Matrox & Selective Reviewing?

[Matt Burris]

Usually PR people don't say things like that unless they were pretty sure, wouldn't you think? Doesn't surprise me that he was "let go" shortly after that, and ATI probably went into damage control mode.

In any case, I really don't see how bringing this argument back is relevant to this thread. This has to do with Matrox, and if they're scared all because of that Quack issue, then they have other things to worry about than just HardOCP or reviewers, if you ask me.

 

[woolfe99]

That FS article was analyzed on the various boards when it came out. Opinions differed depending on fan affiliation. My own independent view is that it was meaningless PR speak.

"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. "

Note the careful use of words - "has an issue", and "the issue will be corrected...." If you were a fan, that meant "bug," but it just isn't what they said, even in this new, glossier statement made a week after they admitted to the cheat. If it had been a bug, they would have said exactly that. But they never did. Instead, the called it an "issue."


As for Mr. Nalasco, well... He said they did it purposefully. He worked at ATI and had access to the people who knew whether it was a bug or a purposeful effect. It was kind of a "yea" or "nay" sort of thing; something any layperson could comprehend. And he said "yea," it was purposeful, BUT they thought they had a good reason for doing it. Is it possible he was mistaken in his conversation with the driver people and he thought they said "yea" when they said "nea"? Not terribly likely. In fact, pretty much impossible. The fact that he was terminated and a more ambiguous statement was released the following week does not suggest that this was a bug. Indeed, it suggests the contra. It suggests that they fired him because he was hired to do PR, NOT to tell the whole truth. Telling the unmitigated truth will get you canned from a PR job faster than anything. Note also they never retracted his statemente as inaccurate, and never said anything inconsistent. If he was flat out mistaken that is exactly what they would have done.

 

[Althornin]

This has to do with Matrox, and if they're scared all because of that Quack issue, then they have other things to worry about than just HardOCP or reviewers, if you ask me.

I think you are wrong about Quake/Quack issue, but hey.

The point of it is to show the kind of sensationalist/slanted/biased viewpoint HardOCP has in its reviews,

 

[pxc]

Is this /. now?

If anyone bothered to read the article, this was printed at the end:

In closing, I did let Matrox know that we would be publicly commenting on this situation and it garnered a “clean-upâ€￾ phone call from them as I was putting the final edit on this article. Matrox committed to shipping a Parhelia card to us tomorrow that we could post a preview on next Tuesday. They also explained that their reasoning for not sending us a first-round review sample was based on incomplete information and apparently the wrong message was conveyed to us on the testing issue.

At this point I think we will just wait and test the same card, in the same retail box, that will be available for public purchase. It is odd that the Parhelia got stable enough for [H]ardOCP abuse in the time span of a couple of hours.

Matrox changed their mind and now they are sending Kyle a card to review. All reviews are going to show up June 25th.

 

[Doomtrooper]

In closing, I did let Matrox know that we would be publicly commenting on this situation and it garnered a “clean-upâ€￾ phone call from them as I was putting the final edit on this article. Matrox committed to shipping a Parhelia card to us tomorrow that we could post a preview on next Tuesday. They also explained that their reasoning for not sending us a first-round review sample was based on incomplete information and apparently the wrong message was conveyed to us on the testing issue.

At this point I think we will just wait and test the same card, in the same retail box, that will be available for public purchase. It is odd that the Parhelia got stable enough for [H]ardOCP abuse in the time span of a couple of hours.

Matrox dissapoints me.

 

[Matt Burris]

This has to do with Matrox, and if they're scared all because of that Quack issue, then they have other things to worry about than just HardOCP or reviewers, if you ask me.

I think you are wrong about Quake/Quack issue, but hey.

The point of it is to show the kind of sensationalist/slanted/biased viewpoint HardOCP has in its reviews,

Well then, that is your sensationalist/slanted/biased viewpoint about HardOCP, but not everybody shares your viewpoint. Personally I have no viewpoint about HardOCP, other than to read the information they present, and if I am interested, I scan a bunch of other sites for the full scoop. I don't read everything they post as the full gospel, but they do post up stuff that most sites don't (like that bash-a-thon against NVIDIA when they wouldn't put their ad banners up and the ATI Quack thing.)

 

[Doomtrooper]

I just wonder how many review sites say "ahh what the heck lets generate a Quake/Quack binary patch program today for this cards debut"

 

[Crusher]

I must have missed the whole quake/quack thing in my EverQuest haze, but I do recall back when 3dfx was around and HardOCP seemed to be on their side more often than not, and nobody really had a problem with it. I also seem to recall them writing some sort of article about how T&L is useless and NVIDIA was wasting our money with it, but I suppose that was long enough ago that they could have changed their minds on what company they like. I've always avoided their site, never seemed professional in any aspect, and full of opinionated garbage, regardless of what they were talking about.

 

[Althornin]

This has to do with Matrox, and if they're scared all because of that Quack issue, then they have other things to worry about than just HardOCP or reviewers, if you ask me.

