Beyond3D Forums Close & Delete Benchmarking Discussion.

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Beyond3D Forums Close & Delete Discussion.

UPDATE: The thread has been reopened, please go give it a read, and act like adults when we are visiting others. :)

Seems as though the guys over at the B3D forums could not stand the heat and have closed & deleted a thread that I was contributing to. It was a great discussion on the way video cards are evaluated. I would love to see the topic picked up here. You can be assured as long as the rules are followed, we will not certainly not lock the thread or go as far as to delete it.

It also called into question comments made by another editor in the past as you can see linked below. My position was that his past comments were so off-the-deep-end that his current comments had not value to me.

Here was my last post to the thread. Maybe this will spark some good conversation here. Feel free to take the topic up here. Those guys crack me up sometimes. :D

_____________________________________

I guess our ATI vendetta and disconnection to the community was only in terms of what we had never written about the GTO GPU. That is reaching, but I will swallow that if you will. ;)

Back to the topic at hand.

There have been some good opinions shared here and while we do very much voice our opinion at HardOCP, we fully support other sites that "do it differently" and we do not doubt that there are people that find value in the data. We started our program over two years ago in this regard and think it is time it evolved a bit more this year. Sadly, there will be those slings and arrows we suffer because some disagree with using real gaming experiences to measure a cards value at delivering real gaming experiences.

We will continue to link others that do it differently, but we will continue to evangelize our own programs. I am very sure we have never stood by a "HardOCP is the end-all be-all" to video card coverage, and I am very sure that we have repeatedly encouraged our readers to look elsewhere to make sure they have broader view of information. And yes, we still link sites that harshly criticize us at having vendettas and not being in touch with the community on certain video card topics.
 
The Equalizer said:
What was the discussion about?
Click to expand...

The overall discussion was about the real world gaming benchmarks we use compared to other ways of doing it. I really wish they had not deleted the 3 page thread. :(
 
I am in the fortunate position that I get to surf a lot during work hours. I read all sorts of sites and forums, and I do not believe that [H] has a vendetta against ATI.

Reading that link through, it seems that this was an attempt to just bash Kyle.

So although I am leaving this comment, I feel it is probably fruitless for me to contribute further.

And yeah you guessed it.

We still luv ya Kyle. Keep up the good fight.
 
Kyle I don't see why how evaluations are done should be a pissing contest. I personally like how you review GPU's.

I have been around long enough to see +'s and -'s in all reviews.

My main interest in reviews is to find problems that I am not aware of. As I sell both NV and ATI. I feel a need to get other peoples insights.

I personnally Show both cards is comparable rigs . So that customers can make a apples to apples decision. I really find it laughable that people buy hardware based on 1 reviewers experiance.

As for B3D I like how they do their reviews also . They go more into the technacial aspects of GPU's and its very good work . Sometimes though it getts a little to techanial for the average reader.
 
Kyle, defender of the right to free speech!

Hmm, I wonder when Dave Baumann will pop his head in here to post as to why he and his site "couldn't take the heat?" Oh, wait, he can't because he was banned here for--oh my stars and garters!--daring to have a discussion with Brent.

Kyle if you weren't married I'd think you were gay, the way you apparently thrive on drama.
 
$BangforThe$ said:
Kyle I don't see why how evaluations are done should be a pissing contest. I personally like how you review GPU's.

I have been around long enough to see +'s and -'s in all reviews.
Click to expand...

Totally agreed - There's more than one way to skin a cat, and as I was saying in the Beyond 3D thread the mix of reviewing techniques across different sites can allow a user to get the full picture of a board in a way that they perhaps wouldn't by only reading a single review or style of review.
 
John Reynolds said:
Kyle if you weren't married I'd think you were gay, the way you apparently thrive on drama.
Click to expand...

Now I take offence.
Thugh I am not gay, I find this kind of derogatory use of being "gay" makes me sick.
Here in DK gay people are considered normal people with the right to marry.
Only ones that bash gay people are either religious...or homofobic...

