What I think about [Hard]ocp!

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I think that this whole thread is based on one persons interpretation of a "way of testing/benchmarking. " Ie The [H] Method. From my stand point, I think that yes it is a biased method. BUT, it is a method that someone(the [H] team) stands behind and at this point in time believes is a solid method.

If you count up how many reputable hardware review sites there are, then think that each has a different method for reviewing, you could say that there is a few different approaches. My point here is that in the grand scheme of internet users, There are not that many people proposing a method and using it, doing reviews and sticking behind them. I estimate that there are about 20 -30 independent, reputable hardware site on the net. That’s not very many methods. They stand up to the flame and praise week in week out. Hats off to the sites and teams behind them for doing what they do.

Let me propose a solution:

a) if you don’t like the method, don’t read the reviews.
b) if you don’t like the method propose a new method and do reviews yourself.
c) if you like the method read the reviews and good buying to you.

I personally choose b) since there is no standard, maybe Kyle could proposes a Community standard. A standard of testing by the people for the people. From memory over 8 million plus people read this site a week. Probably more these day. Why don’t we run a few surveys and find out what people want from a review. What qualities do we as community think are useful and want to know about? Maybe with the [H] weight we could get the surveys done on a few different sites?? Maybe there could be a user/community voted "Default computer" like an empirical standard in science as to what the average PC is made up of each month. Then reviews of games/hardware are made against that box.

Anyway these are some ideas.

- DESmack

(Just for your note Kyle me chossing b) is not a slant on your method. I actually really enjoy them. ;-)
 
Well that is all good and said. But you do not know the pressure that NVIDIA, ATI and others put us webmasters under. Kyle being bigger than Bjorn3D has been able to get them to work with him. They will always come back and beg to be reviewed.

My site that used to be and NVIDIA affliate is now screwed on both ends. NVIDIA is not happy that I report about ATI and the same back. The thing that has me really pissed of is that Add in Board Makers have told me that one of these companies have told them why they should not send things to me.

When a company does not want to send me press samples that is one thing, but to tell AIB's not to chaps my ass. You all can guess which company. Kyle and I know, we yacked about it before.

To not get peronsal gets hard under these conditions. I think HardOCP and Kyle have a right to speak their mind. Just me 2 cents.


Scott
www.Bjorn3D.com
 
Brad4321 said:
My opinions are basically the following. Keep your "omg newbie!!1" comments to yourself to save some bandwidth.

It is very easy to cheat on 3DMark and 3DMark is not an actual game. This means what exactly? If an honest reviewer used 3DMark as a benchmark tool and did not use any methods of cheating, then you could trust those scores (counting on a lack of driver "optimizations" which can happen with anything). 3DMark is not an actual game, but many of the other benchmarks are not actual games either. I may never get to play 3DMark, but I am also never play Doom 3, or everquest. That doesn't not make their scores any less valid.

I, personally, want a card that performs the best. A numberless review won't tell me that. It will tell me how nice the box is and that they played smoothly at whatever settings. That doesn't tell me that the competition's card performs better for that same price. That is what I read reviews. I don't care about the box and pretty colors. I want the best performing card there is for my money. A numberless review is virtually worthless.

3DMark could easily and reliably be used as a benchmark for anything. However, I wouldn't use it as a sole benchmark, nor would I use anything else as the sole deciding factor. Factor it in with the other benchmarks, but take its score with a grain of salt. In actuality, I wouldn't use a 3DMark score to make a decision, but it is nice to see the comparison nevertheless.

I don't trust the [H] for my reviews, nor any other site soley for that matter. Before I buy a component, I read reviews from many, many different sources. Some of them even use 3DMark (omg *gasp*), and that is fine with me. I do base any of my buying decisions on RL applications, but it is nice to see that in there for comparison, nevertheless. In an unbiased comparison, a system which scores higher in 3DMark is likely to score higher in other games as well. Likewise, a system which scored higher in Doom 3 is likely to score higher in other games as well. Is that always the case? No, but it does give a basis of comparison, if nothing else.
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i dont even have the time to read the other how many pages. im with this guy. and i think a lot of us are. now the H is my fav site, i wont lie. but for instance, when a new thing comes out, like todays ati 850 - you will see they link every other major site that reviews it too. and ya know what? i read all of them. my one point is i dont see any bias and what i think you are referring to as bias is the way these guys write. they speak bluntly and at times harshly, and that is something i prefer. if there is one thing about the way people talk here is the majority of this kiss ass passive agressive i have no opinion and shop at abercrombie bullshit. if you speak bluntly, honestly and i guess curt, well then you are bias or unfriendly. look, these guys do drive a hard point about their anti synthetic standards but i viewed it as them trying to drive the point home, to make it absolutely clear what they meant and their motives behind doing a new comparison scheme.

what is my favorite thing about all this? i love the new graphs not only a high low and avg, but the full graphed performance over time. THAT is real world. if i see tons of spikes, and i mean SEE it myself, then i can relate to what my experience might be like with this particular product / combination.

