or read the rant articles lately, and only read the raw data which is still accurate as far as I can see. The game selection can sometimes lean one way or another, but that's often just a case of what's popular on the market at the time. The base reviews are great, informative! Everything around them, not so much.
 
Aretak said:
That's absolute BS, frankly. Linus, Nvidia fanboy-in-chief, is one of the people they've sent a sample to. A man who recently basically called AMD irrelevant when he excluded them from a video about graphics card drivers, saying that he was "reaching 80% of his audience" by focusing on Nvidia. Guru3D have a Nano and I've always found Hilbert to be extremely impartial and one of the best graphics card reviewers out there. Other sites like TweakTown that I've never seen accused of bias have one. Apparently AMD are really, really bad at choosing their shills. :rolleyes:

This article is cringeworthy. It's hilarious how "journalists" like this start stamping their feet and spit the dummy when they don't get their free swag. I own a 980 Ti and have no great love for AMD any more, but this assassination piece made me delete HardOCP from my bookmarks. It's just incredibly unprofessional.
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I see several people here such as yourself who keeps accusing [H] of whining about not getting a review sample while completely ignoring everything else related, and I have to wonder if you guys have actually followed the issue here closely since like a week ago or so, or at least read the article.

Firstly, [H] was invited to the paper launch, conference call, etc regarding Nano. Kyle was even in the process of putting together a SFF system specifically to test Nano. And then in the end, AMD decided not to send them a review sample. That's just poor on AMD's side. If they do not intend on sending [H] a review, why bother invited them to the launch in the first place?

But even then, that's not the real problem here. Kyle have said he will purchase one and do the review, it just wouldn't be out on launch like what we would expect. So we as the readers should be aware of AMD not sending [H] a review sample so we shouldn't expect a review on release.

The problem here is Roy Taylor then went on to accuse Tech Report and Tech Power Up of being biased. Now you may say that it's just his opinion, but when you look at the context of this tweet, he was replying to questions regarding why these sites did not receive a review sample. Therefore he's implying that AMD, as a company, thinks these sites are biased. That's just dumb and juvenile. You don't do that when you are running a company, well unless you intend to run it into ground.

So it was Roy Taylor himself that brought the shitstorm onto AMD. If you want to get mad, you should take it up with him. He's the one acting unprofessional, shitting on sites that review his product for the potential customers.


ps: IMO, anyone who is concern about AMD's survival should be concern about this, rather than sweeping it under the rug, accuse [H] of just being anti AMD and assume everything is fine. AMD isn't in a good shape financially, they cannot afford to keep shooting themself in the foot with piss poor PR. I personally do not want to see AMD go under and have no competition in what is arguably two of the more important and expensive part of PC building, the CPU and GPU. Yet I can only shake my head when I look at how they are conducting their PR at the moment.
 
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DejaWiz said:
Why would he need to apologize for agreeing that AMD is cherry-picking review sites and rightfully getting called out for it?

The same people that are being willfully ignorant to and defending AMD for doing this underhanded bullshit are amongst the same that threw rocks at Intel for their bullshit past processor fiascos that hindered AMD. But this time it's OK, because it's AMD doing it...right?
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Because of claiming that sites who are getting samples are not going to do fair and impartial reviews. Like writing a conclusion about a card that hasn't been reviewed yet is wrong and so is claiming sites are going to write biased reviews before the reviews have even been published.

Ever occur to someone that if AMD is doing this out of malice it's because of something [H] or TPU have already done? Show me prior AMD bias by sites who are getting cards. At least that's something we can look at the the site can defend themselves, if they choose. But accusing them of bias before the fact is just wrong.

atp1916 said:
I'd be curious to know what Roy's testing requirements/resulting metrics are in order for a review to qualify as "fair."
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I think you need to ask what it is that makes them unfair.
 
Amaroth said:
I've been reading [H]ardocp since 98-00. Far too long to actually remember a precise date. The only bias I have ever seen [H] display is bias and loyalty to its readers. Ive seen praise for 3dfx, Ati, Nvidia, Amd, Intel and numerous other brands and products. Ive also seen [H] turn around and point out the flaws and fuck ups. [H]ardocp will always be my #1 source of information due to their integrity and knowledge.
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This. I know im a "n00b" from a post count but I first discovered this site back in late 90s because i was a poor college student and i wanted to maximize my dollar/performance ratio for the hardware that i took on an extra job to pay for. I have been a loyal reader ever since because this site was not only fair and unbiased toward all the products reviewed, but Kyles personality resonated with my own; that is, no bullshit, no fluff approach to hardware review.(As well as his ability and courage to "telling like it is"). Now, i am older, wiser and have some spare cash but that doesnt mean that i am going to piss my money away on a product like the Nano(t). dollar/performance ratio is even more important to me now that we know that big corporations really dont give a crap about us except taking our hard earned cash. Kyle and the rest of the gangs are in the frontline in fight against hardware manufacturer spin wizards and bullshit producers who thinks that nice bullet points, alluring ads and past accomplishments are enough for us to keep buying their products. Not if you are a [H]ardocp reader!

Keep up the great work Kyle! (and the rest of the crew!)
 
Cobalt35 said:
One more thing... if it had been nVidia who had done this instead of AMD, every single one of the people who are jumping up in defense of AMD would be tearing nVidia a new asshole. Anyone who can't see this for what it is needs to stop drinking the kool-aid. Seriously.
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The only way I see this saga is AMD is so insecure of their own $650 card that they don't even want it in the hands of reviewers. So what if certain reviewers they perceived to be biased against them are actually biased...What, they can't make a proper rebuttal like cross reference the results with some other reputable reviewer or do follow-ups? Shitty excuses are shitty.

I bet NV is laughing their asses off seeing how they didn't have to do anything but yet AMD has managed to torpedo themselves even harder this time given the latter's already terrible PR and marketing.

Now I see why reality has an AMD bias.
 
Kyle, despite some jerk being in charge of AMD's PR, you could dial it back a bit man. You could just have said nothing and released a [this is where a review of Nano was supposed to go].

I mean, this guy appears to be a monumental jerk. My theory is thusly: Nano was the goal chip. Nano was supposed to be the Fury. Nano wasn't ready so Fiji cards were obviously in production much earlier...but they were essentially the 'dev' cards. HBM production did not meet demand and they hadn't streamlined power and tertiary issues, so they plunked some Fiji's into essentially older hardware.

The Nano is then the card they intended to deliver, but they might not have the inventory to do so.

I understand this guy is a jerk, but you don't gotta be a jerk back. Just acknowledge the jerky thing he has done with a non-post header [Radeon Nano - the review that should have been here, isn't]

Like, to dig into his twitter and social media and speculate debases you to the exact level you are demonizing.
 
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