What happened to my free time?

I agree, quality is much better than quantity; just look at Mao's "Great Leap", I do not think you want to be part of that.

If it makes you feel any better, I have not played a game in 7 years and I am just 18 years old - last game was on a console.

 

solution: Give all the hardware to me, i have plenty of free time to fill
j/k

 

My my, what a thought provoking artical, i find myself in the same boat with the game playing situ. most of my friends online have completed HL2 and i have warned them about giving away spoilers. I myself usualy end up falling in for a quick game of NS or CS in the times i have for games, seams such a shame playing a single player game when there are mates on all at the same time (after work etc) and putting it simple, i feel selfish if i play a single layer game when there are mates around to shoot in the head (online in a virual world of course!)

Imp

 

From hearing what bigz has said in #bit-tech some of the latest technology can be a right pain to get to work. Why does one card work but not a slighty different version of this. do you a) send it back get another and be upto a month later with the review or b) stay up till 2am for a couple of days to figgure out how to get it working and if the hardware is realy borked

 

yeah im in agreement with if it dosent work after an hour send it back
i do not get why they would send you guys a piece of hardware that takes hours to days to get working anywayh

 

Likewise, CS is always the easy/sociable option.

I agree with what seems to be the majority, that a decent review done in your own time is the best option, but that shouldn't mean benchmarking loads of games at loads of settings - something I find very tedious to read. A couple of pages of stats is quite sufficient. I also am not too keen on the method of comparing different settings on different cards, to find the best playable settings, then drawing conclusions from them - if it's not a direct (or close as possible) comparison then it doesn't mean anything. Concluding the review with a summary of best settings for each card/game/etc is fine but don't base the review on them.

Just a few thoughts.

 

I'm not 100% certain on what you are saying here, but I will attempt to defend my methods of testing, because the way that I do test is aimed to help the gaming community, who are likely to purchase the video cards, to be able to get the best possible gaming experience for the budget that they have.

If you haven't already guessed, I'm quite passionately against the whole "who's fastest" methodology. It's very easy to write drivers that perform well in "pre-recorded" sequences, but these pre-recorded sequences may not represent true real-world game play. Real world game play is about a smooth frame rate, and not necessarily a high one. High frame rates are great, but what happens if your minimum frame rate is appauling? You have to reduce the image quality that you are being delivered, because you have to reduce Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, or in-game detail/texture/mipmap settings in order to deliver a smooth frame rate. I'm not talking about the nit picky bits that you guys will not notice when you're actually playing the game, I'm looking at the overall rendering that the video card can deliver at a playable frame rate.

Also, I make note of driver bugs, to feed back to the driver writers, to ensure that you guys will be given the best-possible gaming experience in future driver updates, when we pick up on a case where we see below-par image quality.

The numbers are there for a reference purpose, but I could quite easily do without them. They are there to show you that you can achieve the displayed game environment quality with a completely playable frame rate.

We are considering adding an apples-to-apples page at the end of video card reviews, but we aren't considering changing the way we focus our review - that is, around real world gaming, and the best-possible gaming experience the gamer could experience with a balanced system on the said video cards being compared.

Also, I must add that the way that video cards render titles now no longer means that you get a true apples to apples comparison anyway...

 

I have to say that when I hear about a new product I really want to know what's going on with it and get a look at it. But my chioce would definitly be to have a quick overview of the product with some pictures ( just to satisfy the basic craving of: "what is it?, whats it look like?") with a real review later on. I've seen some other sights do this and I think it really seems to work well.

 

My point is that a review which includes subjective elements as part of the stats is not really valid. As I say, to have a summary of your thoughts/opinions is perfectly welcome, as I don't doubt you know what you're talking about, but basing a review on them makes it very difficult to draw our own conclusions. It's a bit like the way people say 3dMark isn't a good benchmarking program because it uses optimisations here and there, and is always going to favour a certain architecture. Well, be that as it may, at least it's a standard to compare to and over time people become aware of differences in architecture/drivers/etc and just take them into account.