on that thought, playin devils advocate, it would be nice for them to test new gfx cards for instancce NOT only on the flagship cpu and 2 gig of $500 ram... cuz we dont have that. yes the reviews should have it cuz it allows you to isolate the card, and also show what the best can do, and duh you wont have a PE edition card on a athlon xp... but you get my point. i got a 3200 s939 and a gig of ram with a 6800 vanilla... all about the same level right?

anyways, back to original point - read many sites, form your own opinions. thats what you should be doing anyways. and i vote YES for the H's "real world" gameplay scenario cuz it makes sense to me. oh and screw intel cuz really, to pay for a more expensive, hotter cpu really isnt worth it to me when my day to day working is done on a G5 mac.... my hometime is gaming on the athlon64 homies.
 
I think it's VERY cool that Hardocp allows this thread too to be spoken about them. Lot of sites would lock it, ban the user, or delete it.

I like Hardocp reviews and don't feel them to be bias. That's all I want to say
 
I read page 1 then saw the thread was 9 pages... yikes, so I skipped to 9!!

I've been reading [H] for years. IMO it is one of the most unbias review sites, BUT it is also one of the most opinionated. Maybe some are confusing the two?!?! My gut feeling about the reviews here is that it's done with a "if your gonna talk the talk then walk the walk" attitude for EVERY product reviewed. Every review they have done is there for the eye to see. IMO they call it like it is, and more importantly they are not gonna just follow the crowd, if some BS is out there I am certain [H] will bring it to light.

Benchmarks vs actual games: How anyone can claim that a synthetic benchmark is a better performance indicator than multiple real games is beyond me. Futuremark products have a purpose, but indicating how a video card is gonna perform in games is not one of them.

Maleficuras, I am willing to guess you are an Intel and Futuremark fan. So of course you are not gonna like to hear what [H] has to say about them. I also think you are so used to reading biased articles (and apparently completely oblivious to the fact) that when you read an unbias one it is a shock. If you think [H] has a slant against Intel now then don't come back here for awhile, because AMD is gonna be top dog for the foreseeable future.
 
I do agree somewhat that 3DMark can be a good benchmark, however I think the main reason why it is not good with the industry has to do with driver development. I can understand how maleficarus may argue that it is a good benchmark, since that is its intended purpose. However, I think everyone need to realize that benchmarks such as this take the focus of driver development off of games and forces ATI and nVidia to spend more time enhancing drivers for a benchmark that unfortunately doesn't provide hours of entertainment for most of us, with the exceptional few, such as maleficarus ;) . Anyways, just my thoughts, of course the [H] is biased towards the better technology, however I do not think that is a bad thing, and I love the [H]. :D
 
I haven't posted in this forum in month's because of the forum rape fiasco months ago. I think there is more than one type of bias afloat.

What I do like about Hard is their stand against bullies in the industry and how they have shown to stick up for gamers and the like.
 
God, I would love to jump into this fray!

The temptation is almost irresistable, and I certainly have my own views on the subject! But, having seen threads like this before, and participating in more that I would care to admit, I will just say that the forums are a great place for healthy debate. The debate does not always make or break the basic argument. In fact, most of the time they turn into protracted flame wars that do no good, and advance nobody's ideals.

But, this is America (at least the last time I checked), and there are military personnel overseas RIGHT NOW defending our right to have debates just like this, whether it be in person or behind the anonomous curtain of a forum like this.

So express your opinions! Just don't take it personally and don't get ugly!
 
Anderu said:
God, I would love to jump into this fray!

The temptation is almost irresistable, and I certainly have my own views on the subject! But, having seen threads like this before, and participating in more that I would care to admit, I will just say that the forums are a great place for healthy debate. The debate does not always make or break the basic argument. In fact, most of the time they turn into protracted flame wars that do no good, and advance nobody's ideals.

But, this is America (at least the last time I checked), and there are military personnel overseas RIGHT NOW defending our right to have debates just like this, whether it be in person or behind the anonomous curtain of a forum like this.

So express your opinions! Just don't take it personally and don't get ugly!
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Ummm .. these fourms are for more then just Americans
 
Ok, had to jump in on this one. I've been reading [H]ard|OCP since 1997, back when it was known as the OverClockers Performance page. Sure, I look at other sites, but only when I can't find what I need here, which isn't all that often. I stopped going to Tom's Hardware Guide about 5 years ago, when it became clear that he was snuggly in the pockets of certain manufacturers. SharkExtreme sort of lost the edge. And AnandTech became too generic for me, I actually prefer Kyle and crew's style of writing.

Now on to some specific points. I'm glad Kyle doesn't use 3DMark anymore. Anytime I'm at a LAN party and someone starts throwing around their 3DMark score, game play stops as people start trying to measure the length of their virtual penis. It pisses me off, because it's a waste of time that doesn't mean anything. It's analogous to a 1/4 mile time for a car. You can spend countless hours and dollars tuning your car to acheive the fastest 1/4 mile time, but what does that say about how the car handles in regular driving? Nothing. With synthetic benchmarks people start building machines to acheive a higher number, assuming that means they will have better game play, but it doesn't always work that way.

