Value of Linus Tech Media benchmarking / reviews *pretend spawn

Bludd said:
gn seems to try harder than ltt to keep objectivity so it severely lacks nuance just both-siding this
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GN is the more professional of the three, I agree, he is the best of all of them by far, but he is sliding their way too, his videos of late are now filled with more theatricality and drama, his testing methodology for games (whether CPU or GPU) is very poor, anemic and outdated, with very few games, most of which are old, utilizing uselss test sequences reaching hundreds of fps .. his videos are filled with more and more of his subjective opinions on features like ray tracing and upscaling, so he is essentially in the early phases of Hardware Unboxed. He is also pity, otherwise he would ignore this Linus farce altogether.
 
DavidGraham said:
GN is the more professional of the three, I agree, he is the best of all of them by far, but he is sliding their way too, his videos of late are now filled with more theatricality and drama, his testing methodology for games (whether CPU or GPU) is very poor, anemic and outdated, with very few games, most of which are old, utilizing uselss test sequences reaching hundreds of fps .. his videos are filled with more and more of his subjective opinions on features like ray tracing and upscaling, so he is essentially in the early phases of Hardware Unboxed. He is also pity, otherwise he would ignore this Linus farce altogether.
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its probably because this is a really really hard job, and people have to eat.

and ltt eating a bigger slice of the pie despite being arguably worse is not good
 
DavidGraham said:
GN is the more professional of the three, I agree, he is the best of all of them by far, but he is sliding their way too, his videos of late are now filled with more theatricality and drama, his testing methodology for games (whether CPU or GPU) is very poor, anemic and outdated, with very few games, most of which are old, utilizing uselss test sequences reaching hundreds of fps .. his videos are filled with more and more of his subjective opinions on features like ray tracing and upscaling, so he is essentially in the early phases of Hardware Unboxed. He is also pity, otherwise he would ignore this Linus farce altogether.
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I somewhat agree with this, but I don't think his results are wrong, and I don't think anything he's doing is unethical, which is the difference here. The test results from Gamers Nexus don't necessarily line up with what I'm interested in (e-sportsish experience), so I'm more likely to watch Optimum Tech or something else for that info. I think it's totally fine to have some subjectivity in reviews as long as the reasoning is explained. So if they don't test ray tracing because their viewers don't watch it, or they don't think the results the performance hit is worth it, or some other reason that's totally fine. I just expect the results they use to justify the opinions to be correct, and I think the Gamers Nexus ones are. I do think AMD cpus have been shown to be better for gaming than they may actually be by sites like GN, but that really comes down to the use case. For example, specific things like if you're playing more esports oriented titles with low settings and you're always cpu-limited I've noticed Ryzen cpus don't tend to fare as well (fortnite low settings, apex legends low settings). Again sites like GN don't necessarily reflect that in their reviews, but they don't really test things in an esports way, which is fine. There is a snarkiness from GN that I sometimes don't like, but oh well.

LTT here just seems like a shady shitty company. That waterblock thing is just atrocious, and the tripling down on the Pwnage mouse stuff is just brain-dead misrepresentation.
 
Malo said:
It's fucking terrible that Linus wouldn't spend a few hundred dollars of employees time to get correct testing done, knowing it's wrong, in a 100m+ company. Good ole' bottom line mindset. Minimum effort, maximum output, churn out the content en masse. It's crazy the amount of videos they put out each week, no wonder they make so many mistakes.
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LTT is simply victim of his success. The company is big (in this field) and has huge financial pressure because of the overheads. They don't have any choice, content must come in a frenetic pace to generate revenue so they won't go to bankruptcy quickly. Business 101...
 
Cruising reddit I noticed an ex-employee's story about LTT:

I was expected to post 3 tweets, 2 Instagram posts, and 2 TikToks minimum per day.

I was also expected to plan, film, edit, and post 2 Floatplane exclusives per week.

This included wrangling people to be in them when they were also all struggling to get their work done.

