What can be done about [H], Anand, & THG's BS regarding

hi all

Digitalwanderer why dont you collate some links to the proof of nvidia not allowing trilinear when the app asks-

I will then give you my time to join and post these links/proof at every major graphics card and public news sites

Hey we get enough people doing this we gotta start making a difference
right as the problem is not enough exposure of this major deception nvidia is selling to the public - a lot of news sites ARE impartial to this unlike certain card review websites.

If your serious and want some help im in sir.

 

Hmmm

I was thinking more along the lines of getting technical details from nvidia themselves about their cards performance whilst using trilinear filtering-
(if any exists)

Then assembling proof using various whql certified driver sets (this is where the problems start) as to the lack of trilinear filtering in ut2003 using these drivers.

This can be accomplished with time and effort as dave b showed in his excellent article on the subject.

Nvidia then have to be approached showing them the proof to see what their response is-after all it could be a bug lol

If nvidia decline to comment on this issue then this can be stated- what is important is that proof not opinion can show that when using certain driver sets nvidia drivers lower the filtering output quality even if you tell the card not to - this is what the crux of the problem is.

Review sites that benchmark compare any cards from nvidia that use the triless driver sets need to be made aware that this is the case - they may honestly not know whats happening - this is another problem area.

Unless you can show these sites by direct links to proof you wont get anywhere.

On a lighter note nvidia are doing themselves more damage in the long run by this simple future prediction - when Half Life 2 is released wait for the shockwave of all the fx owners when they try running it in dx9 and realise what theyve brought LOL

 

Apparently the hl2 engine as it stands at the moment does not allow any AA . I read the problem is dx9 related ; to overcome the problem is hardware that only radeons have but cant be used as of yet?

Theres a thred about it on futuremark

If you havent got a card know anybody thats got one?

 

LOL

According to warp2search and [T]ardocp nvidia have released statements they wont CHEAT anymore

LOL

 

I can only say that since the good old days (i began reading internet pages around 1999) there has been an steadily diminishing good content in websites.
Those fan sites that were bought by big companies i dont care to read them by now (sharky's for instance); i lost all interest in them and later i found that the founders where not running them; those sites that still are owned and managed by those fans most of them have turned to something very similar and the worse of them is the present stage of Anand's, it's almost nothing now.

A very special memory for me is one article by Tom Pabst, now only a distant hidden manager of his site and once a very lively writer ( that probably was respected and feared by hardware makers) in wich he confessed himself disenchanted about hardware sites, hurt by harsh sayings about himself and not wanting to participate in this scene anymore ( written with occasion of the problems between AMD and a very popular benchmark program that I don't remember the name about 1 or 2 years ago). Kyle is the one that looks as retaining more of its enthusiasm but why is he so dumbly backing Nvidia is mistery to me; I read his page and forum at least once a day but because of this attitude ( and some distrust to PayPal) i did not send money for his new server.

This is sad to me, but all this sites appear to be falling into a gray impersonal, tasteless, unresponsible marketing scheme; Tom's seems a bit different though. In "the good old days" there was a sense of participating in the big adventure of new hardware creation, at least by reviewing and thinking about it. Now that rests only in "enthusiast sites", this one for video cards, http://www.asusboards.com for motherboards for instance.

 

Maybe the answer lies in the creation of a web database comprising of all the review sites that has information on each journalist and his qualifications.
If you're going to read a technical review it would be nice to know it's by someone with say an electronic engineering background rather than - "I built my own PC once"

 

I don't think that necessarily follows - Have a qualification in engineering doesn't automatically mean you are good at reviewing video cards. Similarly, not having any formal qualifications doesn't make you a bad reviewer.

As far as I'm concerned a lot of it is about research, pure and simple. When you look at the number of sites that still don't know about the filtering issues in UT2003 with GeForceFX cards, even in the wake of [H]'s article, it's shocking. Similarly, sites are still running Splinter Cell benchmarks with AA enabled on R3x0 and NV3x cards.

 

Oddly, there are otherwise sensible reviews that include gems like this:

 

Holy Crap, I'm in 1992!

 

Exactly. Your comments are absolutely correct. I've been frustrated many times in the past by incomplete and misleading hardware reviews as published in the paper trade press. I expect a lot better from the epress, though, because of the immediacy of the media. I sometimes wonder if I should...

Anand, Tom'sH, and [H] (HardOCP) all started out as sites primarily or exclusively dealing with motherboards, core-logic chipsets, and cpus. Tom's H and [H] also did a lot of overclocking stuff. It's when they started branching out into other areas, such as 3D coverage, that they began to have problems. At least that I saw.

The paper trade press has always been split between its loyalties of keeping its advertisers happy and keeping its reading public interested, because of course they receive income from both sources. But non-subscription based web sites receive no money from subscribers and so must depend primarily on advertising income. These sites all began as "hobbyist-enthusiast" sites and Anand started up while still a teenager (I remember one nVidia spokesperson years ago who, when asked about someting or other Anand had disclosed in a review about its products, said something to the effect of "*snicker*--Who cares what a 16-year-old says"...? Although the remark didn't win the guy any points, there were a lot of people surprised to learn Anand was 16 years old...)

I much preferred the content of these sites when they were generally enthusiast sites--there was a lot more basic information imparted at that time than there is today. Anand can do and is capable of very good hardware reviews. His only problem of late is one of inconsistency and frequency. I am also sure that he is busy with other areas of life that supercede his web site--he's still a growing lad, don't ya' know--although *certainly* not 16 any longer... [Ah, if only I could go back to that age knowing what I know now!...]

Also, much of the focus of these sites has shifted to "news" coverage which often is just the recycling of rumors and innuendo among these sites. I don't know how many times I see web sites list an Inquirer article as a "news" item and have followed the link to discover the story has no attribution and is purely speculation without sources (that are named.) Much of what is termed "news" these days is not.

Anyway, the concept of "big" is more of a matter of individual perception than anything else, as far as a web site is concerned. For me, B3d is "bigger" than [H], TomsH, and Anandtech combined, because it offers something more than any of these other sites do. I also have chatted back and forth with the guys here running B3d in other forums and under other handles in coversations that date back several years--and I respect them as people and have an admiration for their approaches that hasn't grown stale with time. I see in them a degree of consistency and sense of purpose that's just not that apparent elsewhere. That's a very refreshing commodity among hardware Internet sites these days.

The great thing about the Internet is that anybody with the "right stuff" who persists and is consistent can be "big"--and B3d has a lot going for it because most people don't care for fluff pieces on the Internet any moreso than they care to read them in the paper press. The only potential problem I see for web sites as opposed to paper press is the fact that if you want to make a business out of it your primary source of income are the companies whose products you review, most of the time. Some of the things we see, and don't see, at other web sites are the product of this conflict of interest, IMO. Don't see that changing anytime soon.

 

Hanners, I was just keeping it brief and electronic engineering was just one example. How about we just start with being a trained technical journalist or a tech product manager in a previous career

 

What if we just start a sticky record of HIV cheatings, starting with the lately really infamous Nvidia

 

Dream Caster....

Hehe.. I'm not sure there's a site big enough to cope