I would like to see some changes in the way they present their game test results. I'd like to see more apples-to-apples comparisons, as I think that gives me a better view of which Video card or CPU is more powerful in a given situation. But aside from that, I love what [H] does, I visit the site at least 10+ times a day. And most of my major buying decisions for hardware were based on reviews I've read here. Just look at my sig, almost all of that stuff was reviewed here. I've been happy with every choice as well.
 
well as many others have said i love this place, find it unbiased, and make many decisions based on kyles reviews. keep up the good work guys!
 
I know exactly what you mean Mal. I always seek out my closest friends for hardware/gaming advice, ask for their opinions/persectives/experience, and then punch them in the neck and accuse them of bias. They then yell "WTF" and say "why did you ask then?", for some reason not grasping that I really wanted them to tell me what I wanted to hear. Why else would I specifically go to them and not somewhere else? (Hint, there is a hidden message here).

Okay I'll give you the answer. The only reason to go to <insert site name here> is because you want to know their take on something. Their experiences, their opinions, their perspectives. Do I visit sites I have no respect for? Negative. Do I visit sites that to me have won my trust? Definitely. To do other then that is just sheer stupidity.

And FYI, 3DMark=feces.
 
Rogue4mula said:
I have a hard time with that since my 2.4c is a 3.4 on air...

Maybe OVERALL considering every cpu made amd has more overall success in OC'ing... but not always... not even close to always...
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*cough* 3000+ (1.8) @ 2.6 on air *cough*

That's FX55 performance right there, for $200
 
ive only read the first page of this thread so this might hve been said already

Moloch said:
I agree, real world doesn't mean much if you dont play that game, or a game using that game engine.
Does benchmarking HL2 tell me how EverQuest2 will play?
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by the same logic, using 3dmark wont tell you how everquest2 plays either. in fact it wont tell you how ANYTHING plays except uhh... 3dmark. its a fun toy, but the only true test of a system is what its made for. you dont test the speed of your car by putting it on a machine and the stomping the gas, or creating a physics simulation. you take it out on the road and take off.

cheese.
 
Are you on crack? Are you stupid, or what??? I was a naive Tomshardware reader for a long time before I found out about Kyle & Steve at [H]ardOCP. I went to them because I found out that Tom gets *ahem* "paid" for his reviews(wink, wink), whereas Kyle & Steve give honest "two cents" accounts and reviews of products that come their way. They're just a couple of guys/fellow Geeks that are tired of all the BS on tech sites, and started one of their own with honesty and frank opinions at the core, and that goes a long way towards their validity and respectability. Tell me, would you trust an automotive review from a chef? I don't think so! You would/should trust a review from someone who actually uses the product as any good consumer would. I've been reading them now for about 4-5 years and they have yet to lead anyone astray. And even in the rare instance that they have made misteaks, they've corrected them. Unlike other review sites. And I hope the amount of respondants to your post has given you the smackdown you deserve!

Angry!
 
lopoetve said:
*cough* 3000+ (1.8) @ 2.6 on air *cough*

That's FX55 performance right there, for $200
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Well, considering these two overclocks are almost identical percentage wise, and the fact that back when the 2.4C's were selling well they were ~$180, and the fact that the best mainstream cpu out there was the p4 3.0C iirc, your point doesn't really make any sense. (And I know your chip would blow mine out of the water, but before I started slowly frying my PSU my 2.4C would do 3.5 GHz, on air, and others were hitting 3.6 GHz on air, which percentage wise are both greater overclocks.) But besides that, pif your chip/mobo?
 
Found that quote I mentioned earlier. Not that its word for word what I said, but close enough. :D

AMD 939 review

Pricing aside, AMD looks to be producing some of the best performance CPUs we have ever seen. The only hole I can really shoot in their armor is the lack of a HyperThreading-type feature. Now depending on how you use your computer, this may or may not impact your experience. When multitasking, the Pentium4 simply feels smoother to use. You get a seamless experience. Now this is not say that you never feel a lag here or there on a 3.4GHz Pentium4 desktop, but I will assure you there are not many of them. As of writing this, I have 15 windows open on 3 monitors running 8 different applications. If I wanted to, I could also encode a ripped DVD to DivX while I work and never be aware of it for the most part. My experience is that cannot be done on AMD's CPUs.
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I didn't read the whole thread, but as an issue with games and real world performance, I don't think you can knock Kyle for the games he chooses for benchies. Most people on these boards flock to those games...do we all play them? Probably not, but that's what the majority are here for. Not everyone here plays Doom 3 or Half Life 2, true. But you can't cater to everyone. Everquest 2 may be more demanding, but just perusing the game forum thread you can see the most traffic right now is being generated from Half Life 2, and WoW probably a second placer. Doom 3 generated hordes of traffic too when it was first released....its not about synthetic benchmarks, "it's the games stupid!" to borrow a quote from another medium.

