THG vs Rest of the world

[pitsi]

I just couldn't stop thinking about this and I thought I'd share my thoughts with you. Here it goes. As soon as I returned home today I got on the internet to check out all the A64 reviews out there. I firstly visited THG byt I didn't read the whole review in detail. I read the coclusion though careful and I was very disappointed by A64.

Then, I went to visit Hexus, Hardocp, Aces Hardware, Gamers Depot, Hot Hardware, Extremetech and AMDZone. I read only the coclusion in *every* site and what I can see is that they all agree between them, but all disagree with THG!!! Yes, some sites make some comments about the price of A64s but no site has any doubts about how excellent performers they are, except THG.

This also made me remember that THG is only one of very few sites that actually suggested 5900 Ultra over R9800 Pro in one of their reviews. What do you think about this? Am I say something wrong here? If not, what's the problem?

 

[rain_king_uk]

THG reviews used to be excellent and unbiased, now I'm not so confident. Alot of people will only bother to browse through the benchmarks, which makes me suspicious of why they have a P4EE overclocked to 3.6ghz in there.

Basically, I used to take THG's reviews as gospel a couple years ago, now I often end up taking them with a pinch of salt.

 

[Unseen]

I think THG seems to getting a big biased. I just read the <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884" target="_new">Athlon 64 review from anandtech </A>, as well as others. They seem to give althon 64 alot more credit than THG does, alteast it shows it compete fairly the same as p4 3.2 EE.

What is REALLY STRANGE is that 3.6 ghz p4 EE. I only skimed through the review and didn't see any catch anywhere about it being OC p4 EE. But I guess it is because I intel only launched 3.2 ghz didn't hear of a 3.6 ghz yet. If didn't really mention OC it is really misleading on THG's part. Anyhow if THG did overclock p4 EE why didn't they oc the athlon 64s? It is very questionable why THG inlcuded that.

 

[Kelledin]

What is REALLY STRANGE is that 3.6 ghz p4 EE.

Remember THG's old article claiming something about a P4 3.6 and sporting a photochopped P4 ES? Deja vu...

Someone else probably remembers where exactly the link is for that one.

<i>I can love my fellow man...but I'm damned if I'll love yours.</i>

 

[SJJM]

You guys should read the review. It states that the a64 fx beats the p4 except for the ee, which is right around the corner. I have yet to check the other sites to see if the benchmarks are the same.

<font color=blue>"You know, that my backstab attack does double the damage. I can make an off button for him." </font color=blue>

 

[TknD]

Yeah, people on other sites are refering to Tom as having an Intel bias. It isn't too surprising given the current benchmark. The inclusion of the P4 EE 3.6 is really ridiculous for a paper release. If they're going to OC a PAPER cpu why not OC the CPU in question that is not PAPER?

The article also claims that 64bit software isn't available for the A64. I think there are ways to take a peak at this feature and there is also linux... But I won't blame them for not wanting to do AMD's marketing job.

The other grip I have with the article is the "Benchmarking done right" section. They claim that using the lower details and lower resolutions result in more accurate results. I'm not sure if this was done if AMD's or Intel's favor but there is no reason to not include at least a few higher resolution benchmarks.

 

[speeduk]

Just done a quick price comparison. A64 3200 = £355 retail. 3.2c = £520 retail. From what I've seen so far, the 3200 performs the same or better (even in quake3) as the 3.2c and is 2/3 the price.....

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7000747" target="_new"> 3D-2001 </A>
<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1284380" target="_new"> 3D-03 </A>
<font color=red> 120% overclocker </font color=red> (cheapskate)

 

[Unseen]

look at the anandtech review for 64 bit benchmarks. I has some nice linux benchmarks for A64 near the end.

 

[Kelledin]

Ja, Ace's actually had a beta of Win64 for AMD. Ran some interesting tests on that...

<i>I can love my fellow man...but I'm damned if I'll love yours.</i>

 

[pitsi]

You guys should read the review. It states that the a64 fx beats the p4 except for the ee, which is right around the corner. I have yet to check the other sites to see if the benchmarks are the same.

Other sites also include the P4EE in their reviews but still, come to different conclusions than THG. Some sites say that the FX performs better or worse than others but NONE says that the P4EE is the clear winner like THG does (it has given the performance crown to the P4EE .. typed in bold in their conclusion).

 

[pitsi]

Also add X-bit Labs to the list "Rest of the world" !!!!

 

[SJJM]

Well they did compare a oc ee, that does make a difference. 3.6 while the other site only used the the 3.2. If you look at thg it shows that the a64 fx beats the 3.2 and 50% of the time it beats the 3.4. While the 3.6 beats the a64 fx most of the time. I assume that thg is think that intel is going to be bring out a 3.6 ghz and that is why they have it in the benchmark.

I agree that they should only have benched the p4 that out as of today not up and coming cpus.

<font color=blue>"You know, that my backstab attack does double the damage. I can make an off button for him." </font color=blue>

 

[shadus]

Nod, you got it on the head. The 3.2/ee and the amd64 are about equal, but the 3.6/ee should and more or a less does blow it out of the water... very logically actually... 400mhz is a nice chunk of speed. The fact that the amd managed to win 15 benchies against a processor clocked 400mhz higher than it's rating is really an accomplishment imo.

As an overclocker, I would have liked to have seen the 64 clocked up to about 3.6 also...

Shadus

 

[SJJM]

The a64 fx is between the 3.2ee and 3.4ee, it usual beats the 3.2ee and it keeps up with the 3.4ee. I think that it does really well, the cost of the fx to the 3.2ee is more.

