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Toms Hardware Gets Real

D

dwayne001

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 9, 2003
Messages
468
Check this out: "We think it is time to get off the carousel of chicanery, and get back to basics"

They're against the crazy video card previews months before product launch..the rushed reviews on beta drivers, etc. The article (or RANT) is shirt, so it's well worth a look:

http://www.tomshardware.com/column/20041011/index.html

I must say, despite my limited status as a computer geek....I've got to agree w/ them.
 
Thats good to hear. Thorough reviews are always better. Even [H]'s was a bit rushed, its only compared to the X600Pro..
 
Nice :), it is a disservice, made me get an x800 pro when I could have bought a faster 6800GT for the same price. :(. Bastard reviewers. I like their thinking.
 
LOL, when I read that a few days ago I just broke out in laughter. Just sounded comical the way they approached it. It was almost like they thought people actually cared that they weren't going to review it. And them pretending that bringing video card reviews to the world was some huge big deal.

Anyways, the Inquirer has a follow up story. You can find it here, http://theinquirer.net/?article=19039.
 
airiox said:
LOL, when I read that a few days ago I just broke out in laughter. Just sounded comical the way they approached it. It was almost like they thought people actually cared that they weren't going to review it. And them pretending that bringing video card reviews to the world was some huge big deal.

Anyways, the Inquirer has a follow up story. You can find it here, http://theinquirer.net/?article=19039.
Click to expand...

LMAO sounds like Toms is just pissed that [H] got the exclusive and not them. Boo hoo..
 
Tomshardware is still the most trafficted hardware review site online and in a sorta recent pole over at newegg a few months back Tomshardware trounced HardOCP and the other review sites in the mix with votes for best hardware site. And this poll had THOUSANDS of votes. :eek:

HardOCP still has better reviews though :).
 
I can see where hes coming from... Im tired of all of the "previews" with beta drivers and hardware... Seems like things change every week because of that...
 
Oh, snap!

All hardware sites should boycott paper launches. Reviews with benchmarks should only come out when products start shipping.
 
burningrave101 said:
Tomshardware is still the most trafficted hardware review site online and in a sorta recent pole over at newegg a few months back Tomshardware trounced HardOCP and the other review sites in the mix with votes for best hardware site. And this poll had THOUSANDS of votes. :eek:

HardOCP still has better reviews though :).
Click to expand...

at least someone got this right.
 
I'd like to see more reviews that include the kind of hardware we actually own... knowing whether the 6800GT and 6800 and X800 is the best is cool... but I want to know how much of a difference I might see between one of those and a Radeon 8500 with current drivers before I shell out $250 to $400 dollars...
 
IceWind said:
Pants getting heavy from all that pocket change from Intel eh Tom? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Has anyone ever had any proof that Tomshardware has even gotten one penny from Intel or is that just what AMD fans say when the benchmarks dont show AMD winning? lol

I thought Tomshardware was an nVidia biased site as well? What happened in those latest benches? Someone needs to tell the guy that did that review that the X800XT PE isn't suppost to ever win cause their nVidia biased.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040927/opteron_vs_xeon-29.html#specapc_applications_benchmarks

Looks like AMD is laying down some fat cash on Toms dinner table now.

OMG TOMSHARDWARE IS AMD BIASED!!!
 
burningrave101 said:
Tomshardware is still the most trafficted hardware review site online and in a sorta recent pole over at newegg a few months back Tomshardware trounced HardOCP and the other review sites in the mix with votes for best hardware site. And this poll had THOUSANDS of votes. :eek:

HardOCP still has better reviews though :).
Click to expand...

...but then you look through the customer reviews section of Newegg, and you begin to realize what might account for the popularity difference between HardOCP and Tomshardware: prettier colors.
 
finalgt said:
...but then you look through the customer reviews section of Newegg, and you begin to realize what might account for the popularity difference between HardOCP and Tomshardware: prettier colors.
Click to expand...

Well i think Hard has prettier colors and thats why i stay here lol. :D
 
I'd love to see HardOCP doing more reviews across all hardware. I agree HardOCP reviews are some of the best but I do find myself heading to tomshardware since they cover alot more stuff.
 
Meh.. who cares tom.
You still can't touch the quality of reviews at beyond3d or techreport.
 
i agree with them about the previews..

reviewers have NO time to write a preview on such a product.

i have no idea how some people do them
 
Moloch,

Since you mentioned beyond3d...

