HardOCP

[TheRealDeal]

I am just wondering if these guys have turned a little bias. Every amd card seems to get a silver award since the release of the gtx680 which always seems to pull a gold while being in my mind a little mediocre. This card spanks all the other cards and does so in good fasion. I never seen anything bad said in the conclusion yet its a silver.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/26/sapphire_hd_7870_oc_edition_video_card_review/10

I like there reviews but lately anything amd seems just a little off. They cant get along with cfx yet sli is so smooth. I just find it all a little dodgy since i have experience of going from my machine with a single gpu and my mates cfx machines for the last 5 years. I cant really see any difference. I thought at one point they were a little amd biased.

Could this swap be down to games or other factors.

 

[gurusan]

Not sure why they give the cards a silver.

The GTX 680 does seem to be the winner among the latest-gen so far but cards like the 7870 and 7850 are pretty darned good for the money.

 

[Troezar]

I take all reviews sites with a pinch of salt these days. If they are self spring in terms of finance there is always room for bias. Look at multiple sites and get a feel for the overall result plus real user testing.

 

[Yaayuh!]

HardOCP are bias, quite so infact. That's why i tend to ignore them now.

Galaxy and Corsair are two to ignore from them since they are sponsors. Also HardOCP run AMD eyefinity shows as well, so that may answer your question.

Also, Kyle is a douchebag.

 

[arc@css]

I look at many reviews before making a decision. It's the only way you'll get a more reliable accuracy, that is without trying first hand for yourself or getting a mates opinion etc.

 

[Locky]

ALL reviews are not worth steam off ****, the best reviews are the real adopters and users, to be honest the reviews of ocuk are worth looking at, a bit vague but informative and they have nothing to gain from siding with brands.

 

[mmj_uk]

Might be because that card is poor value as far as 7870's go, you can get the non-OC version with the same heatsink and only slightly lower clocks for £40 less.

 

[andybird123]

all reviews are biased, sometimes it's not the reviewer that is so much as they've managed to work up a set of tests that don't reflect real life, but even that introduces a bias

reviewers tend to take the path of least resistance when testing as well, so if they get odd results they just publish them without looking at why to see if they cocked something up in swapping cards about

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

Their opinion on the 7900 series is that they're too expensive for what they are, which is fair enough.

When the GTX680 arrived and they were justified in that:
1) The GTX680 is faster
2) It launched cheaper than the 7900 series

The same goes for the 7800 series - good cards, overpriced.

Basically their reviews are against AMD capitalising on a lack of competition. This is plainly ridiclous, but definitely hints at their understanding that these cards should come down in price.

I wouldn't pay any attention to the awards and look at the numbers.

Also HardOCP run AMD eyefinity shows as well, so that may answer your question.

As far as I know, Kyle was running GTX 580s in SLI for a long time.

 

[tommybhoy]

Does it matter?

All you have to do is look at the results given in the graphs at the end of the day.

You have also got to look at it that awards are given to different pricing over the pond (not UK pricing) which makes a difference on what they perceive the 'worth' of said gpu's, remember the 680 was priced $50 dollars cheaper than the 7970 at launch.

The only thing I could say about [H], is recently, they have been quick to point out AMD driver failings and discuss them at legnth, yet fail to talk about Nvidia's apparent Adaptive Vsync stutter or the horrible TDR issue that's still ongoing.

I mean they criticise 79** CrossFire performance(rightly so as it's not good enough) because it's been about 4 months in and it's not good enough, but the TDR issue has been plaguing 560 owners since launch and it's still not fixed, take into account there is far more 560 owners than 79** CrossFire owners and when the 560 series launched.

 

[Mr Krugga]

ALL reviews are not worth steam off ****, the best reviews are the real adopters and users, to be honest the reviews of ocuk are worth looking at, a bit vague but informative and they have nothing to gain from siding with brands.

Nice try.

I'd take Anand's reviews over any that were posted here, ESPECIALLY the ones posted by OcUK's marketing staff...

 

[Helios1234]

reviewers tend to take the path of least resistance when testing as well, so if they get odd results they just publish them without looking at why to see if they cocked something up in swapping cards about

You are right on that but I'd like to think that when I reviewed graphics card, I investigated everything that went wrong. A shame that others just see results and don't investigate things that don't look right and simply publish them to get views.

 

[arc@css]

sometimes it's not the reviewer that is so much as they've managed to work up a set of tests that don't reflect real life, but even that introduces a bias

+1

 

[djxput]

I sort of agree - have been a viewer of their site for years and have noticed a slight decline in the fast couple of years as far as bias and reviews go

 

[andybird123]

You are right on that but I'd like to think that when I reviewed graphics card, I investigated everything that went wrong. A shame that others just see results and don't investigate things that don't look right and simply publish them to get views.

don't forget that hardly any reviewers do it as an actual job, they do it in their spare time for either epeen, beer money or free stuff (or any combination of)

I'm not at all surprised that they sometimes cut corners to hit a deadline

 

[straxusii]

If you were to review the 680 and 7970 side by side at stock then yes the 680 is just out on top but to say the difference between the 2 is silver and gold is just madness.