Terra - I now understand why you need hate-crime bills in the USA...if the is the accepted "norm" regarding how you view gay people in the US :confused:
 
Hopefully there will be some constructive comments posted. As far as reviews go, reading only one review is never a wise choice. What I like to do is find all the reviews for a product i'm interested in, and look at the conclusions drawn from all sites as a whole. [H]'s review method shows me exactly what i'm looking for in hardware. Other sites may have synthetic benches and apples to apples which also gets factored into my end decision as well.

This may be a weak analogy but its like trying to find a good movie. One of my friends may tell me how great the action was, another would tell me how poor the plot was, and I may hear from someone else how great the CG was in the movie. Would I go see the movie based on one of those? Maybe if I wanted to waste 2 hours of my life, I would check all of my resources and decide based on my findings.
 
Dave is a good guy, I like him, he gets down to the technical facts and is very fair, he's got a good site and pumps out good info, but I think he would agree that there is a bias on the forum, and one he's probably not thrilled over.

I honestly think a lot of people on the forum there have lost touch with what gamers want and get out of a video card. I think you can be so involved in something that you lose touch with what the target audience wants for a product, I think that's the problem with some people on the forum there.

But the site itself pumps out great information and does appeal to their audience. That's what it comes down to, your audience. We try and appeal to the gamer, it's just a different audience, and that's ok. We give good information, they give good information, so read as many websites as you can and draw your own conclusion.

Hugs for everyone

/i'm in a loopy mood caused by lack of sleep ;)
 
As for how the benchmarks should be run I like [H]ard's approch.
It's the same way I play with RES/IQ/AA/AF settings in each game to find out where the max playable setting is :)

I don't care how many 100's FPS a GPU outputs, I care about where the limit is for the card in real-world gaming(the more whistles and bells the better).
This should be coupled with a "feel of the game".
Eg. CoD2 feels much smoother (IMHO) at ~30fps than Farcry feels at ~50-60 fps

Terra...
 
I learned early on that deleting one's own posts is a fast track to losing all credibility. If you say something wrong or stupid, own up to it.

To have a website deleting posts and whole threads takes this to a whole new level. If you don't like the content of the thread so it gets deleted....wow, that's really close to censorship.

My opinion, as someone who is a user of graphics cards, not an evaluator or a hardware developer/engineer is slightly different than some others. Personally, I don't mind if there are driver optimizations that increase performance of a card. To me, those are good things. If the optimizations have a nearly unnoticable effect on IQ, but yield a 10% performance increase then I like them, leave them enabled, and just don't post my benchmarks on the ORB's. Those optimizations sometimes allow for running higher res or more eye candy that, in turn has a net positive effect on IQ.

Obviously, my opinion would not translate into an effective way to evaluate the truest hardware capabilities of a given part. However, when it comes to evaluation, the [ H ] has it about as close as anybody. If you look at the benchmarks, you see what a given card can do in each game.

One thing that I would like to see added to the reviews here is the inclusion of older parts' performance such as in the motherboard reviews. It's nice to be able to compare at a glance the performance of an FX-55 to a Tbred 2400+ in their respective platforms. Similarly, I would like to see the difference between the resolutions that a 9800XT, a 6600GT, and a 7800GT can pull off in the same game. This would help a user like me to evaluate when is the right time to upgrade.

But, back to the OP topic. Deleting posts and threads is not cool and I would hope that most people know better.
 
Terra said:
Now I take offence.
Thugh I am not gay, I find this kind of derogatory use of being "gay" makes me sick.
Here in DK gay people are considered normal people with the right to marry.
Only ones that bash gay people are either religious...or homofobic...

Terra - I now understand why you need hate-crime bills in the USA...if the is the accepted "norm" regarding how you view gay people in the US
Click to expand...

Dude, you're jerking your knee. I was a liberal arts major in college and was severely disappointed last night at the Oscars that Brokeback Mountain, my favorite nominated film, didn't win for best picture. I have gay friends, so I know first-hand that gay men, like women, tend to thrive more on drama than heterosexual men. Besides, it was just a little jabbie-pooh and nothing to get all worked up over.

