The Second Controversial Thread

[trinibwoy]

Actually he is quite right, I do remember that some manufacturers use (d) more layers on their PCB's for their N-Force 3 (4) products than they used on ( or for ) their VIA boards. Six PCB layers ( for N-Force ) compared to 4 PCB layers ( VIA ), also i believe that they spend more on the components for better power regulation ( two phase\three phase and so on ).

If that's the case I think it's just that Nvidia's chipsets have a much better reputation and appeal in the enthusiast community. I don't think Nvidia is coercing mobo manufacturers to provide inferior solutions with other chipsets. But since they're so evil they just might be!

 

[Blastman]

It’s pretty hard to point fingers at specific hardware sites and say for sure they’re taking payola for bias hardware reviews without some hard evidence. But some of the hardware sites seem so consistently bias in their reviews it’s hard to believe it isn’t happening - at least in graphic card department.

With NV’s actions in 3Dmark2003 -- new cheat drivers within a month of Futuremark patching the benchmark - I have to believe NV is capable of just about anything in “manipulating” hardware sites.

FiringSquad
Anandtech

… seem to consistently display a favoritism towards Nvidia in their graphic card reviews.

When I look at Anands X800 XL review vs the 6800GT -- the deck looks stacked against ATI. I can see Doom3 being in that review, but 2 year old games like Wolfenstein-ET and Halo -- yiks … those games are from 2003. And NV worked with the developer on Halo to write shaders for the game. Hundreds of new games come out a year … 250-300 …??? and they are running a 2 year old OGL game (we all know NV is generally faster in OGL) and a 2 year old game where NV worked with the developer when hundreds of new games are available for benching……??????

Anandtech then runs a Farcry bench that has the GT beating the XL. In the other reviews the XL is generally as fast or faster in most of Farcry benches -- depending on what level you bench. It seems par for the course for Anand to pick one where the GT is faster.

And then what’s with running benches at 16x12 with no AA/AF? ATI cards usually show better with AA/AF and some of the games are likely GPU limited at those settings so you get ties. So ATI ends up with a few ties after Anand has thrown NV 4 of the 11 benchmarks already. (Doom3, Wolf-ET, Halo, Farcry). Nice way of making the GT look like a faster card than the XL.

The Firing Squad is even worse in some respects. In their recent X800 review half the games (3/6) they tested in that review were OGL when 90%+ games are D3D. 2/3 …of the D3D games were from UbiSoft - a developer Nvidia seems to work closely with. And 1/2 of the games in the review are from that one developer. FS seems to go out of their way to select games favorable to NV.

THG
Techreport

Both the THG and the Techreport did articles questioning ATI’s Trylinear filtering, and said nothing about NV’s lower quality Brylinear -- when they’re benchmarking with it. With articles like … … “ATI’s Optimized Texture Filtering Called Into Question” …and … “ATI’s Radeon X800 texture filtering game” … … Ridiculous. Some of their articles also seem like advertising mouthpieces for anything related to Nvidia.

When I think of the sheer size of Nvidia (or ATI) revenue and profit wise compared to the popular Hardware sites. It really wouldn’t surprise me if some of these Hardware sites were actually owned by these companies. They could buy up a few of the Hardware sites for pocket change. And these Hardware sites have a lot of influence on the industry for their size. Of course, they would have to be controlled or held somehow at “arms length” -- so the game wouldn’t get out.

 

[wireframe]

Are any of you considering natural bias that may occur in a market? For example, Intel has had a very dominant grip on the x86 processor family, and rightly so, having invented it, so it may follow that many people are simply used to assuming that Intel is better or right, even when the performance is down? ("Oh, yeah, but Intel knows what's up...they let this metric go because the market just took a u-turn.") I can easily see the same thing having happend with Nvidia because, let's face it, they were it for quite a while (you have to discount some 3dfx zealots who didn't know to let go to see how true this was).

It's really only with R300 that ATI has had a real competitor and it would be easy to miss it as such at first if you have natural assumptions, like I think most people have. I also think that most places on the Web came around to see the R300 as the champion eventually. It takes time for reality to sink in at times, evil PR or not.