Here's their take on the situtation:

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/twimtbr/

I think they're saying the same thing(s) as Tom.

I concurr with this stance (from above link):
There is usually a gap of about a year between the release of next generation hardware and that of software taking advantage of the technologies and features of such hardware.
Click to expand...

Many times I shake my head when some argue over 'Shader Model 3' and base their purcahses on features which no one has implemented yet or when they look to play at 1600x1200 but their LCD monitor has a native resolution of 800x600.

My take on Tom's situation:

Show a picture of the card.
State the features from the box. No box - no features listed.
Show a table of frame rates for their suite.
Download the drivers from the website, don't use the CD drivers.
If it crashes or fails a test, add that to the matrix.
Don't bother trying to make it work.
Forget about looking for workarounds.
Load up the most demanding game out there (FarCry, Doom3, et. al.) and say whether it played it well or not.
Review it like you would test drive a car.


.
.
You're either going to like it or not.
 
It would be nice if something actually came of this. Somehow I really doubt it. Most places barely have the sack to mention the absurd availibility of flagship cards. Much less lance these companies the way they should be.

Manufacturers continuously treat us in a "we'll deal with you however in the hell we feel like" manner.

Even if a few sites are willing to call them on it there are going to be at least twice as many that are going to take the sing the praises and shut up about everything else money and prizes. :mad:
 
All I have to say is Hardocp's line graphs are inferior to Tom's pretty bar graphs.
 
burningrave101 said:
Has anyone ever had any proof that Tomshardware has even gotten one penny from Intel or is that just what AMD fans say when the benchmarks dont show AMD winning? lol...
Click to expand...

Well considering IceWind has an Intel proc in his sig, id have to say that hes far from being an "AMD !!!!!!" ;)
 
burningrave101 said:
Has anyone ever had any proof that Tomshardware has even gotten one penny from Intel or is that just what AMD fans say when the benchmarks dont show AMD winning? lol
Click to expand...

No one will site an example that shows Tom's bias. I don't think it can be done. Tom's makes mistakes, but that can be attributed to their not knowing the hardware, and sometimes, I think, English not being their first language.

I think the hatred of Tom's comes mostly from the computer culture we have here... it's cool to be one of the computing elite, and the elite don't get their information from the same source as the rest of the dumb public, just like the computing elite don't get their computers from Dell.

You can go to any forum and see its members hating on members of another forum. Ever been to beyond3d, or xtremesystems, or overclockers.com? There are plenty of people that have disdain for the [H]. I think it's the nature of the internet, and especially the hardware community to be snobish.

I think Tom's has a good point in their article. I think comments like "Tom's is mad they didn't the scoop and [H] did" are ignorant and play into the hands of the hardware manufacturers.

Maybe if we all stuck together, we wouldn't be sitting in a forum in mid-october, arguing about the performance of cards that most of us don't have because they arn't available in quanity, even though they released in april or may. :(
 
i think a lot of you fail to realize that the world is a lot bigger than texas, and/or the usa. i love the [H], but toms hardware does some damn good reviews (and they get more hits, being in euorpe and all). they deserve a lot more credit than a lot of you give them. and, if you cant tell, i agree with their stance on these paper/last minute video card releases - how much good does it do for you, the entuhisast consumer? none. if they gave review sites time, and a fair shot, to actually do a review, then maybe more people would be able to see the difference btwn the newest card and a card that is a couple years old. if the [H] would have taken a stand on this (and they should), everyone in this thread would have been, "wow, they ([H]) are so right, what was i thinking?". actually, this thread wouldn't have even existed.....if anything, nvidia (and i love nvida and own stock in them) is lining the [H]'s pockets, not intel lining tom's pockets (let alone ati, amd, or any other manufactuer) :rolleyes:
 
Yea, i'm pretty sick of short preview reviews myself. Even some of the full reviews leave a person wanting more.

I would like to see more video cards and games tested in the reviews here at Hard and at other review sites. I'm starting to get sick of seeing the same handful of games tested when there are THOUSANDS of D3D games and quite a few OpenGL as well. Not everyone plays, UT2004, Far Cry, and Splinter Cell and those games definitely do NOT reflect the performance of a video card for the rest of the D3D and OpenGL titles.

