And people moan about online reviews...

[THe_KELRaTH]

It's not just end user mags either, just browsing CTO and they've got a double page spread on the wonders of Geforce 6 - they used the Farcry steps images comparing PS 2 v PS 3. (you know... the one's that are really PS1.1 v PS 2.0)

It's a classic read... "and this is where Nvidia have pulled of something of a coup. Where ATI sent off an enormous cheque to Valve for a stack of voucher copies of the horrendously late Half Life 2, Nvidia has been pumping money into its "The way it's meant to be played" program. The result is that a number of games such as Painkiller and Farcry are shipping with SM2.0 instructions, but the developers are standing by to release SM3.0 patches as soon as Directx 9.0c is released. This should significantly improve the realsim of graphics in the games, and the key point is ATI wont have support for SM3.0 with it's Radeon X800 chips as it supports 24-bit accuracy rather than full 32-bit support offered by Nvidia"

"It's far too early to say for certain , but right now Geforce 6 looks like it'll be the graphics product of 2004"

This coming from a trade mag is a real disgrace

 

[Sazar]

I swore off of Maximum PC last year

...

Sigh. Definitely the last issue of that rag I ever buy.

I swore of em @ the end of the previous year based on their nv30 coverage... decent gaming articles but some companies with such obvious bias should really try and steer clear of purpotrated "reviews"

 

[WaltC]

It's not just end user mags either, just browsing CTO and they've got a double page spread on the wonders of Geforce 6 - they used the Farcry steps images comparing PS 2 v PS 3. (you know... the one's that are really PS1.1 v PS 2.0)

It's a classic read... "and this is where Nvidia have pulled of something of a coup. Where ATI sent off an enormous cheque to Valve for a stack of voucher copies of the horrendously late Half Life 2, Nvidia has been pumping money into its "The way it's meant to be played" program. The result is that a number of games such as Painkiller and Farcry are shipping with SM2.0 instructions, but the developers are standing by to release SM3.0 patches as soon as Directx 9.0c is released. This should significantly improve the realsim of graphics in the games, and the key point is ATI wont have support for SM3.0 with it's Radeon X800 chips as it supports 24-bit accuracy rather than full 32-bit support offered by Nvidia"

"It's far too early to say for certain , but right now Geforce 6 looks like it'll be the graphics product of 2004"

This coming from a trade mag is a real disgrace

Man, that's really scary. Whew, and although I'm not sure what "CTO" is, if I ever find out I'll sure stay away.... I'm accustomed to having to read Tom's Hardware to see so much bogus, erroneous, biased info occasionally crammed into a single paragraph (which is tongue 'n cheek, since obviously I *don't read* THG for that reason), but it sure doesn't look like the author of this CTO statement is in any way innocent in his misundertandings--hard to see how anything so blatantly void of fact might be the result of error, isn't it? This kind of thing is unfortunate to see...

 

[THe_KELRaTH]

Heh sorry WaltC, it's the main UK "Computer Trade Only" magazine published every 2 weeks and it's one area I would expect just facts, release dates, prices, new prod info, up & coming technologies etc etc.

Just think of all those retailers reading it, a good percentage are just box shifters and have little knowledge about the products themselves - that review is effectively saying "Don't buy ATI".

Oh, and they were at the London ATI venue too!

 

[ben6]

To be fair to print magazines they often have limited space for each article and benchmark results. (You should see the fight my editor and I put up to make the article in a print mag over a 4 page AMD CPU article and it was still cut in size).

As to Far Cry and PS 1.1/3.0 well I question if those reviewers EVER played the game, and I mean at ALL. If you can't tell that the rendering being done wasn't the same as on a R3xx or NV3x then you've obviously never played the game