[H]ardOCP Trying to be too Hard?

[Moloch]

what the hell is up with all these guys regging just to comment here?
did kyle make a post at teh [H] to defend him

 

[patton713MW]

actually no, I registered because I felt like saying something. You probably know Kyle better than I do. I found this thread from the link on HardOCPs front page, and felt like posting. Plus, I like B3D, so I figured that I'd end up registering sooner or later. Am I allowed to read HardOCP then come and post here, or do I need to be sprinkled w/ holy water first? :smile:

 

[Moloch]

Well I was mostly referring to Lollercaust, since his comment is so immature.
I noticed [H]Poddo, then you, which your first post is good, but then the [H]Poddo guy...

 

[Karma Police]

SugarCoat is right. Kyle is a smart guy, but he refuses to admit when he's wrong. Sometimes it's good (Phantom), sometimes its bad (like now). He seems to be doing it alot recently.

Now I'm moving on with my life.

 

[Regeneration]

I think Kyle is a good guy. I admire him because he has balls, unlike many others. He’s not afraid to attack when it’s necessary. Many people are just afraid to do so. I still remember the Futuremark case.

 

[Regeneration]

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.

I think Kyle is totally right about ATI. They really rushed with their new products and it caused a lot of confusion among the market. Even now, we still don’t know clearly what’s going on. They deserved the criticism.

 

[Moloch]

SugarCoat is right. Kyle is a smart guy, but he refuses to admit when he's wrong. Sometimes it's good (Phantom), sometimes its bad (like now). He seems to be doing it alot recently.

Now I'm moving on with my life.

I wouldn't call him smart, just has alot of experience.

 

[PatrickL]

The follow up article is an art piece. Can you say from it what faulty video card it is? I guess not but Ati chipset is clearly named again

Originally Posted by Chris @ HardOCP.com
Recently we have been in contact with Falcon Northwest after we posted a not so kind article about their FragBox 2. Specifically, we had some major issues with stability in the one program that we bought it for: Battlefield 2.

During the course of our troubleshooting alongside Falcon’s technicians for a period of over a week, everyone involved was looking at a memory timing issue on the MSI motherboard powered by the ATI Xpress 200 chipset. I had already experienced poor quality sound out of the integrated solution, and I needed a driver update to get 5.1 surround sound to operate properly and to get rid of a ‘popping’ sound that would occur in Battlefield 2. For over a week, we heard from Falcon Northwest about all of the trouble they had getting the motherboard to be stable in games like World of Warcraft and Serious Sam 2 while running at the rated CAS speed of their Corsair memory. They finally ended up having to lower the CAS latency to 3 from its default of 2 to get these games to run stable. They also required at least one BIOS fix from MSI. An email from Falcon’s support stated specifically that our problems resided in the motherboard’s ability to handle memory timings.

So when I went into the final stages of writing our article, in my mind the problems existed squarely with the motherboard. We published the finished article last Tuesday. Falcon Northwest had received the system the day before, and immediately began troubleshooting the problem.

By Thursday they came to the conclusion that the issue was a very subtle, and still undiagnosed, problem with the video card. Kelt Reeves, Falcon’s President, was extremely surprised that it was the video card and not the motherboard.

I have no reason to doubt Falcon Northwest in their assessment. Assuming their diagnosis is true, it calls into question some of the statements I made regarding the motherboard in the FragBox 2. I stated in the article that the MSI motherboard with ATI Xpress 200 was a poor solution. I was extremely confident in my remarks after the hours of conversation with Falcon Northwest technicians and Kelt Reeves. However, I think that our timing of returning the system and publishing the article was unfortunate and I regrettably made definitive statements about MSI and ATI without having the issue fully resolved.

Regardless, I stand by my overall assessment of the FragBox 2 as stated in the article. I was unhappy with the performance of the system we received, and after weeks of troubleshooting it, I felt that as a consumer who just spent $3200 on a gaming machine, I needed to mitigate my risk and return the system. Whether or not the problem lay in the motherboard, video card, or magic pixie dust, it all comes down to the fact that the system simply didn’t work.

Either way, I appreciate Falcon Northwest’s communications with us after the article was posted, their resolve to fix the issue, and their continued participation in our systems evaluation program. We look forward to getting another one of their systems in our labs.

 

[volt]

Getting back at the topic, here are my 2 cents

Just so you know, I'M NOT defending anyone involved.

To tell you the truth, I agree with most of Kyle's comments in that article. I was reviewing XPRESS 200 based motherboard from a vendor (not gonna say who it was).

It was all fine and dandy until I experienced my first bluescreen / lockup. And guess what? I did have 2 sticks of Corsair RAM in that motherboard, but that's not the point. ATI claims their XPRESS 200 BIOS is enthusiast-friendly -- not so. Trying to overclock the CPU with this thing gave me major headaches and instability. Audio quality was as poor as it could be, a lot of cracking, poor CPU utilization etc.

To make the long story short I refused to finish the review because I've had too many issues with this board. Vendor was fine with that and agreed with my comments.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Was the board using an ATI reference design with the ATI BIOS options?

 

[volt]

Was the board using an ATI reference design with the ATI BIOS options?

If I tell you, you'll know who it was

I'm assuming you've had similar problems or you're aware ref. boards have issues?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, its a pertinent question - if you are looking at a reference design or a board closely resembling the reference design (eg, in the case of XPRESS 200, Sapphire's Grouper board) then you can look at the IHV's claims; if you aren't then then you are looking more at that specific board implementation rather than anything else.