Kyle, that's cool that you reversed your former stand, though I still think you were itching for a fight by posting that thread on your front page. Once I read that I expected the thread to be locked/deleted, though that said I had written a long post blasting a few people for jumping on you for the car you drive (how that related to that thread, or is even anyone's business, is beyond me). Almost posted it, but decided I didn't want to get into the middle of it (at least until your "true colors" meme).
 
John Reynolds said:
Kyle, defender of the right to free speech!

Hmm, I wonder when Dave Baumann will pop his head in here to post as to why he and his site "couldn't take the heat?" Oh, wait, he can't because he was banned here for--oh my stars and garters!--daring to have a discussion with Brent.

Kyle if you weren't married I'd think you were gay, the way you apparently thrive on drama.
Click to expand...

Dave is a pretty cool guy very very smart. I do feel that if a topic doesn't fit or may derail a thread he is a little quik. With delete option. As I am a student of history these kind of actions remind me of THE BOOK BURNINGS that appeared in the late 30's Party and country of actions not mentioned.

Free speech is constantly being deleted in USA forums and this really does piss me off. You can tell when someone has stepped over the line usually. But I have seen at many forums were people have been banned for stating their options without crossing the line .

I think all americans should step back a little bit and take a look at were Blogs and forums are constantly going against the law of this great country.
 
John Reynolds said:
Kyle, defender of the right to free speech!

Hmm, I wonder when Dave Baumann will pop his head in here to post as to why he and his site "couldn't take the heat?" Oh, wait, he can't because he was banned here for--oh my stars and garters!--daring to have a discussion with Brent.

Kyle if you weren't married I'd think you were gay, the way you apparently thrive on drama.
Click to expand...

An apparently literate man makes a prejudiced statement about gays in print, that's something you don't see often in this century. :eek:
 
$BangforThe$ said:
Dave is a pretty cool guy very very smart. I do feel that if a topic doesn't fit or may derail a thread he is a little quik. With delete option. As I am a student of history these kind of actions remind me of THE BOOK BURNINGS that appeared in the late 30's Party and country of actions not mentioned.

Free speech is constantly being deleted in USA forums and this really does piss me off. You can tell when someone has stepped over the line usually. But I have seen at many forums were people have been banned for stating their options without crossing the line .

I think all americans should step back a little bit and take a look at were Blogs and forums are constantly going against the law of this great country.
Click to expand...

Free speech?
*LOL*
I am a dane, from Denmark.
Not one US media has printed the "12 cartoons"(the whole mohammed-affair) from Denmark
There is no true freedom of speech in the USA.
You guys have a self-censorship in the name of religion...

Terra - Sorry for going OT...
 
Kyle,
What i would really like to see is more high resolution benchmarks. For us running big inch displays, we tend to need high performance cards.
Also, the issue of opts also came up in that thread. I can instantly notice when an nVidia card is running opts in D3D games. It looks like crap, and doesn't deserve a quality rating. I don't know about recent ATI cards and their opts but nVidia's suck and imho they skew benchmarks.
 
KENNYB said:
I don't know about recent ATI cards and their opts but nVidia's suck and imho they skew benchmarks.
Click to expand...
It may skew benchmarks but it won't skew screenshots and a gamers opinion, both of which are included in [H]'s benches. I've seen plenty of reviews where Brent mentions which card has the IQ advantage in which games. Personally I only play oh HQ with Nvidia cards because of the IQ. I also believe Brent mentioned that he will be including High Res/Widescreen in the near future.
 
Desdenova said:
An apparently literate man makes a prejudiced statement about gays in print, that's something you don't see often in this century.
Click to expand...

If I say African Americans like watermelon, is that a prejudiced statement? A lot of people will probably say yes, but to me it's the context in which the statement is made that should be the barometer by which to gauge whether or not the perceived prejudice was intentional.

That said, if I also wrote that Germans like their beer what would the general reaction be?
 
John Reynolds said:
If I say African Americans like watermelon, is that a prejudiced statement? A lot of people will probably say yes, but to me it's the context in which the statement is made that should be the barometer by which to gauge whether or not the perceived prejudice was intentional.

That said, if I also wrote that Germans like their beer what would the general reaction be?
Click to expand...

Thin...
Thinnere...
This "excuse"...

Terra...
 