What I wrote has nothing to do with taking money for writing whatever about whatever, but I think it's important to know and understand that there can exist a natural bias without payola.

 

[WaltC]

Are any of you considering natural bias that may occur in a market? For example, Intel has had a very dominant grip on the x86 processor family, and rightly so, having invented it, so it may follow that many people are simply used to assuming that Intel is better or right, even when the performance is down? ("Oh, yeah, but Intel knows what's up...they let this metric go because the market just took a u-turn.") I can easily see the same thing having happend with Nvidia because, let's face it, they were it for quite a while (you have to discount some 3dfx zealots who didn't know to let go to see how true this was).

To me, any bias which exists independently of reasonable justification is an extremely unnatural bias... Or, it's simply the product of ignorance. IE, to assume that "Intel is better" in the absence of justification is very unreasonable, it seems to me.

It's really only with R300 that ATI has had a real competitor and it would be easy to miss it as such at first if you have natural assumptions, like I think most people have. I also think that most places on the Web came around to see the R300 as the champion eventually. It takes time for reality to sink in at times, evil PR or not.

You know what they say about "assumptions" (they make an "ass" out of "u" and "me"--which spells "assume")...

What I wrote has nothing to do with taking money for writing whatever about whatever, but I think it's important to know and understand that there can exist a natural bias without payola.

Instead of "natural bias" I'd just call it PR-driven ignorance and be done with it.

 

[CK]

Just to name a couple of pitfalls that may lead to sites being wrongfully labelled as being biased:

- Relationship and support variation from Intel to AMD etc.
Sites do not get the same kind of support or have the same status at the different GFX, MoBo, chipset, and CPU companies. Site x may be a launch partner for AMD but not for Intel while for site y it’s the exact opposite. Of course the really big ones like THG, Anand, TR, [H] and FS does but all the “below top5” and smaller sites do not have the same kind of relationship with say nVidia and ATI or AMD and Intel. This will inevitably be a concern for the editors and even though they are aware of this, it will at some level influence the articles and the hardware that’s available for review.

The different corporate cultures or marketing/media-relation workers at the different companies will also influence this. Say you want to review a brand new and shiny AIW/Personal Cinema card with a new video or encoding (or whatever) chip and one company will not send the old AIW/Personal Cinema card but only the new one while the other company sends the old one for comparison. These are everyday concerns for even somewhat large English sites – getting the right product for comprising.

- Articles concerning cheat, poor AF etc.
Often sites get hammered for writing articles concerning ATI/nVidia/XGI AF quality, cheat in CPU/GFX/Chipset benchmarks and so on (just like Blastman did in this thread) and then not writing one when the other part is doing the same. This criticism sounds reasonably, if you write a negative article about one company’s mistakes you should also write one about the other one right?

This will label certain sites as biased sites wrongfully. Say you get a scoop about one company cheating or are misleading the consumers you want to be among the first sites to post this. After the first article around this topic other will quickly follow and maybe touch some other questions on that same topic or test it differently, but the conclusion will almost always be the same. After a week no one will do an article on this topic unless they can write one better than the others or at least include new things. Say you get an scoop on an “company x” mistake and is the first one the write an article about it but when “company y” is doing the same thing you might not be the first or among the sites that can do a quick follow-up. Does that make you biased not writing this article? Off course not, every subject and news story has it’s own life.

- New tech and Marketing
At every launch we hear about something brand new and revolutionising technology. This is without a doubt extremely difficult for the reviewers the write about but the real problem is how users will interpret it. Just look at all the “next gen GFX” and coming tech discussions on this board, it’s impossible to predict the influence a certain technology will have. Say you were to write about 3Dc or HDR at the last R420/NV40 launch. Do you put a big emphasis on the topic, and thereby really get to the core of this tech or do you just briefly describe it. No matter what you choose you will at some level misinform your readers. If you really understand the tech and describe it down to the smallest detail users will detect this as a great selling point - no matter how cautious you are in description and explaining the downfalls or how much you think users should consider it when buying new tech. If you do the opposite your users may not be able to understand the tech.