I would also like to see more discussion about AA and AF performance and quality for the cards tested. Its nice to see how much performance is lost through enabling different settings on different engines.
 
airiox said:
LOL, when I read that a few days ago I just broke out in laughter. Just sounded comical the way they approached it. It was almost like they thought people actually cared that they weren't going to review it. And them pretending that bringing video card reviews to the world was some huge big deal.

Anyways, the Inquirer has a follow up story. You can find it here, http://theinquirer.net/?article=19039.
Click to expand...


You ARE a n00bie if you think the manufacturers don't care. Tom's is the most looked at hardware site o the net. It's a frikin newspaper of hardware...run by actual journalists who do imho, a very reasonable job. The site covers so much stuff now that they had to redesign it so all teh nwe items could be adeqately featured with their due prominence. Tom's is tight. Thanks for the link though. Good lookin' out.

The [H] is to hardware what NYC is to Politics. people here can't fathom why anyone would ever want to vote for a republican, just like people on the [H] often can't fathom why people would builda dell, or keep a vid card or CPU for more than 6 months. we're isolated from the muggles, as it were.

Kyle or whomever the editor is should get in on this discussion maybe, to clarify his position regarding the journalism on this site. In my view, it seems the [H] is more of an editorial site/magazine than anything else when it comes to hardware, while Toms seems more like a news paper. They both have current info, it's not delayed like hte diff between paper magazines and newspapers, but nearly every review i read on the [H] ends with a reccomendation. This doesnt surprise me since let's face it, hardware manufacturers aren't interested in objectivity. They want their stuff to be lauded and loved, and if you can get them to send you a reference board, it's because you've agreed to NOT say somethings and DEFINITELY say other things and like use drivers that aren't real. I'm sure it's the same with beta versions of games like DoomIII. The makers jsut want spin, and not real reporting unless tehy absolutely know they can kick the other side's butt.

That said, Toms approach seems to be more mundane than that of the [H] in that they seem to spend less time previewing things and more time evaluating things already avalailable on the market; pitting them against one another toward the end of any given season, something like "20 Gamer Cases Reviewed." That kind of thing showcases crazy amounts of hardware and lets the reader choose that which s/he wants. But at that point all the toys are olready 'old' by the [H] standards..which is completely OK.

See the reason the [H] is what it is is that it's HARDCORE. It's not about the most stable wireless router necessarily, it's more likely to review the absolute fastest router, and even give you some insight as to how to tweak it to get more speed out of it, or at least tell you what's capable if you have the know-how. Then they leave it to us forum people to discern what needs to be done to whatever hardware to get the bleeding edge performance out of it...that's just the ethos of the [H]. Tom's has tried to do this with play-by-play hacks on certain products, but sinceh te site isn't geared toward the really high-tech tinkerer as much as a site like this one is, it comes across as abstract and kind of boring.

So what's the bottom line? The [H] is for the hardcore people--the people who wann spend an hour or more a day looking at a high contrast text on a screen crimson bordered screen reminicent of the bloodlust they have for their just-a-bit-more-involved-than-consumer technology. It's found it;s market, and I applaud that. As a journalism site though, it needs to seperate the editorialism out from the objective articles; sectionate the two. They should maybe get some more writers, do a bit more comparative reviews between products, pull an anand and do some research for a buying guide-- a real one, not what to do with $500 if you're itching to spend it...just expand their scope...become true competitors with people like Anand and Tom's

An alliance between a site like Tom's and the [H] to route out these silly 'preview' articles would go a long way in getting the hardware manufacturers to dro hardware, not theories on hardware. But II'm sure there's something in their veins (as reporters) about getting the 'first scoop' on something.

anyways, that's my two cents...back to work...
 
Anybody who thinks previews is stupid needs to get shoot for being contridicting of themselves!

Think about how many games, movies, t.v. shows, and so on and so forth do you watch/buy without knowing anything about them?

How much of commercial breaks or movie trailers arnt just a preview to whatever is coming out within in the season or whatever?

Who here hasnt spent the last 2 yrs eagerly awaiting Half Life 2 and Halo 2 through the 1-2yr delays that both games have had?

Who here doesnt have a single part in their pc that they bought after eagerly waiting for a review of that part that the read in a preview that got them so pumped up about that pc part?

My point you ask? My point is that previews are a necessity to a consumer regardless of the product. Its like going to war without a plan (oh wait a second didnt we just do that...)!
 
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