MSI and ASUS Accused of Sending Reviewers Overpowered Graphics Cards (theverge.com) 133
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: TechPowerUp discovered that the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X card they were sent for review was running at faster GPU and memory clock speeds than the retail version. This was because the review card was set to operate in the OC (overclocking) mode out of the box, whereas the retail card runs in the more regular Gaming mode out of the box. This may result in an unobservant reviewer accidentally misrepresenting the OC performance numbers as the stock results from the card, lending MSI's product an unearned helping hand. The site found this was a recurring pattern with MSI stretching back for years. Fellow Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS, in spite of having better global name recognition and reputation, has also show itself guilty of preprogramming review cards with an extra overclocking boost. Needless to say, the only goal of such actions is to deceive -- both the consumer and the reviewer -- though perhaps some companies have felt compelled to follow suit after the trend was identified among competitors. The Verge notes that TechPowerUp revealed its finding on Thursday of last week, and has not received any official response from either MSI or ASUS. They did update their story to note that MSI addressed the matter, in a comment provided to HardOCP Editor-in-Chief Kyle Bennett, back in 2014.
Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't some blame be placed on the review sites, for not purchasing cards at retail
I think the public would be better served by that.
But where is the money going to come from to purchase all these cards at retail?
Many of the review sites are not exactly raking in many dollars, or their current source of revenue might actually be sponsorship dollars from the very companies whose products they are reviewing (Which seems even worse to me than getting review samples).
I agree they should disclose if review samples were given by the manufacturer...... They are subject to possible cheating.
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] seems to have the model figured out... They've been discreetly buying the stuff they test — including cars — for decades now. And then selling their reviews to paid subscribers...
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been discreetly buying the stuff they test — including cars — for decades now.
I like consumer reports, but they concentrate on products that appeal to the masses, not highly-technical products like computer video cards that the average consumer is not interested in.
It's amazing what you can do, when you have 7 million subscribers, each paying $30 a year, isn't it?
The market for consumer computer hardware component reviews, does not have this kind of reach, however.
Think there might be a lot more consumers looking for reviews on products in the $100 billion+ per Year market for Cars, Versus the $50 mllion+ per Year market for video cards?
It has not always been like that, but In fact.... I would dare say that discrete video cards are becoming a niche market for hobbyists. There's no way 7 million people are going to subscribe to a publication that reviews computer components; not going to happen.
That is going to be one hell of an expensive subscription (which people will therefore not buy), Or, it's going to by necessity wind up subsidized by manufacturers anyways.....
I'm sure there's no way they could get that, if they weren't concentrating on things of interest to their subscribers. Also, the fact they are buying Cars means that's money they aren't spending on other types of products for review....
A heck of a large amount of money, also, by the way: cars are expensive.
Video cards have a small market and are expensive enough that a significant commitment is necessary.
Also, I see Consumer reports would more likely be reviewing something such as Smartphones that would bring in interest by subscribers and potential subscribers.
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All in all I would say selling eBay is a losing proposition. You will extremely frequently lose your item, get no money, and your consolation prize of having paid eBay fees and shipping fees which increase the loss.
In my experience reselling things on eBay.... 60% to 70% of time, after I package up and sent the item to the buyer, the buyer files a claim with PayPal or demands a return and refund saying the item doesn't work.
Then they ship me "my item" back...... Except, when I open the packa
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30% if PCs ships with dedicated graphics cards. The market is > $1 billion.
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The graphics card market is significantly larger than $50 million. 30% if PCs ships with dedicated graphics cards. The market is > $1 billion.
And 99% of the population wouldn't know how to replace a video card or bought a laptop and cannot replace the video card. Unless laptop manufacturers let you pick the video card brand and model, you'd have no choice anyway. Some manufacturers do let you pick from a limited choice - gaming card versus business card (you know the kind that excel at CAD and such things) but you rarely get to pick from more than 2 or 3 choices.
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A large portion of that comes from retail cards.
Even if you're correct, and only 1% know how to install a graphics card (I think it could be 3-5%) - that part of the population represent far more than 1% of computers sold. Gamers buy new rigs every 12-24 months (or at least replace graphics cards). Non-gamers buy new computers every 5-7 years.
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30% if PCs ships with dedicated graphics cards. The market is > $1 billion.
These do not count as video card purchases.
These are mostly sales of laptops and desktops that happen to contain integrated video functionality; most of the time, the buyer won't even learn what kind of GPU hardware has been included
It's kind of like pointing to the exploding sales of Google Android devices and attempting to argue from that it's the year of the Linux desktop, because these are all sales of the Linux kernel.