There’s way to many people blaming marketing and saying sites are biased or treat one company differently from its competitor. There’s hundreds of pitfalls like this that may label certain sites as biased when they are not. The FX fiasco was a perfect example of how difficult it is to “review right” and how little difference there is between deciding which product that’s the best even when you thing you have documented a certain “truth”.

And ohh year I too bitch about other sites, competing sites as well as sites in English (From reading the above you should be aware that English is not my native language), but I keep it too myself - it’s really difficult to judge other sites, especially when you have not been in the situation they are in.

 

[trinibwoy]

Well you certainly have the best english writing skill I have ever seen from a non-native english speaker online. Good post too!!

 

[Reverend]

Say you get a scoop about one company cheating or are misleading the consumers you want to be among the first sites to post this.

I think that should be understandable i.e. the desire to be among (amongst? grammar teachers?) the first site to post it.

But this made me think of something related : Assuming that company that is cheating is an IHV, what if the "scoop" (could be in detail or simply via hints.... but as long as the "cheat" is true) is provided to a site by that company's competitor? If the "cheat" was true, should the site mention who provided it with the "scoop"? Does this matter?

 

[AlexV]

Kindof like what Driverheaven does in all its articles about nVidia?(save for the part where they reckon that their info comes from ATI, which seems to be MIA) 8)

 

[Pete]

OT

to be among (amongst? grammar teachers?)

I think you're looking for an Anglophile.

 

[WhiningKhan]

I don't think Nvidia is coercing mobo manufacturers to provide inferior solutions with other chipsets.

The manufacturers aim at minimum costs. They won't use 6 layers instead of four just for the fun, since that means more money spent.

General board complexity, powering and signal integrity issues are what forces the manufacturers to add layers into PCB. Layer count is an even worse measure for comparing motherboards than cylinder count is for comparing cars - the cylinder count has definitely more marketing value in the eyes of the masses than PCB layer count, layer count is merely a necessity for making a functional PCB.

The layer count of 6 probably just stems from a design recommendation given by Nvidia, or from trouble experienced with a lower number of layers.

 

[WaltC]

Some brave site at some point in the future might like to post a monthly statement on its front page itemizing all of the direct financial payment it's received from various companies, if any. This would go a long way towards defusing criticisms of bias, or else it would underscore them, among hardware sites.

Sites which carry corporate advertising not connected with host network revolving banner ads and so on already make it fairly obvious where at least some of their income originates. What we never know is the degree to which they are funded by the various companies making the hardware they review.

I'd like to see that disclosed publicly, myself. I'm somewhat taken aback by the idea that no one is doing that yet. It seems the surest defense possible against charges of bias--or the surest indication that it exists--that I can think of. While I can understand why sites on the take would not wish to ever do this, I can't understand why sites which have nothing to hide might decline.

 

[Xmas]

But this made me think of something related : Assuming that company that is cheating is an IHV, what if the "scoop" (could be in detail or simply via hints.... but as long as the "cheat" is true) is provided to a site by that company's competitor? If the "cheat" was true, should the site mention who provided it with the "scoop"? Does this matter?

My first thought on this was, "it doesn't matter". But if I think about it longer, it's not that clear cut any more.

I'm interested in the technical details, not the politics behind it. And a competitor has just as much right to complain about "cheats" as anyone else. Just imagine you're working at one company and discover that your competitors aren't doing what they're supposed to. Should you keep quiet about it? Or worse even, use that cheat yourself?

But there are different ways of how that information can be communicated to the media outlets. If you're an editor and an IHV approaches you with an exclusive hint of a competitor cheating, what would you do? The words "preferential treatment" come to my mind. Why did you get the exclusive information? If you consider yourself unbiased, and let's assume you are, you don't want to be wrongfully labelled as biased, as CK put it. So you avoid mentioning the IHV, because that would shed a bad light on you. OTOH, it wouldn't be responsible to just drop the story altogether. If you know about a "cheat", you should make your readers aware of it.

 

[Fodder]

When I look at Anands X800 XL review vs the 6800GT -- the deck looks stacked against ATI. I can see Doom3 being in that review, but 2 year old games like Wolfenstein-ET and Halo -- yiks … those games are from 2003. And NV worked with the developer on Halo to write shaders for the game. Hundreds of new games come out a year … 250-300 …??? and they are running a 2 year old OGL game (we all know NV is generally faster in OGL) and a 2 year old game where NV worked with the developer when hundreds of new games are available for benching……??????

