Matrox & Selective Reviewing?

[Matt Burris]

I found this pretty interesting, which takes place over on HardOCP: http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzE1

Matrox said they would not be sending us a review unit on the same schedule as other sites and then revealed some interesting reasons. Matrox stated that due to the nature of our testing that they were not “comfortableâ€￾ with sending us a Parhelia card. They seemed to think that we would be a bit too rough on the Parhelia and possibly show some issues that the 'enthusiast' might identify as weaknesses. Logic would dictate that this of course means that Matrox thinks that the hardware review sites getting the first round of Parhelias would not expose those weaknesses. I had to take that as a compliment. Still, you might keep this in mind when you see the initial reviews hit and we will of course make sure you are aware of them as we always want to keep our readers up to date with current information.

I really can't understand why they wouldn't want to send it to HardOCP, as Kyle pointed out, HardOCP attracts a lot of hardcore gamers, which is what Parhelia is aimed at. If they feel HardOCP is going to expose their "weaknesses" then what can we expect from the first batch of reviews? Reviews that are more like PR hyped previews?

 

[Captain-Caverne]

Just seen that on Shacknews as Hardocp is down (for me at least).

Seems VERY doubtful to me, if it was really the case, many hw sites would be concerned also (Anandtech anyone? if you remember their Parhelia preview, you know what i'm talking about...)

 

[Matt Burris]

It's down for me too, was working about 15 minutes ago though.

 

[Riptides]

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzE1

Seems to be back up for me.

All i can see is that Matrox just shot themselves in the foot over nothing, regarding this whole ordeal. Other than the fact that they want to give out beta boards for PRE-view testing by the time the final boards show up on the retailers shelves. They just made it so Hardocp recieves their boards a few days later than anyone else.

-rip

 

[jb]

Well lets look at the last time HardOCP reviewed a major launch from a comapny other than nVidia. Did they really handle the ATI Q3 correctly? The missed the fact that ref to the Q3 had been in the drivers to start with. Then they blow that whole thing right out of the water. Instead of contact ATI to see if it was a bug or not they ran with the Quake/Qauke thing. Come to find out it was really a bug. But the damage was done. If you ask most people out there they will remember that ATI did cheat yet looking at all of the facts would suggest it was not a cheat. HardOCP did not do honest and fair job with the oringal 8500 and that hurt. Remember you only get one chance to make a first impression and if one sight makes an honest misktake it too late to do anything about it as the damage has been done.

I am not saying HardOCP is biased. Just they really need to watch themelves better and if I was in Matrox shoes I would have probably done the same thing, but try to find a more PC way of stating it.....

 

[Mephisto]

They're right. There are plenty of smaller sites that do better reviews than HardOCP. I hope SimHQ, xbitlabs, Beyond3D, Tech-Report and ExtremeTech get a board at first. HardOCP, Toms Hardware and other sites with a big mouth are just lame. Just have a look how bad their reviews are! They mainly test Q3A games and cheatMARK, FSAA benchmarks are mostly limited to 1 or two games without any image quality comparisons and without qualified comments.

There are other issues with HardOCP. They did not get the Quack facts right and they keep silent about NVIDIA 3DMark cheating (like others, NV fansites for example).

 

[Joe DeFuria]

shoes I would have probably done the same thing, but try to find a more PC way of stating it.....

Thing is, we don't know how Matrox stated it, we have Hard OCP's "interpretation" of what Matrox told them. I would love to see the "actual" text that Matrox wrote to Hard OCP.

The only quote we actually have is that Matrox wouldn't be "comfortable" with HardOCP.

Of course, Hard OCP then extrapolates this to mean that Matrox is "afraid" that they will "find" weaknesses, etc.

Matrox has already told us to expect a major "weakness": that is running many game benchmarks with "normal" visual quality won't yield favirable results for the Matrox board.

Now, if I were Matrox, I would NOT give out boards to sites where they might expect a less than "comprehensive" review. If matrox suspects that HardOCP will just publish the same-old Quake3 benchies, not take a good look at image quality, etc., then they won't send them a board.

I find it much more likely that Matrox is "worried" that Hard OCP will not provide a quality review, (that will at least show Parhelia STRENGTHS along with the weaknesses).

I applaud this move.

 

[Mize]

I completely understand Matrox's perspective here.
HardOCP reviewed the Ti4600 and absolutely refused to compare it to a R200 with anisotropic enabled. When I hounded Brent and Kyle about it they promised that they were going to do an article that covered aniso...but never did.

To the "hardcore gamer" at HardOCP (by this I mean the twit who can say the buzzwords without knowing what they are - "The stoopid Radeon's anisotopic [sic] causes moire!") the R200 could never touch a Ti4600.