 

[drunkenmaster]

As I said in the other thread, one of the first xfire vs sli reviews post 680gtx launch said sli worked better, even though one of the games they used both, doesn't work as default in sli with the game IIRC and was unstable at the time but zero mention of this in the review, just "sli works better". Insane, likewise they did the STO dx11 feature where AMD spanked Nvidia in dx10, and while a bunch of other sites that had dx11 working fine, with better performance, somehow [H] gave worse numbers for DX11 and went on and on about AMD drivers.

While on his own forums lately he's been saying xfire is working better than SLI, days later he does a review which says the opposite.

Then there is the Asrock mobo review, known, confirmed faulty mobo, they could have gotten a completely free replacement but instead reviewed a faulty mobo and claimed completely randomly that all the "odd" performance quirks were simply inherant with the board, he spoke to their customers services who told him to RMA and he refused and published a review on known faulty hardware and "fact" that the board was simply awful.

Honestly never seen any other site do that, I don't think any other site would ever intentionally do so and its beyond ridiculous. I didn't mind [H] till that Asrock review, the single most ridiculous review I've seen on any hardware site, read that review, there is no denying they are a **** site after that. Not so coincidentally they kept saying some Asus mobo they hadn't reviewed was simply better, and a few days later this Asus mobo was reviewed and given great marks.

 

[TAC4U]

I find HardOCP a useful review site simply because they have a completely unique methodology. It's always worth checking out their reviews but I always form my opinion by comparing a lot of reviews and reading between the lines, at least when user opinions are not an option (i.e. when new cards are first launched).

As for the difference between gold and silver, I don't find it unreasonable. Everybody complained about how overpriced the 7970 was, whereas the 680 came out cheaper, performed better, quieter and had better power efficiency, as well as new technologies (adaptive vsync, TXAA, turbo boost, support for four displays, etc). I'm not sure I agree with giving them different awards, though I don't fault them for doing so.

AMD had the opportunity to win this generation but based upon how tight supplies for the 680 have been and upon how the 7970 is still in stock despite a large price drop, I think it's fair to say they messed up that advantage. And now it looks like nVidia will beat them to market with their dual-GPU card, which is bizarre as the 7990 was expected around March. Still, AMD has released their full range of cards and had a head start with their top-end so I don't think AMD will suffer much (if at all) from this and it would seem they've got plenty of room to drop prices further. It's times like this that I wish the Steam hardware survey was kept more up-to-date, as the install base is far more revealing than the anecdotal evidence we currently have to go on.

At the moment the 7970 offers much better value but that simply wasn't the case at launch.

 

[tommybhoy]

It's times like this that I wish the Steam hardware survey was kept more up-to-date, as the install base is far more revealing than the anecdotal evidence we currently have to go on.

It's **** though, it used to show my CrossFire as SLI, they sort of fixed it, now it only shows 1 AMD gpu installed in my system instead of 2, which has a knock on effect as they won't count in the overall stats making them skewed results.

 

[ALXAndy]

It's not just them. Custom PC scored the 7970 down because it was very expensive. Then they refused to score the 7850 and 7870 because they couldn't be sure on price. I could have told them there, prices were already posted !

Yet when the 680 came along there was no mentions of the shortcomings. No mention that it was more than a 7970 as it was hailed as being a good value card. No mentions of the fact that it only has 2gb vram, etc.

Some sites prefer Nvidia, just as people do.

I admit that I used to be very excited about Voodoo cards. Every time there was a new launch I would be queueing up outside the local PC shop to get one (mine was boring and didn't stock high end parts as our distros were expensive for them)

If I was asked what brand I prefer I would say Nvidia. But that's only down to personal experience with their drivers vs AMD's.

I certainly wouldn't carry that favouritism into any reviews, I would bash on both cards equally.

Isn't HardOCP that really annoying American bell who likes to put 3000gb of ram in his systems failing to realise it will slow him down?

Or is that some one else? annoying sugared up bald headed pleb with ADHD?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/03/05/amd-radeon-hd-7850-2gb/7

There it is. Quote -

As with the HD 7870 2GB, we’ll hold fire on delivering a definitive review score until we get our hands on retail samples, but needless to say we’re very impressed so far with both the HD 7800 series cards. Nvidia will need to deliver its own 28nm Kepler GPUs soon to avoid being left behind.

Well they have had plenty of chance now and still no update or scores. Funny that !