I was also expected to manage, plan, come up with, execute, get approval for, and schedule out all the sponsored content on socials (not including YouTube)

All while being told not to complain because my job was "the fun job".

I cannot speak on what it's like now, but they have an entire team working on (seemingly) what I was expected to accomplish alone.

I misspoke originally when I stated I had signed an NDA. (I thought the employee handbook acted as one, I am not a lawyer)

I never publicly made any statements regarding my time there because I feared even more backlash from a community that was already attacking, defaming, and sending me death threats.

I also feared for my future in this career given that LTT is large and has industry connections.

My time at this company brought my mental health to an all time low.
You could talk to anyone who was around me during my employment and they would confirm it.

I would not have recommended anyone I knew to work there, especially with my experiences as a woman in the office.

I was consistently belittled by certain members of upper management.

My work was called "dogshit" I was called "incompetent".

When I would reach out to managers and try to get help with these situations, I would be told to "put on my big girl pants" and be "more assertive".
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LTT honestly sounds like a place that just never became professional. Just horrible nerd culture shit that leads to HR and employee problems. They obviously were able to increase production quality, but never developed professional standards and expectations for the employees and content. The content just looked prettier, and they could buy more expensive toys. I sort of question their hiring to. Most of the people don't seem to be knowledgeable about anything, so I have no idea how they got hired.
 
Scott_Arm said:
I somewhat agree with this, but I don't think his results are wrong, and I don't think anything he's doing is unethical, which is the difference here. The test results from Gamers Nexus don't necessarily line up with what I'm interested in (e-sportsish experience), so I'm more likely to watch Optimum Tech or something else for that info. I think it's totally fine to have some subjectivity in reviews as long as the reasoning is explained. So if they don't test ray tracing because their viewers don't watch it, or they don't think the results the performance hit is worth it, or some other reason that's totally fine.
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Then dont call it a "review". Here is the 4070 "review" which does not include the following features of the card:
DLSS
FrameGeneration
Reflex

And there are only two games with Raytracing. In the conclusion of the "review" he claimed that a AMD product like the 6950XT is better ("faster").

A review includes every feature of a product. When you just ignore them, then it is not an objective review.
 
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troyan said:
Then dont call it a "review". Here is the 4070 "review" which does not include the following features of the card:
DLSS
FrameGeneration
Reflex

And there are only two games with Raytracing. In the conclusion of the "review" he claimed that a AMD product like the 6950XT is better ("faster").

A review includes every feature of a product. When you just ignore them, then it is not an objective review.
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I bought a 4070 over a 6950 but I think it's fair to judge these cards on their performance. In fact I prefer it that way. The value of things like frame generation and raytracing is highly subjective. His conclusion is not the one I came to personally but it is completely valid.
 
homerdog said:
think it's fair to judge these cards on their performance
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It is I agree, but we are now five years since Turing stirred things up, and yet these "reviewers" are stuck in the past, refusing to move from it, and are not coping with current tech and events.

Ray Tracing performance is now an important metric, especially for high end GPUs, more and more AAA and AA games are using heavy RT effects, Path Tracing is now a thing too. DLSS is used wildly by almost everyone, Frame Generation is a useful tool liked by most people who tried it, and is even necessary for CPU limited games. Reflex is a net positive win in any game. So, Ignoring these factors in a product review is no longer acceptable or even logical, as they heavily impact the experience of the user.
 
Sounds like they're at least taking Maddison's claims seriously:

Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
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Scott_Arm said:
LTT honestly sounds like a place that just never became professional. Just horrible nerd culture shit that leads to HR and employee problems.
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Yeah that's my take as well. If it didn't happen with this Madison person it was going to happen with someone else sooner or later. LMG has like 10x the number of employees I would feel comfortable with in that kind of informal, free-wheeling work culture.
 
homerdog said:
I bought a 4070 over a 6950 but I think it's fair to judge these cards on their performance. In fact I prefer it that way. The value of things like frame generation and raytracing is highly subjective.
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Ray tracing is performance. If we go this route then we may also say that the value of things like 4K or texture filtering are subjective.
 
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