I'm assuming you've had similar problems or you're aware ref. boards have issues?

Well, actually, no. Now, I don't overclock and tend to stick the the base/default configuration, but the only issues I've had with the reference boards are on the Crossfire platform and ATI's instructions on which was the primary PCIe slot and which was the secondardy being backwards.

 

[volt]

Oh what the heck...it was a reference looking board with vendor branding. Not sure about BIOS, but it had options that were not covered in the manual or settings I have never seen (for troubleshooting / debugging maybe?)

 

[digitalwanderer]

Getting back at the topic, here are my 2 cents

Just so you know, I'M NOT defending anyone involved.

To tell you the truth, I agree with most of Kyle's comments in that article. I was reviewing XPRESS 200 based motherboard from a vendor (not gonna say who it was).

It was all fine and dandy until I experienced my first bluescreen / lockup. And guess what? I did have 2 sticks of Corsair RAM in that motherboard, but that's not the point. ATI claims their XPRESS 200 BIOS is enthusiast-friendly -- not so. Trying to overclock the CPU with this thing gave me major headaches and instability. Audio quality was as poor as it could be, a lot of cracking, poor CPU utilization etc.

To make the long story short I refused to finish the review because I've had too many issues with this board. Vendor was fine with that and agreed with my comments.

Wow, thanks Volt....quit being such a stranger.

 

[Tim]

From the looks of it, a single component in the PC was the source of instability, just not the one they originally thought. I seriously wonder, if [H] had blamed the video card to begin with and it had turned out to be the motherboard at fault, would you be up in arms about their horrible bias against NVIDIA? I doubt it.

People are up in arms about the bias against Ati because Hardocp has been consistently anti-Ati for years, if thay had wrongfully blaimed NVIDIA this time there would be no basis to claim any bias because there are no pattern.

 

[FrgMstr]

Does every thread in this forum involve "KYLE IS SUCH AN ATI HATER" or "KYLE IS ALWAYS RIGHT?" If drawing attention to his site is his goal, though, he is certainly a god among men.

Actually, it seems as though right now I am drawing attention to B3D. Do I still get "god" status for that? Actually we draw attention to hundreds of sites a week, including ourselves.

 

[Geo]

SugarCoat is right. Kyle is a smart guy, but he refuses to admit when he's wrong. Sometimes it's good (Phantom), sometimes its bad (like now). He seems to be doing it alot recently.

Now I'm moving on with my life.

I have never, EVER (feel free to point at one Frgmstr) seen Kyle change his mind significantly in the middle of a brawl. It seems to me, however, that he does change his mind over time, and possibly the cumulative effect of brawls --at least reasonable points made amongst the emoting-- sticks with him over time.

 

[rashly]

If [H] thinks the Xpress 200 chipset is bad, then that’s fine. They can state their opinion as much as they want, and maybe it’s true. Maybe the chipset is flawed. However, unless they throw some objective data out there in the article that backs up that claim then all is lost. A reader should be able to read an objective review (minus the conclusions page) and be able to make his/her own conclusions based on that data laid forth. I see nothing objective in this review that backs up the Xpress 200 instability problem. All I see is an opinion with little fact to back it up. Stating, “In my mind the problems existed squarely with the motherboard,†is terrible journalism. Making conclusions based on assumptions is a terrible way to go about making an article. On top of that, the assumption ended up being wrong. Why publish an article when the real issue is not known? While the home user isn’t expected to do this, why publish an article with conclusions without actually taking the simple step of swapping out the video card to see the issue? If I was writing an article saying that the motherboard was the fault, I would take it upon myself to make sure that the motherboard was the issue. This means swapping out other components. If you don’t want to do this because you feel the average home user wont do this, then don’t make conclusions without knowing all of the facts.

Go on any forum and ask what the best hard drive company is. You’ll get people with nothing but bad luck with Maxtor and people with nothing but bad luck with WD. Show me objective data or don’t just throw your opinion in there. The least that could be done is changing the article and saying that you found no problem with the Xpress 200 chipset and the problem was the faulty card. The problem was the BFG graphics card (let’s not even get into the issue of [H] obviously being biased to BFG over other card makers). Why BFG doesn’t get the same criticism that the Xpress 200 got is beyond me, especially when there is fact to back up that the BFG card was the problem.


The nv30 stuff really turned me off of [H]. They lost all credibility in my mind back then, although I do enjoy some of Brent’s recent reviews. I think that the attitude of the guys that run the site and the comments made in the reviews really turns people off and hurts the credibility. They can run the site how they want, and I congratulate them on their success, but having subjectivity regarding purchasing decisions does not help the [H] readers. [H] is an immensely popular site that a lot of poorly informed readers will visit to educate themselves. I feel bad for the people making purchasing decisions on subjective information. Now I realize that not everyone out there understands (or cares) about the level of technical detail in Beyond3D’s articles, but having subjective opinions in an article with no fact in said article to back said opinions up is doing a disservice to the people who go to [H] to educate themselves on purchasing decisions.

 

[volt]

Wow, thanks Volt....quit being such a stranger.

I am! I rarely post around anywhere nowadays

 

[Tim Murray]

Actually, it seems as though right now I am drawing attention to B3D. Do I still get "god" status for that? Actually we draw attention to hundreds of sites a week, including ourselves.

Pfft, in that scale, you are still an insignificant nothing compared to the horror of the Slashdot Effect.