I think you are wrong about Quake/Quack issue, but hey.

The point of it is to show the kind of sensationalist/slanted/biased viewpoint HardOCP has in its reviews,

Well then, that is your sensationalist/slanted/biased viewpoint about HardOCP, but not everybody shares your viewpoint.

Never said they did.
But Matrox obviously agrees with me
My viewpoint is hardly sensationalist. I'd call it honest.. HardOCP has a bias, just like every human being. If you read their information, i dont care whether or not you say you have a bias (you do), you are being fed only the info they want you to have, in the order they want you to have it. Regardless of whether you want ti to or not, this will influence you - even if you know about it.

 

[Matt Burris]

My viewpoint is hardly sensationalist.

Oh I know, I was just teasing you. Everytime I hear sensationalist, I think of porn stars. I agree, everyone has a bias. If we didn't, we wouldn't really have any directions, we wouldn't understand our own wants and needs. As a gamer though, my bias can easily be swerved, because I want what is best for me, and running a website, for my readers. My purchasing habits has swayed from Intel to AMD, ATI to Real3D to STB and NVIDIA. I honestly have no brand loyalty, I will definitely buy what is best for me and my gaming habits.

What I was hoping to get at is that it's hard to pinpoint HardOCP's bias. They've bashed every company that they can, so those who say they're NVIDIA-biased or ATI-biased are just seeing it from their side of the fence. I say they're attention-biased, in that they'd do anything for attention, hits, and controversy. They breathe controversy (remember the Dr. Tom Pabst vs. Kyle Bennett days?)

 

[jb]

That FS article was analyzed on the various boards when it came out. Opinions differed depending on fan affiliation. My own independent view is that it was meaningless PR speak.

As was Nalasco input.

As for Mr. Nalasco, well... He said they did it purposefully. He worked at ATI and had access to the people who knew whether it was a bug or a purposeful effect. It was kind of a "yea" or "nay" sort of thing; something any layperson could comprehend. And he said "yea," it was purposeful, BUT they thought they had a good reason for doing it. Is it possible he was mistaken in his conversation with the driver people and he thought they said "yea" when they said "nea"? Not terribly likely. In fact, pretty much impossible. The fact that he was terminated and a more ambiguous statement was released the following week does not suggest that this was a bug. Indeed, it suggests the contra. It suggests that they fired him because he was hired to do PR, NOT to tell the whole truth. Telling the unmitigated truth will get you canned from a PR job faster than anything. Note also they never retracted his statemente as inaccurate, and never said anything inconsistent. If he was flat out mistaken that is exactly what they would have done.

The offered a PR to FS that is in direct contrast to what he said. Your forgetting we have people here that work on the ATI driver team. Graneted not at the time but I trust his words more than sum disgruntled employee. And I love the fact that when he was fired you and other ASSUMED he told the truth. We had a nice thread that brought out many points about this. In fact if you looked a the IQ you can see that there was a difference. But that alone was not causing the 20 fps drop. I have yet to see with a slight fitzing of the mip maps cause a 20+ fps drop.

Once again you, matt or I can not say if it was a bug or a cheat until one of us has the source code

My main point was to show that HardOCP lacked the professional respect to get with ATI first on this issue to see if it was a bug. Also with current events with nVidia we do not see the same activity so there is a double standard. Matt at least took the time to post about it and I am thankful for that.

Look at lot is riding on this card. If there is an issue and its incorrectly analyzed with miss information like in the HardOCP Q3 issue, then it does a lot of damage. Most of which is almost impossible to recover. If you had a lot riding on this would you risk it? I would not.

 

[Doomtrooper]

My viewpoint is hardly sensationalist.

Oh I know, I was just teasing you. Everytime I hear sensationalist, I think of porn stars. I agree, everyone has a bias. If we didn't, we wouldn't really have any directions, we wouldn't understand our own wants and needs. As a gamer though, my bias can easily be swerved, because I want what is best for me, and running a website, for my readers. My purchasing habits has swayed from Intel to AMD, ATI to Real3D to STB and NVIDIA. I honestly have no brand loyalty, I will definitely buy what is best for me and my gaming habits.

What I was hoping to get at is that it's hard to pinpoint HardOCP's bias. They've bashed every company that they can, so those who say they're NVIDIA-biased or ATI-biased are just seeing it from their side of the fence. I say they're attention-biased, in that they'd do anything for attention, hits, and controversy. They breathe controversy (remember the Dr. Tom Pabst vs. Kyle Bennett days?)

Yes I also know lots of webmasters that would like to knock his

....can anyone say Chris Tom

 

[jb]

Usually PR people don't say things like that unless they were pretty sure, wouldn't you think

Not to nit pick Matt but with both know that sometimes PR is nothing then twisted lies. Why whould he say that? What purpose does it prove? I find that PR as well as most of them worthless.

