I think most are aware of the harsh comments of certain people from that site toward ATI and their products shipping late. A level of maturity which was shown that can be easily citisized as well however people are entitled to their opinions of course.
Now something new has come up, personally i think this site is going down the proverbial tubes. Basically they reviewd an extremely high end computer done by Falcon NW, and encountered some lock up issues in a game. They contacted support, failed to solve the issue. Full stability problem + review is here:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODE3LDc=
Kyle being the gem he is was quite content that the entire failure was on the shoulders of the ATI Xpress 200 chipset the system is using, this is evident by the following comments
Based on my personal experiences with motherboards using the ATI Xpress 200 chipset, I would have to firmly say there is no way I would put my company’s reputation on the line with such a product. The ATI Xpress 200 chipset has been plagued with quality issues specific to high performance memory timings, among other things, since way before its public introduction. While the ATI Xpress 200 has certainly matured over the last year, there is simply no possibility it would find its way into a $3000 computer that I built for gaming. Falcon’s choice in motherboards for our FragBox 2 represents a bad configuration decision that is ultimately paid for by the gaming consumer in terms of frustration and disappointment. -Kyle
Believe me, the off the record comments were worse. Now he has bodly posted a follow up to the article in which they sent the system back, and the good people at Falcon found the stability issue to be the sole problem of the BFG 7800GTX card, simply a bad apple. And they offered to send the computer back citing, quite fairly, that Kyle had unjustly targeted a company, ATI in this case, and insisted, if not at least strongly incinuated that computers running on the Xpress200 will have these issues. However again, no problem was found in the chipset. Full follow-up is here:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODc2
now comes the fun part. So they offer to send the computer back, saying please re-review or at least correct where the blame was place. Kyle has refused on both accounts. He will not take the computer back, saying that it might be cherry picked now and somehow effecting the review, nor will he take responsability and say that the Xpress200 was stable in his use. Instead he has gone on to say such things as:
I still firmly stand by our opinions of the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. I would neither use one in my personal system, nor any system that I might build due to the stability issues I have seen with it in the past. The chipset might be fine for email and Web surfing boxes, but it is not a good solution for gamers. When I pay $3200 for a gaming computer, I simply expect to be supplied with a powerful solution and not one that even its own manufacturer doesn't consider to be high end.
I see this happening. He had a stability problem with a computer, immediatly jumped to conclusion ATI was at fault and stated as such very publically. The fault was not ATI, but the cards, so he has absolutly zero reasoning to post an opinion in a review if it doesnt belong. If it was stable, you say it was stable, regaurdless of your personally feelings about past products from any said company, you review the system you're given. In his case he not only reviewed it, he said ATI's chipsets caused instability and they dont belong in high end systems. Well considering instability was not a problem here, i dont understand how someone can justly place that in a review?
This is a wonderful example of what review sites should never do.
Now something new has come up, personally i think this site is going down the proverbial tubes. Basically they reviewd an extremely high end computer done by Falcon NW, and encountered some lock up issues in a game. They contacted support, failed to solve the issue. Full stability problem + review is here:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODE3LDc=
Kyle being the gem he is was quite content that the entire failure was on the shoulders of the ATI Xpress 200 chipset the system is using, this is evident by the following comments
Based on my personal experiences with motherboards using the ATI Xpress 200 chipset, I would have to firmly say there is no way I would put my company’s reputation on the line with such a product. The ATI Xpress 200 chipset has been plagued with quality issues specific to high performance memory timings, among other things, since way before its public introduction. While the ATI Xpress 200 has certainly matured over the last year, there is simply no possibility it would find its way into a $3000 computer that I built for gaming. Falcon’s choice in motherboards for our FragBox 2 represents a bad configuration decision that is ultimately paid for by the gaming consumer in terms of frustration and disappointment. -Kyle
Believe me, the off the record comments were worse. Now he has bodly posted a follow up to the article in which they sent the system back, and the good people at Falcon found the stability issue to be the sole problem of the BFG 7800GTX card, simply a bad apple. And they offered to send the computer back citing, quite fairly, that Kyle had unjustly targeted a company, ATI in this case, and insisted, if not at least strongly incinuated that computers running on the Xpress200 will have these issues. However again, no problem was found in the chipset. Full follow-up is here:
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODc2
now comes the fun part. So they offer to send the computer back, saying please re-review or at least correct where the blame was place. Kyle has refused on both accounts. He will not take the computer back, saying that it might be cherry picked now and somehow effecting the review, nor will he take responsability and say that the Xpress200 was stable in his use. Instead he has gone on to say such things as:
I still firmly stand by our opinions of the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. I would neither use one in my personal system, nor any system that I might build due to the stability issues I have seen with it in the past. The chipset might be fine for email and Web surfing boxes, but it is not a good solution for gamers. When I pay $3200 for a gaming computer, I simply expect to be supplied with a powerful solution and not one that even its own manufacturer doesn't consider to be high end.
I see this happening. He had a stability problem with a computer, immediatly jumped to conclusion ATI was at fault and stated as such very publically. The fault was not ATI, but the cards, so he has absolutly zero reasoning to post an opinion in a review if it doesnt belong. If it was stable, you say it was stable, regaurdless of your personally feelings about past products from any said company, you review the system you're given. In his case he not only reviewed it, he said ATI's chipsets caused instability and they dont belong in high end systems. Well considering instability was not a problem here, i dont understand how someone can justly place that in a review?
This is a wonderful example of what review sites should never do.
Last edited by a moderator:
Nifty stuffs.
