[H]ardOCP Trying to be too Hard?

Let me just mention this once again, because someone pointed out the DFI Lanparty board.

A friend of mine has the DFI Lanparty Xpress 200 board and he can run it at 280MHz FSB and 300MHz RAM with Geil One memories at very low timings. This is just how good the board can overclock.

Kyle's opinions are just his opinions, they are in no way factual and very likely heavily biased.

Here's a review of the said DFI Lanparty board from Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2572

It paints a TOTALLY different picture compared to Kyle's comments. So different that, actually, it makes him look like a clown.

I believe nothing further needs be said.

 

It wan't stable due to the bad video card not the chipset. During the troubleshooting process they tried various things to get the machine stable including playing with the memory timings. However it did not solve the problem since it was not the cause of the problem. what is so hard to understand about that?

 

Wow, is that why they never buy the occasional nVidia part but always review cherry picked nVidia/BFG hardware? Now that would make sense, considering BFG parts always had excellent reviews on TardOCP and now that they try a retail part, the video card caused system instability! Incredible!

I'm sorry but if you're going to start dwelling on conspiracy theories, things will just get out of hand like this.

 

I'm completely okay with the review's score for the most part, yes this is a random incident, but its still what happened. What I dont like is the fact that HardOCP took it upon themselves to try to point out the mistake, they said it was the motherboard, but it was indeed not, rather it was the video card. Rather than with the follow up say "We were wrong in accusing the motherboard for the stability issues, it was actually the video card all along", they keep slamming a motherboard that was perfectly fine. Makes no freaking sense, and how people even think its logical is beyond me.

 

Actually I think its kind of indicative of a trend at Anandtech...

Right, conspiracy theories like OMGZ THEY ARE BIASED AGAINST MY MASTERS AT ATi!?!!? OH NOZ!!! The [H] has worked directly with both nV and ATi, just ask ATi. They don't seem to think there is a bias against them at [H]ard|OCP.

 

And its hardly a conspiracy theory to think a hardware vendor who knew the part was going out for review would give the thing a few passes and make sure that it was an exceptional example of their hardware if given the chance. Do you think that they are retarded? They live and die by these reviews to a large extent.

 

Umm, did you totally skip the part where this is a blind review. NFW did not know HardOCP would be reviewing their system, HardOCP bought the system and reviewed it, the system was not sent to HardOCP for evaluation.

 

I was not talking about the FragBox2, I was speaking generally.

P.S. -- in re-reading the original article the frequency of crashes did decrease after CAS timings were altered, though they did not resolve the issue entirely, meaning it wasn't the only thing going on.

 

Am I the only one who is kinda flabbergasted that some people think that one site is more correct than all others in every regard?

 

Thats not the Point...... Everybody thinks that the poor rating for the FragBox and the the blurb about the ATI Chipset are the wholey connected. They are not.

The Fragbox got a low rating because it was unstable (no matter what reason). And while informed that It looked like a motherboard issue Kyle decided to rant about his displeasure of them using a x200 mobo. Myabe if they (Kyle, Chris or FNW) didn't think it was a bad mobo Kyle might not of ranted, it still doesn't mean that he is pleased with the use of a eco board in a 3,000 machine.

Think of it this way and explorer rolls over, everyone thinks the Firestone tires are at fault, so a police officer rants about the use of crappy tires on a $30,000 SUV. It turns out that the suspension failed and was at caused. Doesn't negate the fact that the Firestone tires suck and were responsible for several hundred other rollovers.

 

Damnit that hows the review world works. I remember with the Kowasaki during the zx12 and Busa wars sent reviewers hand built and tweaked zx12 because there was a bug in their design the review ones got to 201 ro 202 Mph but the retails only hit like 183. After about a year ZX12s started hitting 192 or so but never even came close to the ones in the reviews. This is why HardOCP just recently went to purchasing their parts to prevent a manufacturer sending them cherry picked parts.

We have seen Asus, DFI, and Epox board hit 315-320 HTT in reviews yet the limit on retail boards have been 305-311 except under extreme circumstances. Every company wants people to be looking at the best their product can do not the worst. That is also why recieving the Fragbox2 back would be have invalidated the point of the review. Now I am not sure if they have completely made the switch (probably not on CPUs and Video cards though) but their heart is in the right direction.

 

Yes, yes you are...feel unique and special.

 

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzgxLDc=

 

The icon for it can be a little frying pan.

 

I guess you didn't read the last paragraph did you?

" work with computer systems every day that have to be tweaked or fine-tuned in order to make them work right. The Shuttle ST20G5 and its stable operation were beyond my abilities. I feel as though the ULi southbridge took what could have been a great low cost system and turned it into a pile of frustration and confusion. Quite simply, there is no way we would suggest you purchase the Shuttle ST20G5 based on our experiences here at HardOCP. Other solutions in the marketplace are just better choices due to their lack of the problems mentioned above."


Still not a problem with the ATi north bridge

 

They ripped on the MB wrongly so. Even after it was discovered that it was a video card failure they sill had to rip on ATi's chipset.

 

Sadly ATI calls all of their chipsets Express 200s, The one in that review is a RD480 the one that Kyle has been having issues with was the RD 420 I think, may be older. Not exactly Apples to apples. The fact that originally exen the Crossfire boards were going to use ULI southbridges because of inherent problems with the ATI version speaks volumes. Luckily the delay on crossfire let them work most of the bugs out. As for first tries this isn't as good as the Nforce 1 but still better then most first tries. Besides the inherent SLI Vs. Crossfire with them not working on the other I forsee a great life of ATI in the chipset market. That doesn't mean that people specially ones purchasing 3,000 should use them or beforced to use them. The RD480 is another subject and while not many people have boards that use it, it looks like it may be a good chipset, not good enough for me to get rid of my NForce SLI board but, good.

 

They were told that it was a mobo issue and thought it was themselves. You would rather have them go back and hide the fact that they said it just because you don't like it, thats not good, you take the good with the bad. They said it was the video later and thats that. The ripping in of the Chipset was a personal choice and whether or not you liked it Kyle felt it was something worth saying. True that the thought of a mobo prob may have been a catalyst but still doesn't invalidate his feelings.

 

It is not the northbridge that is the issue. It's the southbridge that has the issues. There are no major problems with the Northbridge.

That's why many motherboard manufacturers are releasing motherboards with the ULi southbridge instead. It's not a great southbridge for RAID, but it's a damn sight better than SB450 in just about every department.

I was out in Taiwan in September speaking to several of the guys in Technical Marketing for some of the larger motherboard manufacturers and they're all very sceptical about releasing motherboards using the SB450 southbridge. The engineers don't like the southbridge at all. Why do you think DFI are rumoured to be releasing an updated CrossFire board with the ULi southbridge? They've only just got the CF-DR out of the door.

I've got that board sitting here, but I haven't had the chance to look at it properly yet, as I've been waiting for a CrossFire card to arrive. However, I was speaking to my colleagues at Bit-Tech's sister publication. They've fully tested the board and they weren't impressed with it by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think Kyle is alone with the CF-DR - I'm still waiting for some better BIOSes to come out in all honesty.

Where are the final versions of the CrossFire boards from ASUS & Gigabyte? I've seen the board from MSI, but that is based on the ULi southbridge, same with the ABIT CrossFire board too. The ULi southbridge's drivers are a nightmare at best from my experiences, but it is a lot better than the SB450 when looking at the bigger picture. Why do you think so many motherboard manufacturers are opting for the ULi southbridge over SB450?