I think Kyle is spot on here, JMO. And that's not to say I agree with him on everything, as I am a big Mac fan as well and he and Steve can't resist a zinger or too with the news blurbs. But I don't come here for major Mac stuff. I understand that this is primarily a PC gamer spot, and I use it for reference with my game rig and some other things like the network forum. He even gave us a Mac spot too. It prevents me from having to flip from major forums and its a cool place to hang. His reviews reflect his major "customers" or traffic generated by users to the forum. Nothing wrong with that.
 
Well, I hate to be the practical one, but I never listen to just one voice in making my decisions. I take HardOCP's opinions and balance them against other opinions and reviews.

I have currently just done a major upgrade. For the most part I did not follow the recent HardOCP trend of AMD and Nvida Products (Both of which appear to be the fastest solution). I went Intel, Abit and ATI. Because i did my research and spent some time, I have the most solid machine I have ever owned (operationing 150 hours no crashes :)). I would not have ever bought ABIT except HardOCP says that they produce a good product. I never would have gone Intel, but comments regarding Multitasking and such from HARDOCP confirmed my readings and thoughts regarding CPU technology.

None of this makes anything bad hardware.

People are allowed their opinions. Privately owned media is allowed to have opinions. Regular Media definatly has their opinions. Old school american media is about as biased as fundemental muslim media, just to the other side of the issues. All you have to do to learn about media bias is learn how the NAZI's were able to convince the rest of the peaceful German nation to wipe out everyone else. Most germans were only getting one form of information from one source and not reading or talking to anyone else.

What takes real brain power is to read, talk and gain knowledge from multiple sources, and then form your own opinion, which is informed and is created from your needs and desires. Blind followers do nothing but hurt themselves and those they service. Stating that HARDOCP is biased is like saying the sky is blue.(At least in my world). Everyone is.

HardOCP is one voice in the hardware realm, it is a good voice providing their reviews based on their opinions. Just remember they are opinions, not necessarily fact, or the law of the land. Become a better IT citizen and learn to for your own opinion based on your own knowledge.
 
I saw this thread developing from flame-bait into more of a testimonial on the [H]. Since that's the case, I'm putting in my testimonial. While no one site has the whole picture, in my opinion this site hits closer to the center of the issues that gamers are interested in than just about any other. I appreciate Kyle and Co.'s 'screw you' attitude when push comes to shove. I appreciate that they tried/are trying to create a benchmark suite that would not easily be subverted by the card manufacturers and give a realistic set of results that would actually MEAN something to people that want to play THE GAMES. I consider this site a haven for the [H]ardcore types, and as such it probably doesn't appeal to less advanced users. I guess I'm saying if you don't like it, there's a ton of websites around that you might find more palatable, but leave us to our elitist attitudes and keep on surfing. Nuff said.
 
maleficarus said:
Basically my view is that [Hard]ocp tries to push its views on us readers without being fair and unbiased. That would not go over if this was a newspaper as the readers would not tolerate that kind of journalism in a publication. So why does it get over looked on the www. ?
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First of all, this isn't a newspaper. It's the opinion of a small group of individuals.

Second of all, bias at newspapers gets overlooked ALL THE TIME. Ever read the NY Times? Not fair, not balanced, completely tolerated by everyone.

Thirdly, its a web site. If you don't like it, go away. Problem instantly solved.

Lastly, what do you really want for free? You have tp pay for the "journalism" you mention.
 
maleficarus said:
And for the record I cannot get a single NVIDIA 6xxx series driver to work right on my FX5700 series card!
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Wow, I can 3DMark, AquaMark and timedemo HL2, D3 and everything with my 5700 ultra using the 67.02 beta drivers, so either your doing something wrong or your doing something stupid. Heck, I have one of the fastest XP/5700 machines out there and for all the "FX sucks" comments, mine runs pretty well (got the card at the right price, free, too cheap to upgrade till NForce4 comes out).

Bitching about beta drivers not being WHQL certified is stupid too. That is the point, they are BETA. You know what BETA means, right? That means they are TEST drivers/programs/cars/whatevers. Why would you WHQL certify a freaking TEST?! As far as using them, i will let the phreaks get them and try them first and look at the boards. If the drivers look good (like 67.02 did for HL2) then I install them. If they are crap, then who the hell cares? I don't, I just wait for the next build.

As far as do I trust the [H], well, yes and no. You are dumb as a board if you take everything from just one site at face value. That being said, their inital take on things is uaually pretty accurate, though maybe not the professional, but hey, it is a gaming site. They seems to be biased towards good gaming gear, and as 99% of end users game over CADing, I would say their reviews are very relevant.
 
"Basically Kyle’s view is there not real world and cannot be trusted. What a load of arrogant bullshit that was.'

yea.. b/c we all know ati would never Quake to cheat or nvidia modify shit.

lol.

