HardOCP.com: Status Quo is No Mo

XenIneX said:
.And how long's it been since Anand Shimpi checked out of the website which bears his name? Hell, I still lament that Brian Klug moved on to other things -- when he reviewed a cellphone, you knew you were in for a deep dive.

But these days, Anandtech is a shell of its former self. Sure, they manage a fair look into each new generation of cpus. But mostly, I look at the front page and see keynote liveblogs, interviews with whichever SVP is trying to shill their latest product, and Amazon affiliate links for whatever middling computer component happens to be on sale this week.
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The question raised by the post I was replying to wasn’t “what is the state of current sites”, but was “can you remember any review you’ve read in the last 15 years”.
 
XenIneX said:
Except it isn't five pages.

It's a page introducing the product. Then one showing how it's specs line up against the competitors. Then one showing detail images of the electronics. Then one giving the benchmark setup. Then twenty identical pages showing graphs of performance across different games. Then a page graphing the average of the previous twenty pages of graphs. Then a page for thermals. Then one for power draw. Then for sound levels. Then overclocking. Then the conclusion. All of these boilerplate from their reviewing-product-of-X-type template.
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That's arguing semantics, it can be 20 pages, but you can instantly jump to the page with the information you want. You can't do that with a video, you have to wait it all out, because what you need might be at the 5 minute mark or at the 25 minute mark.
The video contains all the same things, plus a ton of worthless blabla. And you can't selectively just watch the parts you are interested in.
XenIneX said:
Now repeat all that for the indistinguishable same-thing-but-with-{RGB / bigger heatsink / the word "gamer") models the manufacturer made to drive up MSRP. And multiply that by a half dozen manufacturers. And another half-dozen times over for each of the product line variants.

And then repeat it all 18 months later.
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The point being? Car reviews are much the same, but you don't see people going around yelling at clouds: "Car reviews are dead!"
XenIneX said:
Video didn't kill the radio star. Radio being same-y, low-quality trash killed the radio star.
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So what is high quality then? Short, 1-page reviews, if they can even be called that?
XenIneX said:
And how long's it been since Anand Shimpi checked out of the website which bears his name? Hell, I still lament that Brian Klug moved on to other things -- when he reviewed a cellphone, you knew you were in for a deep dive.

But these days, Anandtech is a shell of its former self. Sure, they manage a fair look into each new generation of cpus. But mostly, I look at the front page and see keynote liveblogs, interviews with whichever SVP is trying to shill their latest product, and Amazon affiliate links for whatever middling computer component happens to be on sale this week.
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I haven't been following anandtech much. I'm not sure what do you mean. Yeah there are affilliate links and press releases on tech sites besides the in depth reviews. Can you not click on the review and ignore the sponsored content? The more reactions I see, the more it seems like laziness from the consumer, than actual issues with quality.
 
The ideal end point for consumer graphics technology would be for it to become so powerful and cheap to produce that even the chip in a smart fridge is capable of producing photorealistic real-time graphics. It should advance to the point that hardware reviews aren't required, as not-fun as that is. It would be ubiquitous and not worthy of discussion, as is the case with the billions of embedded chips you find in everything these days.

I think that time will eventually come, but it's a long ways off yet.
 
You just need to adapt to the market conditions. HardOCP could have made that transition but choose not to which is their prerogative. I can’t blame them but like mentioned in the article the writing was on the wall.

I don’t have time to sit and listen/watch a 30 min video of a GPU review (much less a fan review). I love Gamers Nexus but I cherry pick what I watch within the videos.

And I’m a 20 year [H] guy who loves hardware. Ransoms online probably don’t care and want a 9 min overview.
 
next-Jin said:
You just need to adapt to the market conditions. HardOCP could have made that transition but choose not to which is their prerogative. I can’t blame them but like mentioned in the article the writing was on the wall.

I don’t have time to sit and listen/watch a 30 min video of a GPU review (much less a fan review). I love Gamers Nexus but I cherry pick what I watch within the videos.

And I’m a 20 year [H] guy who loves hardware. Ransoms online probably don’t care and want a 9 min overview.
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That's the thing. What takes a mouthpiece half an hour to read and show in a video I can read myself in at least a third the amount of time. Time becomes more precious as we get older, and I am not going to waste my time watching a video when there are more efficient ways to consume that content.
 
Armenius said:
That's the thing. What takes a mouthpiece half an hour to read and show in a video I can read myself in at least a third the amount of time. Time becomes more precious as we get older, and I am not going to waste my time watching a video when there are more efficient ways to consume that content.
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Exactly. I can skim articles much more efficiently than waiting for someone to eventually say the tidbit of information I'm specifically waiting for. Apparently everything has to be a song and dance nowadays.
 
