[H]ardOCP Trying to be too Hard?

Not failing to understand, just saying that for a long while I thought they had a PRO-ATi bias, but I stuck around long enough to realize that it wasn't the case.

Fair enough, cool talking to you

 

Good grief. Bias. How often have we ever heard that around here?

I think I might have some good insights here, so here we go....

As a member that has been accused of bias more than once (some for good reasons, some for bad, but mainly for just ignorance) I can understand exactly this situation. So let me hum a few bars.

I have known Kyle for quite a few years now. I have known him on a personal level, and a professional level. Kyle can be a nice guy, and yet Kyle can be a dick. Just like anyone, there are things that make him happy, and there are things that make him pissed. His life is made up of experiences, and those experiences have given him an opinion on everything (just as everyone else does). Now, I think the biggest mistake people are making here is that Kyle is basing his opinions on merely how he feels (or that he is biased one way or the other), and not his personal experience in the matter.

Let me give you an example. I build systems on a side, and in the past year out of 20 Maxtor SATA drives that I have sold, I had to replace 10 of them. In the same time period I sold around 15 Seagate drives, and I have not had to replace a single one. So, basing my future buying decisions on my past experience, do you think that I will be buying any Maxtor drives? Of course not. Based on my experience there are some real quality issues with the latest generation of Maxtor drives.

Kyle has obviously dealt with a lot of these motherboards. Far more than pretty much 99.99% of anyone out there. If he says that they have consistently seen problems with this chipset, then I am going to take his word for it. I am about ready to embark on a review of the Xpress for AMD, and if I encounter a lot of problems as well, then obviously my opinion of it will be poor as well. I certainly hope this isn't the situation though, as the product looks pretty nifty.

Basically people need to relax on the whole topic of bias. Let me in on a secret... hardware guys are biased... but usually to the product that seems to work best. In 2002 many hardware guys were seen as being "in the red" due to the overwhelming success of the 9700 and 9800 series. Now people are saying many of us are going green, but we can look at the success of SLI, the 6800 series, and the current 7800's and see that for the majority of applications out there, NVIDIA has a better product (especially since NVIDIA impressed so many people with their instant availability). Now that we are starting to see ATI have a good product again at the high end, I think some good balance will be restored. I for one am looking forward to trying out a X1800 someday.

So, love Kyle or hate him, I think you should give him a little bit of respect for doing several things: speaking his mind, spending a lot of time actually working with hardware, and having more than a small idea of what the hell is going on. Kyle is a smart guy, and he has made a million dollar business by doing what he loves to do. How many of us can say the same? While I may have a little respect around the world, I am certainly not rich from what I enjoy doing. I think we can look at Dave and Beyond3D and see that while he has pretty much everyone's respect with what he does, he still has a fulltime job outside of Beyond3D to help pay the bills.

 

I noticed the use of "proof" in quotes. Why is that? (Because its not only not actual proof, there was no real evidence to determine what the problem was before proclaiming it.)

Let me guess...you came to this "realization" right around the time that most see his bias toward Nv?

Many people enjoy the Inquirer and the Enquirer too.

 

I wonder how many times those supporting Kyle will continually getting the argument 100% wrong.

We are not upset about his opinion on the chipset. We are concerned that his opinion was used as a justification for jumping to conclusions.

That's great.

So if you get an unstable system that has a maxtor drive in it, does that mean you come out and factually state the problem is with the maxtor drive when you don't know? And then when it's pointed out to you that it's not, do you say "well, it doesn't really matter what the problem was, because in my experience Maxtor drives don't cut it."

Um, yes. He does get credit for that.

This does not mean he is above reproach for doing stupid things.

 

In spite of you answering your own question, I'll reply It is in single quotes because it is the kind of 'proof' that subjective experiential data gives you. Its his personal experience with the products, just as it is someone else's that they had two bad BFG cards and will tell anyone who listens that BFG sucks. Its not because I don't believe him; his subjective experiential data has the same value as anyone's.

I came to that "realization" after watching the [H] go back and forth between brands more than once. Though I "appreciate" your "use" of "quotes"

 

But is his argument without merit? Let me frame this a different way....

