This post is about the SiS Xabre 400 review

[Simon5]

Hi Mr. Lars and everybody,

You forgot to talk about the turbo texture mode that helps the Xabre card.
It’s enabled in your review because multitexturing is at 1700 MTexel/s, disabled and it's about 500 MTexels/s.
When you disable the turbo mode, you gain quality and loose speed.
The turbo texture mode isn’t up to par with ATi or nVidia quality.
You need to disable it with a register key: SiS.3D.TexTurboMode then you set it to 0.
Then the quality is up to par but you’ll lose about every benchmark.

There's a good article about it at <A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr" target="_new">http://www.hardware.fr</A> but it's french... here's the link: <A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr/art/lire/433/" target="_new">http://www.hardware.fr/art/lire/433/</A> and here's the page about the turbo mode: <A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr/art/lire/433/5/" target="_new">http://www.hardware.fr/art/lire/433/5/</A>

Thanks everyone,
Simon

Oh, BTW, if you don't understand french, click on the last link and look at the pictures, your eyes will understand.

 

[uknemesis]

I have to agree with the person above, IMO the Xabre400 review by Lars Weinand was very poor. The amount of errors in the review was unacceptable and the review isn't up to usual THG standard.

Here are my points which I hope Lars Weinand can answer:-

1.No mention of the general lower image quality of the Xabre compared to the other video cards used in the review.

2.No mention of the use of lower quality trilinear filtering instead of "real" trilinear filtering which is very easy to spot if you know what your doing.

3.No mention of the lack of anisotropic filtering.

4.A few errors in the specifications for the Xabre400 and the Xabre doesn't fully support Directx8.1.

5.There was no image quality comparisons which would of made point 2 very clear indeed.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by uknemesis on 08/02/02 05:41 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[TheRod]

I agree with you! I have read the article at www.hardware.fr and it is clearly stated that the Xabre is not that good!

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

 

[Simon5]

I hope somebody from the staff will notice it...

 

[chuck232]

The editors don't read the forums. You'll probably have to email them.

:lol: Finally, I get a capitalized title!! WOOT!! :lol:

 

[Simon5]

They don't seem to read emails either. I already tried.
I directly emailed Mr. Lars.

If someone knows an editor who reads his email, please tell me who.

Thanks.

 

[uknemesis]

I tried to contact the person who wrote the review as well without getting a reply.

 

[Simon5]

Then I'm not the only one...

 

[cakecake]

You know, it's a funny trend that's going on. These days, reviewers are like living advertisements. Companies qho send their products to well-known web sites or reviewers are, in effect, advertising their products. Hardware users crave information, and the reviews fulfill that craving. Hardware folks adore that information enough that sometimes they will be satisfied reading BS information that they simply like to hear, even when it's not the truth. It's exactly what commercials on TV do for other people. Remember your siblings or friends who would watch a commercial on TV and immediately say that they wanted to buy the product in question? It's exactly like that. Even following the crap around the GA-7VRXP if you go to Gigabyte's web site you'll see the GA-7VRXP is still winning awards, months after its conception, months after the bug was found. It's ridiculous. Do these guys even review anymore?

I wonder how many people's computers are going to blow up due to forgetting to put in <A HREF="http://www.dansdata.com/burning.htm" target="_new">the right water</A> in their Innovatek Water Cooling kit. Right after Tom's did the article on it, orders flew in immediately and Sharka Corp, Frozen CPU, and many others all went out of stock. What percent of those orders do you think are going to end up with a busted mainboard, messed up water blocks due to corrosion, and melted CPU cores? What else did Tom's Hardware recommend in this review? They said "Don't Use CPU Thermal Paste--the water block is lapped enough that you don't need it." Anybody care to disagree?

Maybe they need a break. In the recent Computex and Siggraph articles it's obvious Omid Rahmat isn't getting enough sleep.

Here's <A HREF="http://www.gamingin3d.com/reviews/8500/" target="_new">another review</A> to ponder. Is this the kind of review you read to make a <i>purchasing</i> decision?

1° of separation between my monopoly and yours. That's business with .NET<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by cakecake on 08/10/02 11:22 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Simon5]

I agree with you!

Does somebody know an editor who read his e-mails?!
I never get an answer from them, even if I'm always polite with them.
Thanks.

 

[Dinski]

Ooo, they are so lazy that they don't even write regularly at THG.
Does anybody remember when the last "Tom's Monday Blurb" was and what it's topic was, mmm?
;-))

<font color=orange>ÃÎËßÌ ÇÀËÚÊ ËÀÏÍÈ, ÃÎËßÌÀ ÙÀÍÃÀ ÂÄÈÃÍÈ!</font color=orange>

 

[Simon5]

<A HREF="http://www17.tomshardware.com/column/01q3/010723/index.html" target="_new">http://www17.tomshardware.com/column/01q3/010723/index.html</A>
Slow Summer Season, Not Even Enough To Rant About?

This was the last Blurb done by Tom's on monday...