Krenum said:
If in 2023 Nvidia and AMD announce new GPU's and the prices still remain at $1800-2500 for a GPU, I'm out. 25 years was a good run.
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OutOfPhase said:
As am I. More than I'm willing to spend, compared to cost/benefit for other things.

I'm super stubborn, so will play Dying Light and Master of Orion 2 until I die if this really goes down.
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Just buy used 1 gen old.
 
NightReaver said:
Exactly. I can skim articles much more efficiently than waiting for someone to eventually say the tidbit of information I'm specifically waiting for. Apparently everything has to be a song and dance nowadays.
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Yep.

My combination is techpowerup for their database and charts, Gamers Nexus (charts and conclusion) and here in the forums.

I cherry pick content that I need.
 
FrgMstr said:
HardOCP.com: Status Quo is No Mo

Primarily I am going to discuss MSRP pricing, and the direction of the consumer hardware reviews industry overall.
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I agree with your assessment for the most part.

When it comes to influencer based marketing, I think you are only half right.
I can see someone buying a cellphone, earbuds, gaming headphones, keyboard, gaming mouse from that type of marketing.

I don't see GPU's, and to a lesser extent, CPU's/Mobo's being marketed in that way. You may be totally right that they will try, but I sure as hell am not going to rely on tiktok to make decisions for those hardware components.

The [Big] techtubers I think fit into that influencer world, chances are they will continue to stay relevant at least in the next 10 years. When performance is so good that there's really nowhere else to go, the influencer marketing will be all that is needed. Just depends on how long it takes to get there. Photorealistic graphics, once this is achieved, the technical marketing will be on the way out. 10 years is a total guess.

Glad you are putting your thoughts out there, thanks.
 
next-Jin said:
Yep.

My combination is techpowerup for their database and charts, Gamers Nexus (charts and conclusion) and here in the forums.

I cherry pick content that I need.
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Similar. I do appreciate the GN transcripts on non-Tube site, same with Techspot with HUB. I dont have time to watch a video, nor the patience to deal with the snark of GN Steve.
 
I find Gamers Nexus videos unbearable to watch without falling asleep to his one long monotonous never-ending sentence every video. And their transcripts not really useful for me

Luckily with Youtube chapters I just jump right to the benchmarks/parts I want in their or HWU or DF videos - I do the same with written reviews just jump to the parts I want usually and read the conclusions

ServeTheHome videos I usually watch the whole thing most of the time
 
I can see MSRP going away as well where GPU's are concerned. One very big reason is this: in the current climate they have learned that these cards will sell for whatever price they put on them. Even the entry level cards. Even cards that are poor performers(looking at you, RX 6500 XT). Even the cards that should have way better specs than they do for their price/place in the product stack. I mean, the 3060 Ti, 3070, 3070 Ti, and 3080 all have less VRAM than a 3060 for Pete's sake. Around the time the 3070 Ti came out last year, I was able to snag one at MSRP from a Newegg shuffle. I stated to some friends that it was probably the last retail card I was ever going to buy, and all of this is why. I don't have all day to waste on shuffles, going around to retailers to hopefully get lucky, or wait all night in a 100+ person line for product launches where the retailer only has enough inventory for 12 people. If I choose to continue gaming, this may all send me back to buying consoles. I pretty much only play a handful of games anyhow.

I have also noticed what a lot of you have: that people don't care about the details, they just want to be told what to buy, and if it will allow them to game/stream/etc., at a price they are comfortable with spending. Except it's gotten so bad that the barrier to entry has pushed PC gaming out of reach for a lot of people. You can't just piece something together that can be upgraded down the line so easily anymore. See below.

GoodBoy said:
Just buy used 1 gen old.
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Problem with that is that there's no longer a benefit to it. We should be able to buy 1080 Ti's for dirt right now, but they still sell for close to the $600 price that they were set at when the 2080 launched. For a card that's 3 gens old at this point. It would be great if everything was like it was a few years ago. 60, 70, and 80 series cards for cheap enough that you could build $300-500 bangers all day long. Now you're lucky to get a GTX 1650 for less than $200. Which is still more than they originally sold for.
 
staknhalo said:
I find Gamers Nexus videos unbearable to watch without falling asleep to his one long monotonous never-ending sentence every video. And their transcripts not really useful for me

Luckily with Youtube chapters I just jump right to the benchmarks/parts I want in their or HWU or DF videos - I do the same with written reviews just jump to the parts I want usually and read the conclusions

ServeTheHome videos I usually watch the whole thing most of the time
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Yeah Gamers Nexus provides a ton of relevant and useful information. They have a niche no one else seems to be targeting but because of that it makes their video content dry.

