Sorry, but you seem to be being pretty hypocritical here... also, didn't your mother ever say, 'if you can't say anything nice, don't sat anything atall.' Half of the time to critisize Bit-Tech, others you praise it. Hand on heart, for its mix of people, reviews and modding (possibly the best forum in the world for it) Bit-Tech has to be best forum/website for PC's in the world. there. That made me feel better.
I'm quite happy to spend weeks choosing and more weeks benching, others are'nt, in the past a far more varied test setup was employed offering a broader picture for all, and less effort looking for those who rely on only these two sites and don't have the time for much else. I'm clearly not getting my point across here though so I'll give up, as I don't enjoy having comments that were meant to be constructive turned into something which they are'nt. You seem to think I use [H] as my own personal "everything must be like this", which simply is'nt the case, neither do you seem willing to accept the obvious changes in review methods by both sites as something that makes it difficult for many to gain an easy and varied picture across the whole range and not just mid or high end specifically. I'll let this rest now.
I personally haven’t noticed people being put down or ridiculed for a newbie mod, but I’m not on here has much as you are. quite frankly I find the thought of people within this community putting down others hard work disgraceful. this is not the spirit of the community at all. it does however not surprise me that this sort of talk comes from the pre-mod people, who all seem to rate there mod on the amount of money they spent on it. the question that pop's into my mind is how can the community be turned back to appreciating the little mods and getting away from the put downs? its no easy task to change a large community’s direction.
I'll comment more later but I'm quite busy at the moment. For our last mid-range graphics review, we used a £200 CPU. I'm trying to pick through your points, but that was one that stuck out to me. FWIW, I'm working on some even lower-end GPU reviews at the moment, using a stock E4300.
on the subject of benching, lots of sites and mag's only use top of the range systems for GPU benching, even on low end GPU's becuase that way, the system isn't bottle necking the GPU, so it can run as fast as it can.
It's just not the reviews an such, it's also the community within the site... I like it here, so it's where i'll stay...
Stepping into a discussion this late is allways hard, but I'll give it a go... If I'm up to speed, this thread is about that articles won't hold raw numbers and best playable settings in the future. Well, that is a feature I won't miss... Raw numbers were ditched a long time ago, and that was IMHO a good thing. Synthetic benchies don't say a thing... With the best playable settings you get a better idea how (for instance a GFX card) performs in real world situations. But I for one won't miss it if these are ditched. The way I reach an article is usually Intro - fist pages untill benchies, and then *SKIP* to the conclusions. The benchmark results add (for me) next to nothing to the article. I find conclusions made by Tim or Rich much more interesting then all those numbers. I don't have enough experience to make a good interpretation of those numbers, so I leave that up to people who know their stuff.
i don't understand this "real world tests" thing? How is anything thats reviewed here not real world? Or do you just mean the testing methods?
I still like the reviews on Bit. I've only stopped reading as much because my interests are elsewhere now. I did like the best playable settings way of testing, but if it took too long to do, then fine. (should employ more people ) I for one would like to see different reviews of more hardware, not just graphics cards and CPUs. I'd love a cooling roundup, RAM, cases etc.
With all respect, your comments did not sound "constructive". You expressed concern that BT was "declining'' because it does not deliver what you want anymore, and quoted [H]'s "concern" (which I do question) that BT was abandoning doing things like they do them as support for your position. Hence yeah, that is what I read. But it is a big leap to label a departure from your preferred way of doing things a "decline". I also disagree that different sites doing things exactly the same creates a more varied picture. Basically, it feels to me like you are raising a non-issue and then don't explain your point clearly, except for to say that [H] shares your view. And that, in my view, is not compelling argument.
I don't understand why [H] think they know what's going on over here. It's not like they even bothered to phone any of us up to discuss this 'concern' and get any real facts before posting it on their front page.
exactly what i thought...only to see the response forgive me, but which is it? you are unhappy that you have to go to several websites to get the information you used to get from 2? or you are happy? and did these "others" you refer to who aren't willing to search appoint you to be their spokesman? get quite a few emails from them did ya? im sure they appreciate you taking up their cause...very noble. you know what it sounds like to me though...another "i liked the old way of benching and want you to go back to it" veiled under a "im so concerned about the fate of BT and we must make changes now to avoid destruction" post...my opinion
FWIW, we've had a motherboard in that we've been testing on and off since the start of the year and still haven't published a review. There are more than a fair share of boards that can take over two months to get good reliable results from.
I like that though, you don't just come out and say "We couldn't get it stable, so we won't review it" you keep going.
There's a point at which we stop. Atm that's about 5 months, although I still have the board here and I'm going to see said manufacturer at Computex and sit down with them about it. There's a LOT of hardware we have to get through to keep everyone we talk to happy, but at the end of the day it's just Tim, Joe and I to go through it all. Indeed, actually, we're currently looking for freelancers
As you know Bindi, I'd happily help, but being located at a Boarding school sort of scuppers things..
