TWIMTBR

[K.I.L.E.R]

It would be good if reviewers were more critical these days.
Beyond3D does a great job at that but other reviewers (IE: game reviewers) throw figures like 90% around like it's a festival or something. Personally I believe game reviews suck. I have read game reviews which gave a particular game 98% but the game sucked IMO. I couldn't even force myself to play it.

 

[ByteMe]

Then pretty much every review you've ever read is worthless.

You are correct.

 

[Geo]

Then pretty much every review you've ever read is worthless.

You are correct.

Errr, then why do you read them?

And, if you don't read them, then you aren't the target demographic of reviewers anyway, tho of course still entitled to stand on the sidelines and throw rotten tomatoes.

Or, of course, you can personally fund the ByteMe Institute of Quality, Unbiased Reviewing and accomplish your goals that way.

 

[ByteMe]

Errr, then why do you read them?

And, if you don't read them, then you aren't the target demographic of reviewers anyway, tho of course still entitled to stand on the sidelines and throw rotten tomatoes.

Or, of course, you can personally fund the ByteMe Institute of Quality, Unbiased Reviewing and accomplish your goals that way.

I would but I would not get the enjoyment out of it for the effort involved. It is just weird that most don't seem to understand how much bias there is. You can argue the degree to which the reviewers are biased, but most are still biased.

Even the holy B3D has some bias.

Besides, after the 8500 or GF3, you didn't need anything faster... yet.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Every human has bias. I remember Chalnoth made that comment.

I remember everything that Chalnoth says. Chalnoth is my hero.

Even you have some bias ByteMe. Even machines have bias, guess who builds machines? Humans.
You want an unbiased review? Get God to do the review.

 

[Geo]

Every human has bias. I remember Chalnoth made that comment.

I remember everything that Chalnoth says. Chalnoth is my hero.

And just to make things more complex, one person's biases tend to impact his/her evaluation of other people's biases. Ah, the human condition.

 

[Reverend]

Even the holy B3D has some bias.

I assume by "bias", you're talking about favoring certain companies. Name the bias. Provide irrefutable proof of such bias.

As far as I know, we're biased for the truth and the better hardware. Nothing wrong in that that I can see.

Besides, after the 8500 or GF3, you didn't need anything faster... yet.

Grammar error. "...didn't need anything... " assumes you do need something now, but then you throw in "yet". Okay, trying to be smart here. Fact is, there is always a need for speedier hardware.

 

[ByteMe]

Even the holy B3D has some bias.

I assume by "bias", you're talking about favoring certain companies. Name the bias. Provide irrefutable proof of such bias.

As far as I know, we're biased for the truth and the better hardware. Nothing wrong in that that I can see.

Besides, after the 8500 or GF3, you didn't need anything faster... yet.

Grammar error. "...didn't need anything... " assumes you do need something now, but then you throw in "yet". Okay, trying to be smart here. Fact is, there is always a need for speedier hardware.

Reverend, I was not trying to get your goat. One of the reasons I like B3D (number #1 is all the people with uber knowledge) is the low bias of this place towards graphics stuff.

The "Besides, after the 8500 or GF3," remark was me just being stoopid.

From what I have seen the rule of thumb towards gifts has been the gift has to be worth a low enough amout to not call attention to it. Many companies I have worked with have a no gift over $25 value rule. And I could agree with this solution as it seems to be what fits in this less than perfect world.

As far as taking a $200 or $500 card. Even if you weren't then biased there is NO WAY you can expect someone to think you are not biased.

How many people here would be fired from their jobs from accepting a $200-$500 USD gift?

So, how many "gifts" have reviewers for B3D taken worth more than $25?

And has anyone taken an "ethics" class that would explain why in principle you can NOT accept any gift? (seems common sense to me).

 

[Reverend]

Let's assume NVIDIA or perhaps ATI (or some of thewir board vendor partners) gave me USD$100,000 and say "Hey Rev, this is for writing honest reviews of our products <wink, wink>".

Then I write the reviews of their product.

Will I automatically be labelled as biased for any of the companies because I revealed I received a hundred grand from one of the companies? Or will you judge me according to the content of my review?

Let's say I work in a company that my father owns. He promotes me to general manager. Do you automatically assume this is because I'm the son ("Dud, he's the son... the old man can't be anything but biased for his son, right"? Or do you look at the quality of my work for the company before you pass any comment about my father's preferences or whether he's biased?

I expect folks to judge whether we are biased by our content, the quality of our content and the way we run our site. Not by what we get for free. We recently ran a ATI-sponsored competition. We approached ATI for this. We also approached NVIDIA. ATI said yes. NVIDIA didn't reply. I wanted to reveal this in case folks say we're biased for ATI (with the competition adding to this perceived biasness).