I think the majority of their viewers specifically skip to the relevant information and they (GN) understand that.

If they took a more LTT approach I’m not sure it would work. I used to watch Jayz Two Cents but I just can’t anymore. It’s almost like he ran out of stuff to talk about and just does the same videos every other week.
 
Thanks for the article. The history of reviews for PCs always seemed to be around gaming performance and true "power user" work performance, for photo/video editing, high end compute, etc...
It seems a good amount of those resources are in in the cloud now, and not always working well, but still in the long run may make it less important to have it on the desktop. I am waiting for people to find a profitable way to mine in the cloud and make money.
 
I really don't see a difference between someone buying based on the recommendation of a influencer today vs just walking into Best Buy and grabbing whatever video card the pimply faced nerd 20 years ago told you to buy.

People who want to know the truth will dig deeper and that remains the same now as it was back then. The method that information transmits is different, but the communities of those wanting truth over all else will not go away.
 
I'll try the inventory stream hunt when RTX 4xxx series is released, I had to do it for my 5950x back in April and tried a bit for a 3070, but gave up

Gaming is just on the backburner altogether in the meantime - I still have Control and Death Stranding I wanna play, but wait till I can play with ray tracing/DLSS

If I get the urge to game it's just the same old Rocket League/Resident Evil remakes for a quick few

The world is on fire in enough other ways it's easy to fill the void TBH

Edit - wait so FrgMstr are FE going away forever too or or while it's profitable so that I can't even tell MSRP from Best Buy's price for a FE RTX 4070 so to speak?
 
Eh, all I care about is that I know what the card can do and what it will cost me at the store. If I can afford it and will use it, I will buy it and if I cannot, I will not.
 
Computer gaming turned into "lifestyle brand" stuff a while back. The deal with the devil was signed and completed back when corsair DDR1 pro with LEDs, 6800 SLI some with LEDs, and ASUS ROG on AM2 shipping with LEDs and key chains. I'll through f4tal1ty branded stuff as well. That was really when things changed and now it's come all around into PC gaming being just as lifestyle cultish, if not more, than apple products.

I'd say the influencers time is limited though, at least for who exists now. The fact is everything is moving to the cloud. It's not even hidden that the future of this is renting tiered systems. The more you pay the better the resolution, frame rate, details, and more modern games you can play. It's going to be a bastardization of Azure/AWS and Netflix all rolled into one shit ball. That's going to bleed in slowly. But anybody who's on the hardware and not the lifetyle side of things is already obsolete. It's like the Wiley Ccyote. They are already over the cliff and it's over, they just haven't looked down and figured it out yet.
 
Darunion said:
Amazon and microsoft aren't going to youtube to check reviews of components to build their server clusters
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but the people that buy and run it gotta come from somewhere theres always gonna be an enthusiast home hw market for one reason or another people don't only just do or use this stuff even gpus just for games

you got home labs and garage code ai devs etc
 
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next-Jin said:
Yeah Gamers Nexus provides a ton of relevant and useful information. They have a niche no one else seems to be targeting but because of that it makes their video content dry.

I think the majority of their viewers specifically skip to the relevant information and they (GN) understand that.

If they took a more LTT approach I’m not sure it would work. I used to watch Jayz Two Cents but I just can’t anymore. It’s almost like he ran out of stuff to talk about and just does the same videos every other week.
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Yeah, I like GN but Steve does tend to go on a bit too long sometimes, before and after the "meat" of the video. But I love when they put out videos calling out shit companies, like the recent Newegg one.
 
MavericK said:
Yeah, I like GN but Steve does tend to go on a bit too long sometimes, before and after the "meat" of the video. But I love when they put out videos calling out shit companies, like the recent Newegg one.
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do they get paid the longer you watch?
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
Computer gaming turned into "lifestyle brand" stuff a while back. The deal with the devil was signed and completed back when corsair DDR1 pro with LEDs, 6800 SLI some with LEDs, and ASUS ROG on AM2 shipping with LEDs and key chains. I'll through f4tal1ty branded stuff as well. That was really when things changed and now it's come all around into PC gaming being just as lifestyle cultish, if not more, than apple products.