Do you still really think that KyroII PDF was an internal sales tool

I would much rather Trust 3DGPU to do a reveiw of the new Matrox part than HardOCP. At least there I know I can trust you to look at it from a gamer.

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.

Very good questions. However if someone write a review or an artilce then this issue is their's to solve. Just because its hard dose not excuse the writter from this duty. You know that the web is a very dangerous place. Its very easy for an half baked review to do damage. If I had a nickle for every time I saw in a review that had a GF3/4 and an ATI card and read their comments on why the score for a 8500 is soo much slower for the ATI card in Vulpine and DroneZ I would a lot of nickels (BTW the reason is both of those contain nV OpenGL calls that of course dont run on anything else). There are a lot of people out there that should not be doing reviews.....

 

[ben6]

You know, most hardware companies care that you're fair to them . They can live with a negative review, they can live with reporting problems , but they would expect you try and give the good points about the hardware as well. I have good relations with Matrox, Nvidia, ATI and SIS. Not because I'm not critical when I need to be but try to give an overall picture type of review.

I find it a little disappointing that Kyle took his lack of a Parhelia review unit public in a article and more disappointing that he took it upon himself to discuss something in the article he shouldn't have discussed.

In any event , that's not the way to get in the good graces with a hardware company. No matter how big your site, or visitors you have...

 

[Althornin]

What I was hoping to get at is that it's hard to pinpoint HardOCP's bias. They've bashed every company that they can, so those who say they're NVIDIA-biased or ATI-biased are just seeing it from their side of the fence. I say they're attention-biased, in that they'd do anything for attention, hits, and controversy. They breathe controversy (remember the Dr. Tom Pabst vs. Kyle Bennett days?)

Now that i agree with.
This presents a problem from Matrox's point of view. Dont you think that a headline "PARHELIA a FLOP: Slower than a GF4!!!" would get them tons of hits and "publicity"?
While being true only without FAA / aniso? Which are elements that the HardOCP have traditionally ignored/glossed over in their reviews?

thats the point i was trying to get at

 

[jb]

Ben,

I agree I could care less if they found issues. I could care less if it was negitive. Alls I want is a fair and honest review with a splash of professionalism which is getting harder and harder to fin these days. Thats why I trust yours, TR, beyond3d and 3DGPUs reviews.

 

[Ailuros]

I find it a little disappointing that Kyle took his lack of a Parhelia review unit public in a article and more disappointing that he took it upon himself to discuss something in the article he shouldn't have discussed.

I couldn´t agree more. It´s an issue that could have been handled quietly and tactful in the background. Instead I read a childish "if you won´t give me one I will tell...." reaction.

I disagree though with Matrox´s intention to select the hardware sites it intends to send boards out; just because those kind of reactions should be foreseable. There´s always the chance that a reviewer that didn´t get a testing sample will just borrow or buy a card later on and burry it 10 feet under the ground.

 

[LittlePenny]

Re: Is this /. now?

In closing, I did let Matrox know that we would be publicly commenting on this situation and it garnered a “clean-upâ€￾ phone call from them as I was putting the final edit on this article.

Does this sound like a threat to anyone else? What a bully.

 

[pxc]

Double standards

If it were NV being "selective" with review samples, most of you guys would roast them for that. If they further gave the reason that they feared testing may reveals flaws in a product that ships in less than 2 weeks, we'd never hear the end of it.

Kyle did do wrong in this situation. When he got an assurance that a card would be sent to him tomorrow, there was no point to printing his complaint. But he does have a reason to feel slighted. The original excuse he got for being turned down is pretty pathetic. If the product isn't ready, it will show in all reviews anyways, so Matrox has nothing to fear by having HardOCP review it.

Or it could be that Matrox feels Kyle is getting fed details of flaws from NV and that HardOCP will be unfairly harsh in reviewing the product. Again, if it does have flaws, those will be found eventually and that still isn't a good reason to withhold a product from him.

Or it could be that the card emphasizes features over raw speed. fps obsessed fan sites like HardOCP may make the card look bad by comparing standard tests and not showing advanced features that Matrox added (FSAA/high precision color/programmable features/etc). That's not the reason Matrox gave, but I'm feeling charitable.

The Parhelia will probably be a good selling product for its price range ($399), but especially at that price it should be raked over the coals. ATi, despite the quack thing, probably won't withhold NV250 and NV300 from HardOCP. And of course NV won't.

 

[Mize]

Re: Double standards

If it were NV being "selective" with review samples, most of you guys would roast them for that. If they further gave the reason that they feared testing may reveals flaws in a product that ships in less than 2 weeks, we'd never hear the end of it.

Wow, that's quite a jump you managed there. From 'we don't respect the quality and depth of your reviews' to 'you might reveal a flaw in our product.' Granted my jump is equally big as I (and nobody but [H] afaik) have no idea of the actual words that transpired.

It's only days away so let's not let Kyle or Brent or anyone erode credibility or share price with conjecture in the meantime.

Mize