Tom's Hardware To Cardmakers : Game Over

Merlynnus writes "Today, Tom's Hardware has announced that they're tired of being jerked around by the video card manufacturers and are going to publish reviews on their own schedule rather than one dictated by ATI or NVidia. From the site: "Reviews of cards with pre-launch buggy drivers and yet-to-come updates do no service to the user. We explain why we will no longer play that game."

Comments

Hopeful

[HappyKleenexDude]

A lot of that message, especially the end, sounds like it's directed more towards other review sites than their to their general readers. Maybe they're hoping others will follow their precedent.

They're a large enough review site that they could hold out by themselves, but I doubt it will make any real difference unless some of the others adopt a similar position.

Re:Hopeful

[general_re]

I don't run out and buy $400 video cards on a whim, just so I can have bragging rights about riding the cutting edge. A fast card that crashes hourly is no good to me. A card that runs like a champ on game "X" when I don't play X is not valuable to me, especially if it turns out that it runs like a dog under my favorite game, Y. A card where half of the advanced hardware features are disabled because the drivers don't work yet is no good to me.

Which car review would you put more stock in - the one written by a person who got to take the car home for a couple of weeks and subject it to regular daily usage, or the one written by the guy who got to drive it around the block twice while the salesguy was sitting right next to him? I mean, if all you want is info as fast as possible and you really don't care about the source, well, both ATI and nVidia put their press releases on their websites - just bookmark those pages and call it a day.

who's fault is this?

[fireduck]

Tom's were the people putting the reviews out early using buggy drivers. They're the only ones to blame.

Nvidia and ATI are all about getting as much free publicity as possible. If slipping a card to Tom's gets a pre-release review that breathlessly points out how it gets 3.5 fps more at 1600x with FSAA turned on, the manufactorer's are going to do it. You can't really fault them for trying to one up the competition.

However, the article seems like TH are blaming the manufacturer's for this. Take this quote for example: "Maybe everyone has lost sight of the fact that all the analysis that is done is supposed to serve the consumer, the interested reader and to help them make informed decisions." The only people who seem to have forgotten this are the reviewers at TH and other sites that push to get their exclusive first reviews out before the product or any other website beats them to it.

And then, there's this doozy in the opening paragraph: "It's always the same, with no time to do thorough testing, constant last minute changes, and a rush to print. If we were cynical, we'd have to think that the companies involved do not want us to have time to do thorough testing." Are the companies actually giving them the cards and saying "you have 40 minutes to post a review?", or is it more likely TH is given the card (maybe around the same time a competing site is given a card), and TH is just being quick and sloppy to get the first review out?

No one is forcing them to publish reviews of products they've hardly tested except themselves. While it's good that they seem to recognize the symptom (shoddy reviews), it's be nice if they recognized the underlying problem (they want to be first to benchmark) rather than pawn it off on the manufacturers (who are just out to get free publicity).

Re:perhaps I'm on the wrong page

[kLaNk]

I bought my card based on the pretty picture on the box, not some useless review.