I'd say the influencers time is limited though, at least for who exists now. The fact is everything is moving to the cloud. It's not even hidden that the future of this is renting tiered systems. The more you pay the better the resolution, frame rate, details, and more modern games you can play. It's going to be a bastardization of Azure/AWS and Netflix all rolled into one shit ball. That's going to bleed in slowly. But anybody who's on the hardware and not the lifetyle side of things is already obsolete. It's like the Wiley Ccyote. They are already over the cliff and it's over, they just haven't looked down and figured it out yet.
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Online gaming doesn't use up too much bandwidth, apart from the initial download (100+GB for many titles today) and some of the bigger patches. Game streaming via Geforce Now/Google Stadia etc. does start to use more bandwidth, a lot more. As in, you will probably hit your data cap if you have one in a couple of weeks if you're playing more than a couple of hours per week. 6 hours per day is around 100GB data usage per day.

That low monthly fee for game streaming adds up if you need to spend $50/month extra (Comcast's rates last I checked) to get unlimited bandwidth from your ISP.

While I agree many companies want to move to the service model, I don't think this is a good idea for any of the hardware makers because in the end it will if not kill, hamper PC gaming and then it will be just waiting for the next big "lifestyle brand" to knock it out of favor. At that point, will you have any game developers willing to push the tech envelope if no one has the hardware to play the games? Will even us hardware enthusiasts care at that point?

Then again, Nvidia has moved into AI and networking with the Mellanox purchase. Along with coin mining sales. Maybe those hardware companies will be able to ignore the gaming market that has helped them sell new hardware for 40 years because they expanded beyond that market.
 
SOAREVERSOR said:
Computer gaming turned into "lifestyle brand" stuff a while back. The deal with the devil was signed and completed back when corsair DDR1 pro with LEDs, 6800 SLI some with LEDs, and ASUS ROG on AM2 shipping with LEDs and key chains. I'll through f4tal1ty branded stuff as well. That was really when things changed and now it's come all around into PC gaming being just as lifestyle cultish, if not more, than apple products.

I'd say the influencers time is limited though, at least for who exists now. The fact is everything is moving to the cloud. It's not even hidden that the future of this is renting tiered systems. The more you pay the better the resolution, frame rate, details, and more modern games you can play. It's going to be a bastardization of Azure/AWS and Netflix all rolled into one shit ball. That's going to bleed in slowly. But anybody who's on the hardware and not the lifetyle side of things is already obsolete. It's like the Wiley Ccyote. They are already over the cliff and it's over, they just haven't looked down and figured it out yet.
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I'm not sure that cloud streamed games will ever really take hold in a massive way, unless there is a fundamental reshaping of how ISP's operate, which results in massive improvements to the end user.

I do believe there will be a couple of successful titles. But Its not going to replace having hardware in your house.

And that's because of

1. internet data caps are not going away
2. internet speeds are on average, just ok, for under $100 per month. And if someone else in the house is watching Disney + or something, your cloud game streaming performance will s.u.f.f.e.r. Much like my stream to twitch suffers.
3. cloud game streaming at its best, should still probably be played on a wired connection. Trouble is, a lot of people are not able to use a wired connection.
 
chameleoneel said:
I'm not sure that cloud streamed games will ever really take hold in a massive way, unless there is a fundamental reshaping of how ISP's operate, which results in massive improvements to the end user.

I do believe there will be a couple of successful titles. But Its not going to replace having hardware in your house.

And that's because of

1. internet data caps are not going away
2. internet speeds are on average, just ok, for under $100 per month. And if someone else in the house is watching Disney + or something, your cloud game streaming performance will s.u.f.f.e.r. Much like my stream to twitch suffers.
3. cloud game streaming at its best, should still probably be played on a wired connection. Trouble is, a lot of people are not able to use a wired connection.
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I feel that 1-2 would not be that much much sense before 2050 (and for a large part of the world not that much, in some part of very rural canada the cost for really high speed (download / upload) illimited is really good:

https://www.planhub.ca/quebec/compare-internet-plan?locality=nc&postal=G4X6L6&downloadspeed=288Mbps&uploadspeed=0Mbps&bandwidth=unlimited-data&services=cable.dsl-fttn.ftth.wireless.satellite.2years&provider=15-63-56-118-88-24-129-1-170-145-61-106-132-138-55-16-25-17-112-80-142-70-110-18-139-13-19-135-71-2-81-65-131-60-114-105-148-102-120-123-113-98-68-130-93-121-180-115-72-171-21-127-169-91-58-128-140-107-133-26-6-79-12-136-172-134-137-144-22-89-7-62-92-74-4-64-10-101-27-86-122-108-94-78-57&searchinput=

Unlimited 300/500 mbs plan with excellent Wifi rooter for $55-$60 USD, we are talking of a small village in one of the worst country Internet connection wise Canada (population density being has low has it get).

