Thank you Hotwired. Uhm, as for the HardOCP thing yeah I guess I'm a forum member there...but me and Kyle haven't always gotten along since about 99? I met him at the original Phenom launch for the first time after spending the better part of a decade fighting/arguing/debating/goading/having fun with him online and when we met in person we actually got along pretty well! I mean, he was all about Intel and nVidia and I was an ATi and AMD guy so of course we'd but heads on technical forums...but when you actually meet you realize you've got a whole lot more in common that with most folks just because you're both in to the hardware. We had a great and very sociable and friendly argument about our fights over the years, but we both smiled and shook hands at the end and I we greet each other and get along well when we meet at events. He's banned me from his forums more times than I can remember, ESPECIALLY during the FX scandal! ROFL But he let me back in and changed my official title to "I CONTRIBUTE NOTHING!!!!" which I sort of liked because it's just sort of how we are, but I do respect him in my own way as much as I plan to keep disagreeing with him in the future. (Oh, I've been out of the tech scene for about 2-3 years due to some family stuff and I'm just getting back in to it. Sorry, it's late and I've been up for too many days and my daughter just went back to school after 3 years of hell and I'm somewhere between occasionally weeping with joy and freaking out that I will FINALLY have a bit of time to pursue my own life soon!)
I was originally a mod at Rage Underground, but all us mods got sick of the owner and we quit en mass and started our own little site called Elite ********. I LOVED the place, it was the best little tech site no one knew about and we had the advantage of having some of the top people from the best sites as members because it was a great place to talk where no one would notice. I also helped start Driver Heaven during that time, but as much as I loved the folks there me and management didn't quite work out so I just went back to admining at Elite ********. The site had been stagnate for a couple of 3 years, I will take the blame on that one because my real life got busy but EB was my hobby and my family is my life. I'm a stay at home dad for about 20 years now, which is also why I got so heavily involved with forums because I was stuck in my house with 2 babies for about 5 years and the only social life I had was on the web.
I have no complaints, i made some of the best friends of my life online and I still haven't met 1/1000 of 'em. Doesn't really matter if I do or don't since we're in touch either way, but it is a trip to meet someone you've know for years but not have any clue who they are until you ask them if they're who there forum name was, and then the real fun starts!
Currently I'm a lame facebook person since I'm old, but I'm still very active on Beyond3D just because I keep learning so much there. They put up with my ignorance in exchange for my wit, or else they're just humoring me.
Oh, I also spent a great deal of time over at Rage3D and nVnews before Mike got ****** at me and permabanned me. I think I'm still banned at Anandatech too, not sure.
So I hope that clears things up about me. Currently I'm not with any company/site but I'm looking in to starting something new now that I've got time. I got back in just in time for the Ryzen launch and the return of AMD to be competitive in the CPU market is something I've been waiting for 13 to happen, so I'm a little pumped about everything right now. It's gonna be an exciting time for gaming over the next 6 months to a year!
The thing with the card price is bugging me though, because I asked some AMD people about it and they explained to me they were literally barred by law to set what the retailers charge for their cards. I know they did the pack thing to try and get some in to gamer's hands before the miners sucked 'em all up, which I think is at least trying but doomed to fail. The pack deal just isn't that good IMHO, the monitor you can save $200 on is $200 less at most places that don't carry the bundle and the games are only a deal if you planned on buying them anyways. I tend to think games included with viddy cards should be like a bonus freebie to show off the card on a highly optimized game for it, but I suck with business and monies so what do I know?
Sorry if you thought I was here to cause drama, that really ain't my intent. I'm just trying to understand the discrepencies between what you're saying and what I'm hearing from AMD, is that fair? I do believe I opened with "i'm not looking for a fight" because I tend to do that when I'm genuinely coming to a forum for information and not drama.
If you want drama I can provide, but man please let me get a decent nights sleep first! One of my dogs got skunked on Sunday and it took me until Tuesday to recover/fix the dog and house and then the next two days were spent getting my daughter back in to high school for the first time in 3 years...which went REALLY well and I'm still a bit slap happy with relief over. (YOU try being stuck in a house for 3 years with a suicidally depressed teen spending every day trying to get her help. We finally ended up doing a genetic screening, turns out she's missing the gene that produces serotonin which is the brain's "happy juice" and all she needed was a heavy duty folic acid supplement. Within 2 months she was back to her old twinkly eyed self, and today was her triumphant return to the world of academia!)
So no, i'm really not here to cause trouble...just to understand. I really don't get the story here and I just want to very badly so i thought I'd ask for help. If I'm causing trouble please just post up and I will stop posting as I don't mean to be a disruption.
Oh, and I take no offense at the general jumping to conclusions it was the start of some forum war dramas. I've had my fair share of them and yeah this did sort of look like one, that's why I thought I'd post this second one trying to be as open and honest as possible with y'all.
I will make a few disclaimers. I am a huge AMD fan and have been since they bought ATi. ATi I wasn't just a fan of, I genuinely loved that company. Fought 'em in the mid 90s with a few other forums since they were so bloody unhelpful with the community, and got to watch and be a part of them change their corporate attitude around to start embracing the community. Now a lot of my ATi friends work at AMD and after 20+ year or so a few (most, it's weird!), of them are in upper management of AMD so I have weird information contacts there that a lot don't. They also have an annoying habit lately of hiring all my friends over the last few years, so there's that too. I also have friends who work for Intel and nVidia, but nVidia hates my guts ever since the FX fiasco and Intel just never felt the pressure from AMD to have to make many friends. (Although my buddy who works there says it's a great place to work, same with my nVidia friends. <sigh>)
See? It's not about which brand is better or who has the bigger e-peni, it's about enjoying the geek to the gaming. I've found that to be a pretty good point of reference for most tech minded games to meet on.
So are you guys saying that AMD is ************ me? I AM NOT ASKING THAT AS A LOADED QUESTION!! I'd really like honest opinons on that too so hopefully it'll make me understand this thing a whole lot better.
Sorry for the imposition for information, but isn't that what it's all about?
Again, if you think I'm just here causing trouble just ask me to leave and I will trouble you no more. I don't like wasting my time in places I'm not wanted and it just seems rude to over stay one's welcome.
I throw myself upon the mercy of your judgement. Please either try and help me understand or just tell me to sodoff, I won't take it personally either way because I've been where you're at and it ain't always an easy call.
EDITED BITS: Oh, I was at that AMD thingy at SiGGRAPH too and got all the lectures/dives/info and the info from vidoecardz isn't wrong. Nothing was mentioned of a launch price and then a later price hike, just the package deals and the MSRPs that were reported.
EDITED BITS II: Ok, if you had the ear of the guy at AMD who said this wasn't real what would you ask or say to him? I'm pretty sure i can get answers to those questions fairly quickly, I just want to make sure to communicate them clearly and I can't if I don't understand.