3dmark is useles man..
really you need to benchmark obscure games that the companies have not optimized for.. which i never see.

[H] rules... if you want a site that will give you an opinion on something and damn the consquences.. its H.
 
caitiff said:
I saw this thread developing from flame-bait into more of a testimonial on the [H].
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You're right. This thread is basically a testimorial. Just post your thoughts on what you think about synthetics, this site and the games we play. Let's be honest here. This site is one of the most popular when it comes to the games we play. I mean its link city galor. If I want to find out about a game the first place I look is here. He has all the latest news cause he links it up. Another thing like is [H] posts links to other topics. Some are kinda dumb but some actualy make me sit down in front of my PC and read.

But.. and there is always a but. The dam site pushes its views on certian topics that really piss me off as a gamer. Like to try to take down synthetic benchmarks was like saying elvis was a bad singer you know? He was the king!!
 
I'm seeing a lot of the same comments being made when Kyle et al first decided not to use 3DMark in their reviews. I'll sum up the comments I made before and try to make them as crystal clear as possible.

3DMark: Problem
As a benchmark, 3DMark fails in several respects. It only separates the benchmarks based on DirectX versions and is affected greatly by driver optimizations. As a result, it only gives you a general idea of how a game might perform and becomes no better than using an actual game as a benchmark. The scores become meaningless since it lacks context. A score of 26321 will tell you nothing of the texture-fill rate of a video card, the clock speed, or the number of pipelines. It's then logical to use several games as benchmarks since the readers of this site can make a more accurate comparision.

3DMark: The Solution
Mad Onion seems to be hung up on making game engines and demo scenes rather than a benchmark. Using only games as a benchmark isn't much better of a solution either since each video card performs differently on each game. The solution is to do raw benchmarking (much like was used in 3DMark99) and use standard metrics instead of subjective scores. Frame rate is an aggregate number that doesn't the true processes going on. A suite of tests that test only specific items, akin to Sandra SiSoft, should be used instead. Consumers will then get a true benchmark. Once you have these raw numbers you can extrapolate the data to see how a game will perform. One benchmark needs to be run, rather than 5 or 6.

HardOCP Personal Problems
Many readers do not understand the full impact of the "dramas" that have on the site. Readers need to be aware of what's going on. For instance, if Infinium Labs wins their Florida lawsuit, KB Networks may have to pay $20 million in damages. This site would not exist. Furthermore, this hurts not just this site but other web journalism sites, who now have to fear writing something that will piss off a start-up company that will sue them. This stifles hardware reporting on a global level.

I don't think anyone truly enjoys the dramas that go on, but when they do rear their ugly heads it has a great potential impact to you.
 
Bubba The Barbarian said:
Wow, I can 3DMark, AquaMark and timedemo HL2, D3 and everything with my 5700 ultra using the 67.02 beta drivers, so either your doing something wrong or your doing something stupid. Heck, I have one of the fastest XP/5700 machines out there and for all the "FX sucks" comments, mine runs pretty well (got the card at the right price, free, too cheap to upgrade till NForce4 comes out).

Bitching about beta drivers not being WHQL certified is stupid too. That is the point, they are BETA. You know what BETA means, right? That means they are TEST drivers/programs/cars/whatevers. Why would you WHQL certify a freaking TEST?! As far as using them, i will let the phreaks get them and try them first and look at the boards. If the drivers look good (like 67.02 did for HL2) then I install them. If they are crap, then who the hell cares? I don't, I just wait for the next build.

As far as do I trust the [H], well, yes and no. You are dumb as a board if you take everything from just one site at face value. That being said, their inital take on things is uaually pretty accurate, though maybe not the professional, but hey, it is a gaming site. They seems to be biased towards good gaming gear, and as 99% of end users game over CADing, I would say their reviews are very relevant.
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I'll try to handle a piece at a time:

"Wow, I can 3DMark, AquaMark and timedemo HL2, D3 and everything with my 5700 ultra using the 67.02 beta drivers, so either your doing something wrong or your doing something stupid. Heck, I have one of the fastest XP/5700 machines out there and for all the "FX sucks" comments"

I'm using an Asus FX5700 Oced to 500core/600memory. P4 3.0C that can OC to 3.6 on air. My mobo is an Asus P4C800-E and I have 1GB of Kingston DDR400. The only driver that dosen't kill my Quake3 performance is 56.72. Anything higher and my Quake3 scores drop by 50%. I've tried no less then 6 updated drivers all to no avail. I know its not my PC. I update everything like its a religious symtom. My motherboard BIOS is 1019 and my chip set drivers are the latest from INTEL.

"Bitching about beta drivers not being WHQL certified is stupid too. That is the point, they are BETA."

Then why release them in the first place? I could see 1 or 2 popping up from time to time but dozens? The route of this problem is not the synthetics and how they police, but the dam leaks that spawned a web site (guru3d.com)
 
oldsk00l said:
Again if you don't like reading it, why are you here reading all the scandals??? I take it that, Steve and Kyle forced your head into a vice, and you have NO CHOICE but to look!!!???
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I usually DON'T read the scandals. I don't click on them or even read past the snippets.