For 3, could stay for a while, but there so much investment and R&D G5 and such that it could be less and less an issue.

I do not see streaming game more an issue for the number 1-2 than streaming correct quality 4K content and this is almost certain to take hold (already has in many place), not able to use cache for #2 maybe ?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
...I know I am usually an outlier, but I have never viewed reviews as entertainment. I have viewed them as information, as data with which I can make a reasoned decision.
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Normally I tend to agree with this, but ~20 years of reading [H] articles has shown me that hardware reviews (and editorials from people like Kyle Bennett) can be among the highest forms of entertainment. To an extreme hardware enthusiast, [H] was about as good as it gets when it comes to edutainment. Not just good information that helps you make informed decisions, but Class-A entertainment as well. Reading [H] content was always a ton of fun. Although the article that is the topic of this thread was more depressing than anything else.
 
sc5mu93 said:
do they get paid the longer you watch?
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Yes, in a way. Minutes watched factors into how much a video gets recommended (how exactly, nobody knows) and how many ads are served on it.
 
I don't mind video reviews. You people are some cranky old bastards. TikTok can burn tho.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Influencers are one of the worst developments of modern times. A real cancer on society.

"Buy this thing because I am being paid to make you think it is cool" is the worst possible reason to buy anything.
[...]
Now it sounds as if the only category we have left is the last one, and they don't have to pretend anymore. Being an influencer just means you are a professional liar.
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They are indeed professional liars. Thanks for calling out this particular example of bullshit.

Influencer is obviously just a euphemism for shill (many pejoratives work), which managed to escape from the Marketing edition of Buzzword Bingo and enter general circulation unfiltered. It ought to be purged from the Earth, along with the influencers themselves. Feel free to do the same with the marketing department it came from, or just every marketing department for good measure. 🗑️ People really need to update their Bullshit filters. The engine is probably due for an inspection too.
 
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MSRP is a tool to maintain a desirable price but if people are willing to pay 2x to 3x the MSRP then it may go away... temporarily. This GPU shortage won't last forever, and when prices do eventually come down the MSRP will be reintroduced, assuming it ever goes away to begin with. Which it may because MSRP is used to point at retailers fuckery and remind everyone how greedy they are when the market is disrupted. It may go away like the YouTube dislike button, to avoid bad press.

The question is how much damage will this GPU shortage create before everything is back to normal? Will $100 GPU's be a thing of the past? Will $250 be the new 64-bit standard? Will Louis Rossmann expand his business to repair broken GPU's? Will games ever require hardware beyond a GTX 1060? The next 5 years of gaming could be the lost years.
 
DukenukemX said:
MSRP is a tool to maintain a desirable price but if people are willing to pay 2x to 3x the MSRP then it may go away... temporarily. This GPU shortage won't last forever, and when prices do eventually come down the MSRP will be reintroduced, assuming it ever goes away to begin with. Which it may because MSRP is used to point at retailers fuckery and remind everyone how greedy they are when the market is disrupted. It may go away like the YouTube dislike button, to avoid bad press.

The question is how much damage will this GPU shortage create before everything is back to normal? Will $100 GPU's be a thing of the past? Will $250 be the new 64-bit standard? Will Louis Rossmann expand his business to repair broken GPU's? Will games ever require hardware beyond a GTX 1060? The next 5 years of gaming could be the lost years.
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I think prices will have to eventually, Publishers know that the current pricing structure is not sustainable for their business model and there is too much money invested there to let that slide. Publishers will start to exert pressure on NVidia and AMD at some point to bring things back down, I fully expect we will see pricing return to a sustainable state where builds can be sustainable across all budgets. I do fully suspect that these will be the lost years as you call it, should pricing crash back down to "normal" levels tomorrow it would take 3+ years before the hurt from these past 2 wears off, it is undeniable that overall performance growth for systems has been stifled and the target performance group will be hit to match. I do wonder though if long-term we are going to start to see a decrease in custom builds and an uptick in OEM ones instead.

For the last year now as much as the enthusiasts I know have wanted to their only feasible option have been OEM builds, because as much as a premium you pay for say a Dell, HP, or Lenovo gaming PC/Laptop they are still cheaper overall than trying retail for most of the components. Yeah I mean they are bummed out about the lack of actual upgrade options for boards, cards, and chips, but realistically given how things currently are and the expected timeframe to when this shortage is expected to end, when asked how likely they were to actually upgrade once they got the systems stable they basically admitted that is was slightly better than zero.

As a hobbyist, I am really bummed out about the prospects for the next few years for sure.
 
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