<font color=blue>"You know, that my backstab attack does double the damage. I can make an off button for him." </font color=blue>

 

[pIII_Man]

We must remember however, that the a64 must compete with scotty, which will probably perform better than even a 3.6ghz ee.

I also must add, that it seems that all of the a64 chipsets still have problems to iron out, and probably some more performance, they are being compared to intels tried and true platform.


Proud owner of DOS 3.3

 

[Unseen]

Ace's hardware <A HREF="http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000253" target="_new">althon 64 review</A> actually has OC athlon 64 FX at 2.4 and 3.4 p4 EE. Have look at it, it seem to show athlon 64 2.4 beating out 3.4 P4 EE.

 

[Grub]

Consider this...THe A64 is a disappointment no matter how you slice it. If it barely beats the top current intel processor in a few benchmarks, its not really big news... If it beats the top intel processor by say 25%, then that would be big news, but it doesn't. These hardware sites live off of reporting news, and if there isn't any, they try to make a buzz about something. It benefits them to report the performance crown going back and forth rather than staying on intel's 'head'.

Scamtron doesn't like my sig...

 

[pitsi]

Consider this...THe A64 is a disappointment no matter how you slice it.

I can't say I agree with you. The reason that the FX is not trashing out the fastest P4 is because Intel acted very cleverly by releasing the P4 EE two weeks ago. If you compare the FX to the 3.2c then you will get the 25% difference you are looking for in many benchmarks. Now, we have to wait and see Prescott's performance. I am really very curious how the FX vs Prescott fight will turn out, especially if a FX-53 model (2.4GHz) is released by December (most probably), when Prescott will be released. The way I see it, nothing is final yet, and everything comes down to whether each company will be able to ramp up the speed of their new CPUs.

 

[SJJM]

I find it fishy when I see that the a64 and p4 have the same numbers. are they rounding up or what.

<font color=blue>"You know, that my backstab attack does double the damage. I can make an off button for him." </font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

The fact that the amd managed to win 15 benchies against a processor clocked 400mhz higher than it's rating is really an accomplishment imo.

And then you actually READ the conclusion and found out it was the 3.2EE that won 32, compared to the FX-51 winning 15.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Kelledin]

And then you actually READ the conclusion and found out it was the 3.2EE that won 32, compared to the FX-51 winning 15.

And you look at a lot of other reviews, and read that the FX-51 is actually right about on par with the P4EE 3.2--sometimes better, sometimes worse. Head over to [H] or Ace's and you'll see what I mean.

Add to that, the FX-51 is available <i>now</i> (newegg lists it as in-stock), and P4EE is essentially paper-launched. P4EE isn't even stocked AFAIK and won't be for another month or two, and even when it is, it's a low-volume "non-mainstream" part. Intel cleverly announced it without actually being able to get it into end-users' hands yet.

Apparently that doesn't matter to THG though. Volkel took the P4EE sample, ran with it, OC'd it to 3.6, and pitted it against the FX-51. And of course the FX-51 got whipped--by a CPU that really doesn't even yet exist for public consumption (and won't for quite a while).

(The Ace's review is really quite interesting, as they actually got their hands on a beta copy of WinXP 64-bit.)

As for me, I'm <i>very</i> interested in Athlon64. I run Linux, so I can easily get the nice 64-bit advantages. Hell, it would be fun getting LinuxFromScratch working on that bad boy; the challenge of making LFS work on Alpha is wearing off a bit.

<i>I can love my fellow man...but I'm damned if I'll love yours.</i>

 

[jurians]

and you also forgot that the fx takes ecc memory and you cant buy 400mhz ddr ecc memory yet. so you cant use the fx that well. Also imo the fx loses a lot of ground for the simple reason that it uses ecc memory and i think a lot of people are going to wait till the non ecc memory version comes out. thats not going to happen till early next year so personally im skeptical of the situation. In otherwords the p4ee is market gimick and the fx is not a feasible product for enthusiast and mainstream consumers. Although im not impressed with the 64 series im going to wait till the non ecc comes out and maybe how it fares against the new prescott.. good job amd your back in the game just have to get ready for the big battle ahead.

 

[kinney]

P4EE is a joke created to steal the A64 thunder. It was a great idea but I don't see it as a viable product esp at the price point.
A paper release of the P4EE should not really even be compared to the A64 which is available NOW.
Typical of the industry but we as enthusiasts should know better.

The issue about THG is nothing new.
They are intelboys and its just the way it is.
Anandtech has been, and is really the place to find your unbiased objective reviews.
I respect Tom but he needs to get his reviewers straightened out.
But I'm sure theres big money being tossed around for the favors.
I'd like to be proven wrong, and the best way for that to happen is for Toms to happen to fall in line with almost EVERY SINGLE credible source out there.

Everyone who posts here likes THG, but even we were wary of the "Graphics Card Buyers Guide" that was out some weeks ago. It made the FX series to appear quite presentable while I couldnt duplicate the results from other sources.
You can make things look drastically different when you pick certain benchmarks and certain settings and its nice to know we have multiple sources to compare against.

Toms is the "big dog" in the hardware community and it would be a shame to see it lose its reputation like this.

-----
eden is my intel/ati superboy

 

[Jake_Barnes]

Funny - I read the same reviews and found the conclusions to be marginal at best. I guess we read different languages ...




<b><font color=red> “Liberals have many tails and chase them all.” – H.L. Mencken </font color=red><b>

 

[ufo_warviper]

Sorry Double Post


My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by UFO_WARVIPER on 09/23/03 08:32 PM.</EM></FONT></P>