If I wanted to read that type of trash, I would tune into the OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson case... or watch Jerry Springer.
 
Hornswoggler said:
I usually DON'T read the scandals. I don't click on them or even read past the snippets.

If I wanted to read that type of trash, I would tune into the OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson case... or watch Jerry Springer.
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Heh, you need a better definition of "scandal." Would it be a "scandal" if this stuff came out about the XBox, GameCube, any other product that we might be interested in buying? I know more about the Phantom Console from the links [H] has provided, then if I had just stumbled upon info somewhere else. I'm not talking [H]'s view of it either. Their journalism exposed a crap product just like I expect a hardware review site to do.
 
WOW you sure had time on your hands to write that. Well, I have a few minutes so I'm going to say this:

I've been visiting HardOCP for sometime now, its one of the sites I visit habitually 2 times a day. But this is first time I thought I think to say something regarding the site.
Mr. BigOpinion over there needs to keeps his mouth shut and show a little gratitude. Where is his examples of the wrongness in HardOCP reporting? If you're going to analyze a website and bring your opinions and possible errors to the table, wouldn't it be wise to not have it be all hot air and unquoted sources?
1. I find the reporting of MPAA and RIAA, SPAM, and other digital niusances very entertaining. There's usually a comment standing by to lighten up the foul mood of a large firm bearing down on the little guy. Or there's some comment damning the spammers (Insert reference to Wolfenstein 3d here)
2. This website is a testosterone endowed computer overclocking mosaic. I say testosterone because some of the reporting is definately biased on the male side. This is an observation, and certainly not a complaint. The overclocking nature of this website brings up another major point of flammage.
3. BIAS towards AMD brand name is inherited. Anyone with any sense knows that for the amatuer or average overclocker the AMD chips are better choice financially. Plus, the performance gains are in the favor of this manufacturer.
4. Before you open your big mouth and start adding more opinions, realize that HardOCP does a service for most of us. I think we need to come at this at a different angle.

EXCEPTION: When the reporting party or editor suggests or states that something initially and then later on retracts from it whole or in part.

Recent Example of HardOCP possibly missing the mark:

The following quotes are taken from this article.

The big picture I was starting to see was HardOCP’s responsibility with its reviews, as many people were making video card buying decisions using our data and opinions. Of course with that being the case, it seems as though we had better be testing the video hardware in a way the gamers out there that are laying down the big bucks for the upgrade would be using it.
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This is so true, many readers like myself base decisions off of the accurate reporting and benchmarking of this website. But what if, by chance, the review takes a different direction and addresses a single party with 500 dollars to burn? What happens to the person with only 200 dollars? Are they considered part of the "big buck" clique'?

You are seeing the end of HardOCP “video card reviews” and the beginning of “video card gameplay evaluations."
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I praise the efforts and support of HardOCP with the release of Doom 3 as they stuck by this statement. On the other hand...

HardOCP has moved away from “apples-to-apples” benchmarking, although we will still include a small section of this for those of you that have asked for it. We now scale the resolution, texture filtering, and antialiasing settings as we think most gamers do at home. Most of us look for the best playable image quality in a game, and that is exactly what we now focus on. If you are more concerned with which card will run Quake III the fastest at the same exact IQ settings, we are not going to be the resource for you.
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You have, oh really? What's this?

Comments:

I'm surprised that while HardOCP reviewed gameplay performance of Doom3, it certainly did not do the same for HL2. All the above quotations pretty much mean jack when you read the above linked article. Why on earth would I read that, Oh wait the title says:
Half Life 2 Benchmarks : Preliminary framerate benchmarks facing off NVIDIA’s and ATI’s latest AGP video cards in Half Life 2 using our own custom made timedemos compared apples to apples.
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This is title is misleading, I thought this was going show benchmarks and gameplay performance for HL2... not how great one 500 dollar card is over the other running in this game engine. Apples to apples comparison? Ummm... Did HardOCP fall off the bandwagon or what? INADVERTANTLY, This goes against the benchmarking objectives HardOCP has laid out for itself, if I want to compare and base a buying decision of 2 monopolistically competitive products, then I'll goto ANOTHER website...

This has been a bit of example of how reporting and review can go the wrong way, and if you are a informative reporter, at least say what you mean and mean what you say. This kind of article belongs on some CounterStrike flaming, porn collecting, 12 yr. old's geocities website.

Other than small issues like that, I think HardOCP does a great job for what its worth. There's alot of people that would like to see HardOCP fall and I'm glad that Kyle and the others and HardOCP give us a say. But please, do not turn into site like others than only reviews the latest and greatest hardware. Don't forget the little man with the overclocked ATI 9600Pro wondering if he or she should upgrade or not.
 
Hornswoggler said:
I usually DON'T read the scandals. I don't click on them or even read past the snippets.