If there is a case whereby a certain card can't cope with adding 4*AA, say, where it's opposite number can, then the only way to compare them is to note that one can't cope with AA at a decent fps, then compare them without AA noting how much of a difference the AA makes to image quality on the card which can run it. So after the sceintific bit, you can then conclude that the card which can cope with AA is obviously the one to go for, or whatever.

That's entirely irrelevant, if one can't cope - IT CAN'T COPE! For whatever reason.

Also,

Do people really care that much? I just wanna know that when it comes to me buying a new card I know which to go for. Ok something like SLi was a significant thing that we all wanted to know about, but most new products aren't going to be revolutionary and I can certianly wait a couple of days to find out all I need to.

 

Hey, Tulatin, sorry for the o/t, but you might drive a bit of traffic your way if you put a link in your sig. I've just had a bit of a snoop around (never hit your site before) and it looks pretty good. I'm sure many other BT members would do the same if there was a link, perhaps with a regular update of the latest headline pieces on your site.

Just a suggestion.

[/off-topic]
I agree with the majority here - I'd rather wait a while for a well written, informative and (above all) accurate review with meaningful comparisons to similar products than have a half-ass sloppy rushed piece pushed through in a couple of hours.

Can I just say, and I think I speak for the bit-tech community as a whole here, that I really appreciate all the work you guys put in to bring us the quality content bit-tech provides.
[/brown-nosing]

 

And that's exactly why the reviews are done the way they are - you see instantly what a card can and can't cope with. When you're buying a card do you really want to see what it can do at settings predetermined by a reviewer trying to find a resolution that doesn't make an FX5200 run at 1fps? Of course you don't, you want to see what the best settings you can run the latest games at - isn't that what bigz's style tells you before all else? Nobody wants to play a game at 15fps, so what's the point of a benchmark that tells you "this card runs our benchmarks very badly" when you know full well that turning down settings will give you a playable resolution?

That's the flaw of an "apples-to-apples" comparison; the variation between cards is far too great to be able to pick settings - or even several sets of settings - that will suit all the ranges of cards out there.

 

Unfortunately she aint my site, but rather the site i write for

 

Balance

Speed OR quality? I think what's needed is a balance of both. Too hasty and the review get filled up with either crap or cut'n paste like material as off the producers website. Too much quality takes too much time - And time is - as always - the big issue. If there's little time, a qualty review may take a week and a half to complete, thus work would just pile up into oblivion.

No, give me a balance based on the writers own judgement, and the review-friendliness of the product. If our main man has no time for *life* why even think about doing these reviews? The only thing that will happen is one burns out, grow tired and weary of everything. All this to find out one has nothing to lean back on.

Take the time needed to nurish yourself, your interest and those closest to you. Without all that this we see here is naught but dust and meaningless. You cannot have more time, nor less. There is only one good solution.

Balance.

------------------
I felt something had to be added. Taking notice to what Meanmotion stated in his last post:

This IS relevant. I believe what bigz is aiming at here, is the fact that the different developers go separate paths. Would you review Athlon XP 1600, P4 1.6 and Dothan 1.6, and compare them as they all were the same product, just sold under different names?
I most certainly would not.
It's not right to compare how pleasant it is to drink water and motor oil. One is for drinking and the other is most certainly not.

 

I would state that the average Bit-Tech review is the first place that I turn to when when I see something first on the magazine/net/store ad ..
I see the advertisement, then turn to Bit-Tech. I don't rely on you to tell me first. I rely on you to tell me everything that all the other reviews didn't tell me in thier 3 sentance review.

I love the hardware. To play games. I don't need a video card at all to write a word document. I don't need a super-cool case to burn a cd. Watercooling is not needed for me to look up why my dog's eyes are purple and her tail is green on the net. Informative and review(ers) insight is what I want here.