To me, HardOCP isn't biased at all. They lean towards the better GPU at the time. The remarks they made for the ATI chipset were warranted, and NVIDIA has had their share of the bashing as well.

I don't just read one review and make my decision. I look at a lot of them. Different hardware, different methods, etc.. HardOCP does a great job with the maximum playable settings approach. Beyond3D goes into a lot of technical detail. If you don't like either, skip over that part.

The ATI/NVIDIA war is starting to end up sounding like politics. I've seen some people get REALLY worked up over George W. Bush. Others love the guy. ATI has some loyal followers, so does NVIDIA. I was a HUGE NVIDIA fan before the release of the 9700Pro. Then ATI brought the eye candy with great framerates. I was hooked. Now that NVIDIA has the lead (depending on who you talk to!;)), I'm leaning more towards them.

I personally would like to see different configurations; i.e. A top of the line video card tested with a low end, medium, and high end PC. It should show a point of diminishing return. If you have a high end PC, this is the card, otherwise skip it. Or: The video card is still the limiting factor is such and such game. It would appeal to a larger audience, as well. I see a LOT of people asking if a video card would be the bottleneck, or if the CPU would. I guess this would answer the question.

Kyle, don't worry. We know you're not gay. Steve's the one that wear's the bra's in the HardOCP lair. :D
 
KENNYB said:
Kyle,
What i would really like to see is more high resolution benchmarks. For us running big inch displays, we tend to need high performance cards.
Also, the issue of opts also came up in that thread. I can instantly notice when an nVidia card is running opts in D3D games. It looks like crap, and doesn't deserve a quality rating. I don't know about recent ATI cards and their opts but nVidia's suck and imho they skew benchmarks.
Click to expand...


That is already being done, you will see it in upcoming articles. Thank Brent for that one...and his expanding budget. :eek:

On the optimizations front, I will let Brent chime in on that one as he has tons more first hand experience than I do recently.
 
John Reynolds said:
Dude, you're jerking your knee. I was a liberal arts major in college and was severely disappointed last night at the Oscars that Brokeback Mountain, my favorite nominated film, didn't win for best picture. I have gay friends, so I know first-hand that gay men, like women, tend to thrive more on drama than heterosexual men. Besides, it was just a little jabbie-pooh and nothing to get all worked up over.

Kyle, that's cool that you reversed your former stand, though I still think you were itching for a fight by posting that thread on your front page. Once I read that I expected the thread to be locked/deleted, though that said I had written a long post blasting a few people for jumping on you for the car you drive (how that related to that thread, or is even anyone's business, is beyond me). Almost posted it, but decided I didn't want to get into the middle of it (at least until your "true colors" meme).
Click to expand...

Dude any body that sees good coming from the hate crimes bill is nothing more than a sheep in human clothing.
Every bill that is added to the constitution does not gaurnatee rights . It infact degrades freedom and rights.

Sorry john reynolds I accidently quoted you .I was also referring to the same post as yourself. So to that poster I also say.
Your consternation of the gay remark is both amusing and shocking. You wrote it off as simply being someone from the religios right . When infact it was just plain a bad remark coming from noware in pertecular other than bad comment judgement.
 
Terra said:
As for how the benchmarks should be run I like [H]ard's approch.
It's the same way I play with RES/IQ/AA/AF settings in each game to find out where the max playable setting is :)

I don't care how many 100's FPS a GPU outputs, I care about where the limit is for the card in real-world gaming(the more whistles and bells the better).
This should be coupled with a "feel of the game".
Eg. CoD2 feels much smoother (IMHO) at ~30fps than Farcry feels at ~50-60 fps

Terra...
Click to expand...

Too bad Kyle's approach isn't really even close to an apples to apples where image quality is concerned.

nVidia's OpenGL Filtering on Trial

Not your fault Kyle... seems to be a driver *cough* Bug *cough*...:p
 
The thing that, I think, separates [H] from the other sites is that they will link to the other sites' reviews of the same product. So, not only do you get their opinion, but you also get direct links to other's opinions as well so you get more of the overall picture.