If I wanted to read that type of trash, I would tune into the OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson case... or watch Jerry Springer.
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Then what do you care what he posts if you skip past it? Some of us love it. Jerry Springer didn't have good ratings for nothing.
 
maleficarus said:
Like to try to take down synthetic benchmarks was like saying elvis was a bad singer you know? He was the king!!
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I'm not sure if you understand the true nature of benchmarking. Let's take your example. You consider that Elvis is the King and performs better than anyone else. However, a recent British poll found that John Lennon was the greatest rock icon. Who is to say who is right? How do you determine who is better? On the surface it seems subjective, but it's possible to benchmark the two.

If you use the 3DMark method, you would sit each singer down and have them sing the same four songs. The end result would give you some number saying which singer is truly better. Now that isn't quite fair is it? While they are quite good at what they do, it doesn't tell you much about those singers. This is especially true if you have songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; Viva Las Vegas, Imagine, and Mozart's Requiem. Each singer would rock the first song, do great on their respective songs and bite the big one on Mozart. Again, this isn't a good test.

Using the HardOCP method, you test each singer singing their own albums. Here you see a "real world" examples of how they perform. You are able to see a greater range of the performer, see how they are "optimized" and also see where improvement is needed. I don't have time to listen to every album to see how they might do on the next Nelly album that's coming out.

That's where metric benchmarking comes in. Take each singer and break them down to see how they would perform. You start measuring every nuance of Elvis and Lennon. How many albums were sold, length of career, ec. Elvis is a better singer, but Lennon is the better writer. Elvis had more number one hits, but Lennon was more influential. Elvis has a better and larger vocal range and dances better, Lennon is better at instrumentation and branched out away from music. They both have downsides like doing drugs and Yoko Ono. It's hard to cheat as well. Either the singer gives me a C# when I ask or he fails.

Once you have that out of the way, you can start comparing. Lennon would do well at writing the rap lyrics, but would probably suck at performing it with his Liverpool accent. Elvis would probably do better overall. We don't have the Nelly album, but because we have good numbers to compare the singers we can extrapolate who would do better.

Hopefully, this gives you an idea of why metric benchmarking it the best way to go. Comparing physical hardware is even easier with metrics than it is with singers. I can measure specific areas and know how the card performs exactly.
 
Every site has its own reviewing style, and it's own "bias" if you want to call it that. Bias is kind of a strong word, maybe its more like leanings or tendancies, but eventually you figure out what types of products appeal to a site/reviewer, and which aspects of performance that reviewer considers more important than other aspects.

So, being the smart cookie I am, I put all my tech reading bookmarks into a little bookmark folder in Firefox, and do "Open in Tabs" when I feel like reading hardware/software stuff. It opens up:

Anandtech- For when I feel like reading a 27 page article covering only one video card really really well. Also, motherboard reviews are top notch.
HardOCP- For when I want to check up on video/cpu performance and forget about the business side benchmarks.
The Register and The Inquirer- Hey a little rumormongering never hurt anyone.
Toms Hardware- For when I want reviews of weird crap like printers and cell phones, because I just don't trust their serious reviews. Plus their page is full of so much crap on the front page it's hard to locate anything useful.

At one pont, sharkyextreme and firingsquad were both on that list, but as another reviewer stated, they've both lost their edge from my pov.

So, when it comes down to it, I don't think hardocp is any worse off than the other review sites. Out of all of them, I think probably anand is the most impartial, but as a result, they never really throw their weight and endorsement behind a product. I think that might have to do with how huge they've become as a review site, but Iono. Toms I see as the worst as far as bias is concerned, and they're even worse because they claim to be impartial but aren't. Hard is somewhere in the middle from my perspective because they do reviews like a person does; at some point in the review, or at some point during a current product cycle, H forms an opinion about two competing pieces of hardware and decides one is better than the other. If you want to call that bias or being partial, then be my guess, but it sounds like perfectly good human nature to me. And H remains open minded, since the opinion of which brand is superior does indeed change with the times.

Whew that's purty long there.
 
Wow! This sure is a long thread. I just had to put in my own two cents.

I once thought that Kyle and friends were a little biased, but I see things differently at the moment. Being a forum member for some time, I learned that Kyle can be a prick in the forums at times (he's just moody) but his review process I am favoring.

By showing me what card can do what with what game at what settings helps me avoid having to do it myself. I don't need to know how well each card performs at each specific setting. Am I going to play a game at 6x8? Nope! Can I get my mid range card to play the game at 16x12? Hell no. So does it matter? Should it matter? Not at all. Most people that read reviews are trying to get the most bang for the buck. That shows that most are using midrange vid cards. Knowing that the latest and greatest cards form ATI/nVidia can play games at a certain setting easily tells me what I can do with my card.

Like someone said very early in this thread, take the writers opinions with a grain of salt. Look at the numbers and use your brain. I know...I know.....it's tough.
 