God forbid someone might want to know what OGL performance is like outside of Doom 3?

 

[Moloch]

When I look at Anands X800 XL review vs the 6800GT -- the deck looks stacked against ATI. I can see Doom3 being in that review, but 2 year old games like Wolfenstein-ET and Halo -- yiks … those games are from 2003. And NV worked with the developer on Halo to write shaders for the game. Hundreds of new games come out a year … 250-300 …??? and they are running a 2 year old OGL game (we all know NV is generally faster in OGL) and a 2 year old game where NV worked with the developer when hundreds of new games are available for benching……??????

God forbid someone might want to know what OGL performance is like outside of Doom 3?

The Q3A engined games are so dated in tech, it's not really relevant imo.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Some brave site at some point in the future might like to post a monthly statement on its front page itemizing all of the direct financial payment it's received from various companies, if any. This would go a long way towards defusing criticisms of bias, or else it would underscore them, among hardware sites.

Sites which carry corporate advertising not connected with host network revolving banner ads and so on already make it fairly obvious where at least some of their income originates. What we never know is the degree to which they are funded by the various companies making the hardware they review.

I'd like to see that disclosed publicly, myself. I'm somewhat taken aback by the idea that no one is doing that yet. It seems the surest defense possible against charges of bias--or the surest indication that it exists--that I can think of. While I can understand why sites on the take would not wish to ever do this, I can't understand why sites which have nothing to hide might decline.

Ha! EB already does. 8)

(Ok, so it's just cause we don't have any advertisers or corporate sponsors/financial arrangements. )

 

[Tahir2]

Tomshardware - Intel and in the past RAMBUS

Anandtech - NVIDIA (no idea if he actually getting paid)

HardOCP - from his advertisers, but rather subliminally WRT the reviews he does etc. not his actual editorial even though at times I have wondered about this.

AMDZone - but Chris Tom is a useless fanboi and nothing more.

Just my two pennies worth and I know I am making big accusations and could be wrong. Just my personal opinion and nothing more.

I have spoken to DaveBaumann a few times and from my experience he is neutral in almost every way... not bad going.

 

[WaltC]

Ha! EB already does. 8)

(Ok, so it's just cause we don't have any advertisers or corporate sponsors/financial arrangements. )

Nevertheless, that is quite excellent and I hope it sets a trend.

 

[Sharkfood]

Anyone that feels there isn't bias related to IHV "relations" in one way or another is fooling themselves.

We have 10+ years of evidence of such, from the Riva3D incident of seeing a review totally pulled after being published years ago, to unusual revisions of reviews silently overnight, etc.etc. These are surefire indications of IHV directed bias being applied to review websites.

I remember specifically one example- where a "Win2K shootout!" was posted, then unusually a few days later had a revision adding Win98/ME scores for ONLY the videocard that was losing dramatically. That was a real knee slapper for the aware.

Even benchmark companies themselves aren't exempt from this, given past MadOnion/Futuremark fiasco's. It's come to the point where we have to take an objective view of dismissing/filtering a great deal of the information we have in order to make an educated decision.

But this is the trend of any source of information.. be it hardware, news, or even educational materials, documentaries and "pure" research results. What gives us a better glimpse of reality is to use a broad, varied approach to all the information and cross reference similarities versus taking information from a single site. No matter how much 'pull' a particular IHV has, there are just far too many sources providing information to censor them all with the same effort... so the consumer just has more work to do in order to make a proper, and undirected by marketing, decision.

So, to answer Rev's questions- I resound "All" to his questions. There are direct and indirect monetary ramifications to going against the will of individual IHV's. There is also a dynamic of 'saving face' from a more fuzzy, interpersonal relationship aspect as well. It's always going to be this way.. and always has.

 

[rwolf]

http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/tech/graphics/nv_ati_dx9/index.html

Nvidia slanted here.

 

[_xxx_]

http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/tech/graphics/nv_ati_dx9/index.html

Nvidia slanted here.

That's like a year old...