We all remember the Suzuki Samurai (Roll Over Suzuki!). Now, the majority of the accidents this car had was due to the driver taking the car into situations it couldn't handle. Did this mean that the car itself was perfectly fine but that the drivers just couldn't handle it? No, the car was highly unstable and even when driven in favorable conditions it could exhibit some nasty instability.

So how is Kyle saying "we have had problems with Xpress boards and feel that it is a shortcoming to the Fragbox" any different from Car and Driver saying "the Suzuki Samurai is a horribly unstable SUV"?

 

Sigh.

And again. We're not criticizing Kyle's beliefs. I truly and honestly believe he is 100% sincere in his opinion of ATI's chipsets.

This does not justify what happened. What this opinion did, in fact, was cause blame to be incorrectly assigned...and worse...not apologized for.

 

Yes...given the nature of the problem? There are a zillion different things that can cause "instability". Could be memory...a faulty hard drive...a video card...an OS that had a botched install...the motherboard itself (or ANY given component.)....power supply...

What on earth does that have to do with anything?

First, the Samurai is factually unstable.

Second, Kyle feeling that Xpress boards are a shortcoming is one thing. Saying it without:

1) Presenting objective test results showing why
2) Using that to justify asigning blame to a specific problem, when there was no evidence to support it.

Let's look at your suzuki analogy.

Say two people get hurt in an accident while driving a suzuki. They attempt to sue because they feel Suzuki knew of the "problem" with roll overs and didn't recall the vehicle, or whatever. Sounds like a case that has at least some grounds to at leat go to trial right?

Then we find out that the accident was not a rollover...but a head on collision due to going the wrong way down a one-way street....

 

Right and it doesn't prove either way whether it was the video card or the chipset.

 

And falcon saying they determined it was the video card isn't good enough fo you?

 

I already tried that with the relation of the lights dimming when you battery was dead.

Apparently coming to a conclusion based on previous experience is not allowable. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems the view is you cannot share your opinion on a website, though I assume he would be allowed to use his opinion in diagnosing the problem by changing mobos and seeing if it worked.

Though in this case it was not allowable.

BTW there is no microatx Nforce board that is really decent now either. Mine is a PITA and I would probably not get it again.

 

But Joe, I knew this one guy that owned a Samurai, and he never had a rollover! So does his one troublefree experience mean that all Samurais are safe?

 

In absense of any other fact to support that conclusion?

Please tell me how system instability problems by default point not only to the motherboard, but to the chipset.

 

No, why?

 

Summary, there are lots of mickey mouse sites out there serving the mickey mouse club. The adults can come to B3D for some real information.

I've never had a pc that didn't give me some grief over the time I owned it, PCs suck! I've run macs that caused me problems as well, Macs suck! I've had problems on unix machines, they suck too! Windows sucks, MacOS sucks, Unix sucks! Everything sucks! My advice, don't buy a computer, play hangman on a piece of paper or something.

 

That is exactly my point. If Kyle has done testing on many variations of the Xpress chipset, and found that most of them have issues, why would he not warn his readers about a product that was using a chipset that he has had many issues with?

To take my analogy further with the car (though I admit it is getting old, and I apologize) let's say a user rolls over his Suzuki, but the cause was the front wheel blowing out. The inherent instability of the car did not directly cause the rollover with such a catastrophic event, but shouldn't it be mentioned that the car itself is inherently unstable?

 

Sigh.

Why would he support the conclusion that a specific problem encountered during a review of a product was due to something that wasn't supported by anything presented in the actual review?

How many times do I have to say that the issue is not if Kyle or anyone else mentions their opinion of the chipset!?!?

 

Apparently once more.

 

I just hope I don't have to find a way to make it BLINK.

 

After a week of them saying it is? Also, its the conclusion of some people I have no experience with vs. a guy whose opinions and methodologies have been supported by my own experiences with hardware.

General system instability doesn't, but when you have repeated issues with memory timings with a specific chipset on different iterations and manufacturers version of a specific chipset based board, logic may (or not...) step in and say, "Hey, let's draw a conclusion based on this evidence!"