However, I do have minor issues with the games used in the reviews. It seems we get 3 or 4 fps's and 1 each from a couple of other genres at best, but I suppose it's an issue to me more because I rarely am interested in more than one of the games tested, and even then it's only of passing interest as I only play the fps's at LAN's. It is difficult for me to make a decision when the game I'm most interested in isn't tested, so then you have to look at the trends for the games that are there and go from there...
 
Edit: This thread is spreading like wildfire... in the time it took to post, my points were no longer relevant.
 
ElMoIsEviL said:
Too bad Kyle's approach isn't really even close to an apples to apples where image quality is concerned.

nVidia's OpenGL Filtering on Trial

Not your fault Kyle... seems to be a driver *cough* Bug *cough*...:p
Click to expand...

I think one of the big issues that we have tried to make known over the last few years is that there really is no more apples to apples in terms of cross competitor comparisons. This is another reason I see all those bar graphs as rather useless. How does it impact my gameplay and my overall experience and immersion into the game? That is what I want to know.

Does transparency AA make a difference in my experience in BF2? Is it a feature worth investing in? These are the things I want to know as an example.
 
bobzdar said:
The thing that, I think, separates [H] from the other sites is that they will link to the other sites' reviews of the same product. So, not only do you get their opinion, but you also get direct links to other's opinions as well so you get more of the overall picture.

However, I do have minor issues with the games used in the reviews. It seems we get 3 or 4 fps's and 1 each from a couple of other genres at best, but I suppose it's an issue to me more because I rarely am interested in more than one of the games tested, and even then it's only of passing interest as I only play the fps's at LAN's. It is difficult for me to make a decision when the game I'm most interested in isn't tested, so then you have to look at the trends for the games that are there and go from there...
Click to expand...

I think we are more even-handed across genres than most other sites are. We try our best not to get stuck in the First Person Shooter grind that does not make sense after a while.

We visit lists like these often.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/charts/?id=177

If you guys aint buying it, we ain't evaluating with it. Just that simple.
 
BLiTzKRiEG said:
Edit: This thread is spreading like wildfire... in the time it took to post, my points were no longer relevant.
Click to expand...

You should have three weeks of testing invalidated by a driver release. :eek:
 
bobzdar said:
The thing that, I think, separates [H] from the other sites is that they will link to the other sites' reviews of the same product. So, not only do you get their opinion, but you also get direct links to other's opinions as well so you get more of the overall picture.
Click to expand...

Most review sites link reviews from different sites as well and many list [H].
 
Coldtronius said:
You tend to piss alot of people off don't ya Kyle?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but in my defense, it just seems to be the crazy ones that disagree with everything HardOCP represents. ;)
 
bobzdar said:
This I realize, which is why it's only a minor issue. Testing a lot of games usually gives an overall trend, and that's what I can start to base my decision on. Usually it's pretty easy for me though, I have a certain budget and there's almost always an obvious choice at that price level. I compare purely on price, not 'generation' or 'intended competition' which is another minor issue I have with some reviews...
Click to expand...

I wish I could include 20 games in a review, but it just aint happenin
 
Hold on just a tic! You guys are starting up the fight that was shut down at Beyond3D here?!?!?

























































AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT IT!?!?!?!?!

Where is the love? Sure I'll be fighting ya and slinging the nasties with the best of 'em soon, but I thought we were all friends? You were going to try and have this fight without me?!?!

Harumph, now I don't even know if I want to play.
bleh2.gif
 
I agree with that I await response

This is what a agree with

There's a problem.. your reviews show both cards running High Quality AF and people figure both have the same image quality. When in fact you should state that nVidia's Control Panel High quality AF still contains opimisations and inflates the score by 15-35%... in OpenGL games
 
Actually to be honest, picking a fight with beyond3d is just stupid. Those guys are the hardcore of hard. Kinda like arguing with a MAC user.
 
Politics....I don't know how they get entangled in a discussion about testing graphics cards but it says something about the pervasivness of it all, doesn't it.
 
Coldtronius said:
Actually to be honest, picking a fight with beyond3d is just stupid. Those guys are the hardcore of hard. Kinda like arguing with a MAC user.
Click to expand...
Is that sarcasm or your honest opinion?
 
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