 

[ByteMe]

I expect folks to judge whether we are biased by our content, the quality of our content and the way we run our site. Not by what we get for free. We recently ran a ATI-sponsored competition. We approached ATI for this. We also approached NVIDIA. ATI said yes. NVIDIA didn't reply. I wanted to reveal this in case folks say we're biased for ATI (with the competition adding to this perceived biasness).

THAT is the problem. How do you expect the average Joe that doesn't know the differance between a pixel shader and a lawn shade to be able to judge if you are biased?

If YOU want to remain unquestionably unbiased you can NOT accept any gifts. Along with this, all information that you discover or are told MUST be reported. This means NO NDA's. If they don't want you to report it then they don't tell you.

What you are trying to do is have your cake and eat it too. Most do it this way. It is up to you to decide just how unbiased you want to be.

The competition example was a bad one. You are not taking any gift.

How many people here work for a company that has a gift policy?

***edit***

If you took the hundred grand from nvidia... yes you would be labled as biased because you would be biased. You want that additional 100 grand next year right?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

ByteMe, assuming Reverend [LoveJoy? ] takes the gift ($100K) and writes a review which places the product in bad light there will still be people labelling Mr Tan as biased.

It's a no win situation. You can't please everyone, but you can try to make your review as unbiased as possible while using common sense and your judgement to be your guide.

 

[Tim Murray]

or, you can just say in the review where you got the card and let people decide for themselves.

 

[Arun]

Is it just me being stupid, or is ByteMe completely forgetting the fact that most reviews got BOTH competing GPUs free? So if they get all the hardware free, how could they be biased due to this?

If one of the companies began giving reviewers dozens of $49.99 games, thousands of bucks in hard cash, and so on... Yeah, they'd be biased. Free hardware isn't bias though. It's an industry standard. Is the industry biased? Big parts of it, yes, but it has little if anything to do with this free hardware principle.


Uttar

 

[digitalwanderer]

ByteMe- What is the point of getting into reviewing if you don't get free kit? :|

I dunno, after getting a feel for how much work goes into a decent review I think the free card is more for payment for work done to review it. (I'm serious with that, you're talking a couple of days of work on a good review at least...why shouldn't the reviewer be compensated?)

(BTW-)

 

[digitalwanderer]

Is it just me being stupid, or is ByteMe completely forgetting the fact that most reviews got BOTH competing GPUs free? So if they get all the hardware free, how could they be biased due to this?

Well, some of us have been blacklisted by one of the major IHVs so we're out of the running for nVidia cards. (Although after they see me comparing a GF2 MX400 to an AIW 9600 Pro & 9700 Pro I think they might regret that policy and reconsider it. )

 

[Arun]

Well, some of us have been blacklisted by one of the major IHVs so we're out of the running for nVidia cards. (Although after they see me comparing a GF2 MX400 to an AIW 9600 Pro & 9700 Pro I think they might regret that policy and reconsider it. )

If I was you, I'd still try buying a FX5200R 64MB, with the worst imaginable clocks possible.
That way, you can compare them at identical settings


Uttar

 

[digitalwanderer]

Well, some of us have been blacklisted by one of the major IHVs so we're out of the running for nVidia cards. (Although after they see me comparing a GF2 MX400 to an AIW 9600 Pro & 9700 Pro I think they might regret that policy and reconsider it. )

If I was you, I'd still try buying a FX5200R 64MB, with the worst imaginable clocks possible.
That way, you can compare them at identical settings


Uttar

I thought about that, but two things prevented me from doing it. One, I still refuse to give any money to nVidia right now just on principle; and two, my wife is still dogging me to keep the IT budget at a little less than zero and I already went $40us over that this month picking up a used 40Gb HD. (I couldn't take the ratchety 3.2Gb in Blue another day, I finally cracked. )

Besides, it's a nice GF2 MX400 at least. Modded with a blue & gold theme and she's been running at 240/420 for years now. 8)

 

[thegrommit]

If YOU want to remain unquestionably unbiased you can NOT accept any gifts.

So, I take it you'll be chipping into the beyond3d new hardware fund? Or do you have another suggestion for how they should "acquire" said hardware?

 

[Dave Baumann]

You need to keep the hardware for comparison purposes.

 

[jb]

Rev,

not sure what else you can do atm. Yes no site is "prefect" but I think B3D is pretty good. More games would be ideal just to ensure we don't look at results that have been "hand tuned" by a software engineer at some IHV.

And maybe if you have extra hardware given to you that you dont need anymore...then maybe you could see it on Ebay and use the $$ to help pay for the site?