New [H] editorial...

[digitalwanderer]

Will other large websites (Anand, Toms) start to actually inform their readers?

Is that seriously an issue for you?

Well, yes actually.
I have a long standing interest in benchmarking generally, and if you look at hardware reviews of computer systems, video cards, hard drives and whatnot, they are dominated by - benchmarks. It could be claimed that benchmarks are used in the industry both for product evaluation and to drive percieved need.

Cheating at benchmarks strikes at the heart of what drives much of the hardware scene. Not only does cheating at benchmarks remove the sole means for informed comparative shopping a consumer can realistically do, it is also an insidious way to have other hands do your deceptions for you, websites and magazines in this case. (Intel has successfully played that game through BAPCo, although that was by putting out a benchmark tailored for their product.) Even now, it may be that nVidia, if we could tally the final scores, have benefitted from their practise. And it would be too bad if systematically decieving their customers and using perfectly well meaning reviewers to endorse and recommend their products based on such false data actually paid off for nVidia. If that was allowed to happen, particularly now that the cat is out of the bag, it would be very depressing and a very sad testament to the state of reporting on the internet.

All IMHO.

Entropy

That's one of the things I do give Kyle credit for, he took what I feel is the right stand and he did it on his frontpage for the world to see.

Kudos Kyle, good one.

Now Anand, THG, and others don't have the excuse to hide behind that "no one really knows, much less cares!". I bash [H] a lot, but I do respect it's sheer size and the size of the audience it reaches.

That's what makes this a really good thing the more I think about it. It's raising the level of awarness of the problem, which is about the best any of us can hope to do about it.

 

[Dave Baumann]

What will antagonising parts of the enthusiast community cost nVidia, and do we have any means to actually gauge the cost/benefit of their methods

Well, could this be indicative of the costs already:

Thats a graph of our monthly stats, and the highlighted points are the first day hits of the 256MB Radeon and 5900 Ultra articles. Granted both of these were fairly late, but I had expected the Radeon not to be busy at all, since it was basically the same as the normal Radeon - the FX review also had more pages and a greater number of first day referral links (even Kyle linked to this, which he hasn't done to any of our articles for the past 3 months prior).

I was expecting the 5900 review to be much busier than it is, it was previously unheard of that an NVIDIA article would be this lethargic. I don't know if this is reflected with other sites as well, but if it is perhaps they are beginning to see that ATI articles now get as much, if not more, interest as NVIDIA at the moment - its in webmasters best interests to treat them with an even hand.

I also think that NVIDIA are realising that they have lost some of the mindshare recently because they are very forthcoming with us at the moment, and I presume other publications as well.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I also think that NVIDIA are realising that they have lost some of the mindshare recently because they are very forthcoming with us at the moment, and I presume other publications as well.

Good news!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Neato! Thanks for that bit-o-insite Dave, it's very cool!

 

[Slides]

That's one of the things I do give Kyle credit for, he took what I feel is the right stand and he did it on his frontpage for the world to see.

Kudos Kyle, good one.

Now Anand, THG, and others don't have the excuse to hide behind that "no one really knows, much less cares!". I bash [H] a lot, but I do respect it's sheer size and the size of the audience it reaches.

That's what makes this a really good thing the more I think about it. It's raising the level of awarness of the problem, which is about the best any of us can hope to do about it.

Exactly what I have been trying to say throughout this thread. I'm not asking anyone to go marry Kyle, but to keep their thoughts and feelings on Kyle's financial dealings with Nvidia to somewhat logical levels.

Walt, I do agree with your latest post, but still believe that rampant speculation about Kyle should be kept to a minimum. AFAIK, his is the only major hardware website that has written an editorial about Nvidia's cheating. So, I guess it's a good sign. Unlike Anand and Tom who don't even post on there own forums or explain there positions, at least Kyle is somewhat accessible.

 

[Doomtrooper]

If the article was written when it should have been, like about 6 months ago then maybe 'these optimizations' wouldn't be here today, two product launches after they were 1st discovered

 

[Dave Baumann]

AFAIK, his is the only major hardware website that has written an editorial about Nvidia's cheating.

* Cough *

 

[Doomtrooper]

I was going to post that

Beyond3D must not be considered 'major' to some

 

[John Reynolds]

AFAIK, his is the only major hardware website that has written an editorial about Nvidia's cheating.

* Cough *

But does a news post on a message board count as an editorial?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Its on the front page John, pretty much where we post our editorials.

http://www.beyond3d.com/index.php#news7361

FYI "news" forum = to frontpage (they are one and the same)

 

[digitalwanderer]

AFAIK, his is the only major hardware website that has written an editorial about Nvidia's cheating.

* Cough *

But does a news post on a message board count as an editorial?

That's a fair point, why hasn't it made it to the front page?

Heck, even Kyle put something up about it on his front page already....

EDITED BITS: Doh! Never mind...I only went to the story from the link in the forum and assumed it was a forum post too. (I ain't a real big front page person... )

 

[Slides]

Yes, sorry about that. I have not visited the front page for a while.

But, the timing is somewhat strangely close the the [H] article, isn't it?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yes, sorry about that. I have visited the front page for a while.

But, the timing is somewhat strangely close the the [H] article, isn't it?

I do believe you meant to say "Isn't [H] article's timing rather strangely close to B3D's article"....Dave was first.

 

[Slides]

Well yes, wrong choice of words.

 

[John Reynolds]

Its on the front page John, pretty much where we post our editorials.

http://www.beyond3d.com/index.php#news7361

FYI "news" forum = to frontpage (they are one and the same)

LOL I know, but the only place the text resides is as a post on the message board. And the words just aren't as official with .php?t=####&start=### in the url instead of htm.

 

[Dave Baumann]

eh?

http://www.beyond3d.com/index.php#news7361

 

[John Reynolds]

eh?

http://www.beyond3d.com/index.php#news7361

Dave, I'm being facetious.

Damn, why must the cross I bear is to be misunderstood? Why, God, why???

 

[Dave Baumann]

Ah - humor bypass due to lack of sleep!!

 

[Slides]

Ah - humor bypass due to lack of sleep!!

You spelled humour wrong.

 

[Dave Baumann]

meh. see above.