If the Hadware sent is so bad that it takes over an hour to fix; put a note on the FRONT PAGE of Bit-Tech stating that:

"The (insert item to be reviewed) is here! We would love to have a review for you but we have to bug-test the (item to be reviewed) first. While you play two hours of your favorite game on our behalf we/I will be making some calls to get the (item to be tested) to work in the first place"

 

I read the article and whole-heartedly agree on a lesser scale.

I used to review for a hardware review site and am currently in the process of starting my own, and it's a lot of work. Contacting the web designers, making sure this and that gets done, hand-picking people I'd like onboard, starting to think about site layout, etc.

It's a lot of work.

I go to a great school in the US, and I'm glad I've put the effort into putting myself there. However, this isn't elementary school anymore. No longer can I not study at all and get straight As. The fact of the matter is, intensive homework and review time is neccessary for success. I find that even weekends, what used to be my unrestricted 8 hour game sessions have become 30 minute "hop on a game and look for a server for 25 minutes, then get 5 mins of good gameplay" sessions.

Either way, it's intensive work. I'm surely not going to give people tips on writing reviews unless they ask for them, but really you have to make sure you have all your pictures PERFECT (VERY difficult if you're not a photographer, some pictures look fantastic on the little LCD screen, but turn our horrible), make sure that your grammar is IMMACULATE, and make sure all your facts are straight and the article is easy to read. Add in formatting the article, getting everything in order, posting it, and sending it out, that's about ~7 hours of work for a decently sized review I estimate. That's a lot of time you could have spent having fun, but hey, reviewing is fun for me, so that's all that really matters.

QUALITY really comes into play when you're reviewing actual "stuff" like videocards and heatsinks. Having utmost accuracy is the difference between your site getting slammed a few hours later for being inaccurate or the review being widely accepted. This is why distributing hardware gets so complicated, especially when you're reviewing heatsinks. While some people would like to review heatsinks, you ABSOLUTELY MUST keep your results constant. This means that no matter what, you MUST have the same system reviewing heatsinks with no changes. Hassle? Yes, but it's a neccessary one.

There should be no substitute for quality, but there are things that can ease the burden a bit.

However, time concerns should be really of no use in an article. While you can remark and say "Oh man installation of this thing was HARD", that's no excuse for writing a shoddy article about it. However, for the end user, this should be more important than performance. If they have to fiddle with it for hours or even mod their system to get it to work, something is wrong, but with the millions of hardware configurations out there, I can't blame the manufacturers. Somewhere down the line, something is bound to fail.

Hope this gave you all some insight into why/how this is the way it is.
-Fyber

 

Interesting....
Bit-tech stands for Pro´s.You know what you are doing.
Quality is what a review is all about otherwise you could
just skipp it.
I have never seen a review on bit-tech that has been wrong,
all the facts and opinions has been well worked out.
Now, If you get a computer part to review that is not working,
then send it back, the part isn´t worth to be reviewed or fiddling with.
All parts on a review must work fully otherwise
it may result in unfair benchmarks and tests.

Merry Christmas

 

That's why i'm buying an iMac this Christmas. I know, i know.... it sucks for games, but since i hardly play anymore (except for important stuff Doom 3 and Half-life 2) it doesn't bother me. I am SOOOOO sick of always having to run Spybot, tweak windows, and all the maintenace that it takes to get my pc running how i want it. It frustrates the hell out me. As much as i know about computers there is always something comes up, wastes my time, and bugs me to death.

Don't get me wrong i still think PCs have there uses and i won't ditch my computer just yet; but my new iMac will be taking over the lifestyle side of things ( photos, movies, word, calendar etc). And if my new mac doesn't work i'm moving to the mountains, buying some sheep, and building a nice little place for me to spend my life without the annoyances of modern technology.

 

OT
I´m with you here , thats why i´m getting a Xbox after Christmas.
I play verry little these days and when i do , i must tweak and
hack and waste my time on getting the games work.