Of course [H] is biased. Kyle and the crew love to be biased, but they are not biased in the way haters want to say they are. [H] is just simply biased to what is CURRENTLY the best product to be had on the market. Who cares if it is Intel or AMD, Nvidia or ATI, they champion only good products that deserve praise. Sure Nividia was bashed on this site (not to mention numerious others) but you dont seem them bashed in any more since there is now a great deal of parity in the videocard arena.

As far as the reviews go i find them all enlightening and the data that is given tries to provide a clear picture of the type of performance that is to be expected from the given product. I myself am not rich by any means so i am not able to buy every new videocard to play with so i rely on [H] and other sites to let me know what is worth my money and what is not. On this regard [H] has done a wonderful job as I have used their reviews (along with other reviews) to base my buying decisions on and have yet to be really disappointed or thought that [H] has led me wrong with what they have published.

[H] is uncompromising in its reviews and the only i gripe i have is a industry wide standard. The use of FPS is outdate and needs to be done away with. On cards that are marketed to the same price level you know you can expect performance with a few frames of each other, just look at the current high end segment between ATI and Nvidia cards, the best card from either company is rarely ever scoring an AVG FPS that is 5-10 FPS higher than the 2nd best card, so essentially they perform almost about the same FPS wise. The only difference would be Res level and IQ settings, but FPS are not the end all they used to be. I would rather game at a higher res and IQ settings at a slightly slower framerate if doing so would be possible without stuttering issues etc.

[H] has come a ways in try to do some of that stuff in the way they do their current VC reviews, and i think they are the best on the www in that regard.
 
maleficarus said:
I'll try to handle a piece at a time:

"Wow, I can 3DMark, AquaMark and timedemo HL2, D3 and everything with my 5700 ultra using the 67.02 beta drivers, so either your doing something wrong or your doing something stupid. Heck, I have one of the fastest XP/5700 machines out there and for all the "FX sucks" comments"

I'm using an Asus FX5700 Oced to 500core/600memory. P4 3.0C that can OC to 3.6 on air. My mobo is an Asus P4C800-E and I have 1GB of Kingston DDR400. The only driver that dosen't kill my Quake3 performance is 56.72. Anything higher and my Quake3 scores drop by 50%. I've tried no less then 6 updated drivers all to no avail. I know its not my PC. I update everything like its a religious symtom. My motherboard BIOS is 1019 and my chip set drivers are the latest from INTEL.
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PNY 5700 Ultra 256 Oced to 535 Core 635 Mem, Athlon XP 3200 OC'd to 2.5 on air, 1.5 gig of Ram and all the other trimmings you would expect on a system like that. Just cause I am cheap don't mean I know what the hell I am doing.

Oh, and I think I found your problem. INTEL...lol (sorry just could not resist the tweak).
 
I saw HardOCP go from Kyle, to Kyle and Steve, to Kyle and Steve and SomeRandomGuy#1 to Kyle and Steve and SomeRandomGuy#1 and SomeRandomGuy#2

Kyle NEVER posts anymore. Except when it's something huge. Where's the small town love dude?
 
maleficarus said:
That would not go over if this was a newspaper as the readers would not tolerate that kind of journalism in a publication.
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That is without a doubt, the biggest lie I have read in weeks. Are you seriously that blind? For God sakes, wake up! You either work for the New York Times or are Dan Rather's grandson, which is it?
 
Hornswoggler said:
I usually DON'T read the scandals. I don't click on them or even read past the snippets.

If I wanted to read that type of trash, I would tune into the OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson case... or watch Jerry Springer.
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I find it sad that you equate HardOCP acting on multiple threats of lawsuits for having the truth published on our site about a CEO and his company with Jerry Springer. If every site gave into these threats, you would not have ANY news to read, just PR statements.:rolleyes:
 
rcpilot said:
Well, considering these two overclocks are almost identical percentage wise, and the fact that back when the 2.4C's were selling well they were ~$180, and the fact that the best mainstream cpu out there was the p4 3.0C iirc, your point doesn't really make any sense. (And I know your chip would blow mine out of the water, but before I started slowly frying my PSU my 2.4C would do 3.5 GHz, on air, and others were hitting 3.6 GHz on air, which percentage wise are both greater overclocks.) But besides that, pif your chip/mobo?
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Percentage wise, yes, but with the greater IPC on the AMD procs they actually gain more per clock than the P4 does. The 2.6 3000+ will blow a 3.4 Intel out of the water, just as the FX-55 does ;)

And no, no pif ;)
 
maleficarus said:
Then why release them in the first place? I could see 1 or 2 popping up from time to time but dozens? The route of this problem is not the synthetics and how they police, but the dam leaks that spawned a web site (guru3d.com)
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NVidia may make continual improvement of the drivers a head ache for getting certified drivers, but I am absolutely happy they release the non-certified drivers to the public. I'm using a 50" LCD rear projection TV as a monitor and I wouldn't have been able to play at the native underscanned resolution without the 66.00 beta drivers when Doom3 was released.
 
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