[H] Benchmarking Future Ed.

Very interesting article by Lars, and one of the best reads I had at THG since... well, a damn long time. No name-calling, and very deep and thought-provoking. Thumbs up on this one !

 

I think you should be a bit more careful with praise. What the article looks to me is an excellent example of fact use for agenda support.

What agenda? In this case, I think it is the agenda of stating facts to maintain readership trust. Is that an "unacceptable" agenda? Actually, no, and that's a refreshing change...in an imperfect world, I wish this was an "average" article. What is bad is that the agenda does not necessarily equate to reporting without bias...and the statements aside from the facts have some issues (IMO) with that criteria.

For instance, there are a lot of substantiated and useful unique tidbits about ATI and nVidia, but there are also statements that stand out for a lack of substantiation and their incongruous fit with the facts surrounding them.

To be brief, I'll post one example of what disturbed me:

So, nVidia isn't slinging mud because they are "looking out for the industry", and not because of a lack of mud to throw or their already established decision not to call this cheating and minimize the impact on consumer awareness concerning it? Note the implications about what ATI is "happily" not "looking out for". This isn't exactly subtle.

Is that interjection logical at all? If you don't mind paying Tom, et al, some more money, read through the article again and look at the comments between the (admittedly thorough) collection of facts. If you work on the assumption that providing facts are a baseline and minimum for decent journalism, instead of comparing to examples of journalism completely devoid of facts, do you still think it is a "good article"?

Or maybe your standards for "good" depend more on the availability of information for you to evaluate, and you care less about whether there is an apparent attempt for lacing fact listing with spin that might not be supported by those facts? I guess I can see that, and in fact I don't feel too bad for giving them hits for sharing all the useful things they seem to have supported. My problem is with calling it "good article", I guess.

 

Who said it was a good article? I never said it was good. I never said it was factual. I said it was "a pretty good read". Meaning it was entertaining. A Stephen King novel is hardly factual, but it is still a pretty good read. I did notice the things you pointed out. He even contradicts pretty heavily what I quoted above by giving all these "insider scoops" in the article itself.

I still stand by my statement of it being a pretty good read though. It kept me entertained for a few minutes. And although it wan't completely throrough or factual, I was still able to read it without wanting to throw my monitor out the window.

 

Re: heh

Someone made a GREAT parody of that nVidia press release, you can read it over here. (I leave the author annonymous, if they want the credit I know they read this board so they can post up...I'm not sure they want nVidia knowing who they are... )

 

Heh, his name in the url might give it away.

 

Shhhhhhh! That's 'sposed to be secret...

 

I find that article amusing considering Lars was one of the few sites that claimed the cancelled '5800 Ultra' the new King.
I also find it pathetic that at the end of the day that site in question is all part of the big controversy, I mean they are one of the high traffic sites and also the site that has been 'played'.
Considering they used Bilinear filtering modes in the 5800 Ultra review vs setting it to application which is now name to quality when he was the one harping about the 8500's anisotropic filtering being bilinear is very contradictory

 

Re: heh

Precisely... When you can't ship competitive silicon you ship PR hot air instead, until such time as you either take your marbles and go home or you get back in the game again with a competitive product line you can actually ship in a timely fashion.

I would dearly love to be a fly on the wall in Brian B.'s office these days... I can picture him, head down and cradled between his hands, sobbing and moaning, "It can't be happening to me again--not again! Oh, no!" I am no stranger to such unwelcome deja vu myself.

Writing PR spin for a company when PR spin is all it has to ship has got to be one of the most depressing moments in a PR career.

 

Re: heh

Really, funny... And a much more informative and entertaining read than the original...! A "must read" for anyone whose humor quotient for the day is lacking...

 

that is a joke. I am nearly speechless. they wouldn't do that at a high school newspaper.

 

I think that there is a bit more truth in this PR.

 

I only had a chance to skim the nvidia press release, but this was just too good to pass up...

In the footnote about the doom3 bench:

Bold added by me...
lol all I can say is that is a choice placed typo in a press release from Nvidia on this subject

 

The Nvidia press release on [H]'s front page has been fixed, now it is actually called a press release.....

 

Re: heh

Hehe, good start for the morning

 

certainly an interesting article.. no doubt

parts of it are a little off... specially about the whole keeping of tabs on each other.. but other than that lars has done a good job of keeping things reasonably balanced while @ the same time putting things in perspective by commenting from the POV of the ihv's and benchmark devs...

a decent read for the most part... in contrast to many elements of [H]s article...

considering that both the editorials address the same situation... it is interesting to see the differences in opinion concerning the SAME topic on various websites... I wonder if anand/sudhian and others will come up with their own editorials...

perhaps anand will do his right after he addresses the splinter cell conclusion that he had in his 5900ultra review and no longer has..

 

Re: heh

No need for anonimity, I have nothing to hide - As I mentioned on another forum, this isn't a parody, I simply optimised the text of the article.

 

Re: heh

Isn't THAT the truth!

And this from Kyle on the Yahoo "article":

Does anyone else detect a bit of desperation in everything nVidia has done in the last year?

 

I'll admit I was debating between calling it an editorial or an article. And I agree with demalion and sazar that it wasn't perfect. It had the usual THG "inside details but above the fray" slant, with some seemingly thin reporting and speculation, and the conclusion kind of left us where we started. But it was a fairly good read for an editorial, IMO.