more evidence that anandtech is in nvidia's pocket
- Thread starter kyleb
- Start date
Bjorn said:
Anand has recently developed a new strategy for IQ evaluations among products. Whereas his former approach was to publish long, complete, somewhat exhaustive reviews which included IQ examinations, and which generally garnered him high marks for effort if not content, of late he has taken to "multiple-part" hardware reviews which seem to always postpone IQ evaluations until part II or part III of his review, which may differ from Part I chronologically by weeks or even months when published.
My theory about that is that it has become inconvenient for Anand to do IQ and performance reviews at the same time because Anand's primary sponsors object to them being done at the same time. What happens is that Anand does "performance" in Part I, which is based on a set of highly optimized drivers which suffer from an IQ perspective, which provides his sponsor's products with glowing performance numbers. In the latter parts of the review dealing with IQ which appear much later, the IHV sponsor has had time to work on the IQ in subsequent driver sets so that it is now possible for Anand to say, when he publishes his IQ evaluations weeks or months later, that "As you can see, from what I hear there is no difference in IQ between product X and product Y," and Anand will publish "screen shots" which he purports to prove such assertions.
But since "Part II" (or III, as the case may be) deals with IQ, instead of performance as measured by frame-rate bar charts, Anand simply links to "Part 1" out of Part II (or III) for his performance numbers in Part II, and so directly relates the IQ revealed in Part II to the performance he revealed in Part 1, some weeks or months earlier. This allows Anand to be kind to his sponsor and test his sponsor's products with separate driver sets for performance and IQ, respectively, and thus remain "fair" to his sponsor. After all, as Anand says, "From what I'm hearing, the idea that different drivers produce differences in IQ and performance when run on the same hardware is but a myth, because IQ and performance are entirely different things, and so it's only natural to use different drivers when comparing the two."
Yes, indeedy, from what I'm hearing that makes all the sense in the world...
I think this problem has deeper roots at Anand: NOBODY has a flying clue he's writing about - first and foremost Anand himself. This is the biggest problem: being such a bungler, he obviously picked similar people for company... this is where everything starts, I believe.
Anand: how low can you go? 
Anand: how low can you go?
Quitch said:
Derek seems like a nice guy, and he's at least participating in the debate. Anand's total silence following his 5800U article was an eye-opening indication of how he (and thus AT) will treat reader complaints, from my perspective. I'm very pessimistic about forcing changes via complaints. I (and others) complained loudly and often after the 5800U article, and it got us absolutely nowhere. I'm trying a more understanding approach, hoping that we can reach satisfactory reviews with calm debate rather than heated accusations. And I'm honestly not sure if Derek's nV-biased or I'm ATi-biased. I can't be too strident as I own nary a DX9 card, whereas Derek has tried all of them.
I agree that his choice of game tests are questionable, and comments like #33 disappoint me terribly, as people may get the wrong impression based on the very shallow peek at the cards' performance this article offered.
OTOH, perhaps Anand's silence following his 5800U article wasn't intentional, but perhaps forced by other things in his life taking priority. Not an excuse, but that interpretation offers more hope for the future. But I still think that for all of AT's touted financial success, they should be producing articles far superior to what they do now. People shouldn't have to point out shortcomings or omissions; AT should have enough collective knowledge and resources to do things right the first time. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from a site whose primary focus is motherboards, not graphics, but I don't think so.
I just dont understand why they would do thru all that trouble, and just do three games, and one (low) resolution. One of the games doesnt even work with AA.. its a pretty pointless review to me.
I also find it hard to believe that they got such low overclocking numbers from the 9800XT's for the core and memory. I do realize that overclocking varies from card to card, but I dont think Ive read of anyone having a card that does as poorly as all of their did. Heck, mine is stable at 480/420 with 100% stock cooling, and a case with just 3 fans, and not great air flow.
I also find it hard to believe that they got such low overclocking numbers from the 9800XT's for the core and memory. I do realize that overclocking varies from card to card, but I dont think Ive read of anyone having a card that does as poorly as all of their did. Heck, mine is stable at 480/420 with 100% stock cooling, and a case with just 3 fans, and not great air flow.