What really bugged me about that review was Brent's response to my email about his omission of AF: he said he omitted it because "everyone knows the GF4 isn't an AF card!"

Classic slanted advertis...uh.."journalism."

Sorry, but I think it's pretty clear that [H] has a slant to their rant.

Mize

 

[Doomtrooper]

Selective reviewing is long overdue..their video card reviews are nothing special at ALL, Kyle Benett and his site shot themselves in the foot, the site is a complete joke with daily rants about something thinking they 'look cool'. I won't even get into details about the latest joke of putting up a poll and because he didn't like what he saw, changed the POLL numbers then finally just took it down
I have a REAL good feeling ATI will not have Hardocp on the top their list either for a R300

 

[Sharkfood]

Yay! Matrox is the first to step up to the plate and tell it like it is.

As already mentioned, one only needs to go back to the last product launch to see clear indications of how this particular site has handled itself- by doing so completely by instruction of a competitor.

There should be absolutely no debate *where* HardOCP got their little Quake/Quack binary patch program, nor where the direction from which that whole debacle was steered from.

There are a number of sites that simply have financed "puppet strings"- and it would be a much cheaper and smarter product launch if those puppet string sites could be bypassed. Obviously competitors would donate resources free of charge to instruct these sites how to carry out their reviews, but at the same time the product launch manufacturer would have to dedicate a tremendous amount of time, resources and financing in order to manage this kind of "review" site, as has been illustrated, sometimes to a degree the launch company may not have at the critical time (i.e. ATI).

 

[John Reynolds]

When I spoke on the phone with Sebastian (PR rep for Matrox) about a month ago, I asked him whether or not Matrox were concerned with all the "me-too/cookie-cutter" online reviewers who'd just run through Q3/3DMark resolution benchmarks with only trilinear and no IQ discussion/analysis. The answer was yes.

 

[jb]

JR,

makes perfect sense to me. I doubt if half the review sites even look at the IQ of the card that they are reviewing....

 

[Matt Burris]

There are other issues with HardOCP. They did not get the Quack facts right and they keep silent about NVIDIA 3DMark cheating (like others, NV fansites for example).

Ah, then that must means 3DGPU isn't a NV fansite, because I posted on it and even put up a statement from a former Real3D driver coder saying NVIDIA is optimizing/cheating.

I do agree with Matrox on one point, if it is what they were getting at: HardOCP don't look at FSAA and anisotropic filtering so much, or don't seem interested in it in some of the more recent reviews. Parhelia will be focusing on IQ in most cases, so sites that focus on IQ will, of course, portray the Parhelia in the best light.

 

[Randell]

Cool so who here is getting a Parhelia? Dave, Rev or Marco?

 

[Dave Baumann]

John (if/when Matrox deem us worthy! )

 

[Matt Burris]

jb:

Looking at IQ in games and 2D is something that I know most gamers look for ... when buying a card, a visible improvement is what we want most of all. In a review though, how do you convey a difference? How do you analyse it? How do you rate it? How does a reader interpret it? It's an age-old question for vidcard reviewers.

 

[Above]

I think Kyle is the "white trash and proud of it" in the computer community.

 

[LittlePenny]

Gee, we have never known Hard|OCP to put a journalistic slant on anything have we ? In my opinion Hard|OCP didn't earn their chance with the Parhelia, after all Matrox is a smaller company and Parhelias are expensive boards, I don't see how it could be feasible for Matrox to send as many review boards out as the big two.

 

[woolfe99]

This is a reply to jb.

I keep seeing this historical revisionism about the Quake/Quack issue being posted and reposted here and on Rage3D. The fact that the ref to Q3 had been in the old drivers, a fact known from the beginning of the controversy, did not prove it to be a bug rather than a cheat. Indeed, the ATI driver team admitted that in fact they purposefully downgraded the image quality to boost framerates. I have no beef with ATI. In fact, I am a fan of the 8500 and own one, but what's true is true. I think it is time to move on. The admission (actually, there were several of them) is summed up in this link here:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33586737&highlight=quack

Later, ATI promised to remove the "optimization" in their next driver version, which they did in November. End of subject.

 

[jb]

Woofee,

Dave Nalasco was a PR person for ATI not a driver writer. He also was let go from ATI that very same week. He statements counterdick the statemets made in this FS interview the next week:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/8500int/page2.asp

Most of our optimizations for Quake 3 and other applications have no impact at all on image quality, and therefore it would be pointless to allow users disable them. The current RADEON 8500 driver revision has an issue that prevents it from correctly interpreting the texture quality slider setting in Quake 3. This issue will be corrected in the next driver release.

BTW those optimizations still remain but have been extended to cover all Q3 engine games. What is missing is the ref to q3 in the drivers.