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I like to think of it more as 7 million of us regular people deciding to each chip in $30/yr so we can hire some folks to buy a bunch of products and do head-to-head comparison reviews.
If you want products to be reviewed, someone has to pay for it. The question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to pay for it to insure the reviews are done in your best interest? Or are you so insistent on want
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"But where is the money going to come from to purchase all these cards at retail?"
Well, if a company -really- wants a fair review by the reviewer, and wants to avoid accusations like this, they can always send the reviewer a coupon code or something so the reviewer can get a free copy off the shelves.
Rebates (Score:2)
How about instead of sending cards, the manufacturers send rebate forms (worth 100% of the total price) to the professional reviewers. Assumedly the reviewers are getting some revenue, so they'd only have to cover the gap between card purchase and rebate submission.
That or have a buy-back program for cards used in reviews where the cards can be returned.
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Shouldn't some blame be placed on the review sites, for not purchasing cards at retail? That's SOP for reviewing products in many industries.
Not if you want the review available at launch, which is when people want reviews. So unless they have a time machine to go with that money, it doesn't help.
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Shouldn't some blame be placed on the review sites, for not purchasing cards at retail? That's SOP for reviewing products in many industries.
High end video cards are pricy enough that reviewer are understandably not going to buy them. However, they could get same effect if they swapped the review card for an off the shelf one at retail.
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't some blame be placed on the people that rely on other people's advice/research instead of doing their own?
What? So I am supposed to buy all the cards, and test them myself, so I can decide which one to buy?
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What?
This is about review sites. People who earn money by reviewing stuff so YOU don't have to.
I'm not sure how you were able to misunderstand the concept.
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no it isn't. the bullshit is usually obvious, and there are a few popular sites which fairly review all manner of consumer hardware. you google this shit for a few minutes and then bookmark the good sites.
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Moot, not mute.
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I'm not sure how you were able to misunderstand the concept.
Simple. Read the trail.
My first thought was also that your comment was idiotic. So you've successfully managed to confuse multiple people already. People misunderstand only when the speaking party fails to properly communicate what they wanted to say.
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Yes, exactly. If you and a million other video card buyers pool your resources and chip in just $1/yr, you'll have enough money to buy test equipment, pay a couple engineers to do the reviews, and still have enough money left over to buy a couple thousand video cards off the store shelves.
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What? So I am supposed to buy all the cards, and test them myself, so I can decide which one to buy?
No, you're looking at this backwards. What we should all be doing is claiming we are reviewers, and get our cards straight from the manufacturer.
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I would write a review of any hardware I was given, sounds like a fair trade to me. Where do I sign up?
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of times this is a whole non-issue, and not for the shill reasons you'd expect. They come out saying right at the start that these are "review samples" and those have almost always have a different bios flashed on to them then the run of the mill retail cards, especially since those review samples are selected cards that have a more stable and higher base clock rate in the first place and have already been used internally for testing. If a site doesn't want a "review sample" they only have to tell the company that's sending them the hardware they would prefer to have retail boxed copies of hardware.
That of course means the reviewer will have to wait for a retail version to become available to them in most cases instead of getting their review sample a few weeks early. I'll bet you already know what the site will want anyway, they'll still want that review sample so they can get people in the door and looking at their site.
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A lot of times this is a whole non-issue, and not for the shill reasons you'd expect.
So why are you making excuses like a shill would do?
They come out saying right at the start that these are "review samples" and those have almost always have a different bios flashed on to them then the run of the mill retail cards,
Why can't they reflash them?
especially since those review samples are selected cards that have a more stable and higher base clock rate in the first place and have already been used internally for testing.
What does that have to do with the BIOS? Stay on topic.
If a site doesn't want a "review sample" they only have to tell the company that's sending them the hardware they would prefer to have retail boxed copies of hardware.
And then they get what they were going to get anyway, or they get nothing.
That of course means the reviewer will have to wait for a retail version to become available to them in most cases instead of getting their review sample a few weeks early.
Nobody is expecting them to wait for a retail version. We ARE expecting companies to send out representative review samples. Sure, they'll pick the ones that overclock best, but if they send them out pre-overclocked, that is bullshit. The sample hardware should be as close as possible to the final prod
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So why are you making excuses like a shill would do?
I'm making factual statements, you know because I have some small idea of how this stuff actually works. Don't like it? Tough.
Why can't they reflash them?
In most cases? PR will walk in saying we need some cards to send out. And engineering will dump a bunch of cards in their lap that were used for internal testing of retail samples and we need them yesterday. Surprise. So they get dumped a lap full of cards.
And then they get what they were going to get anyway, or they get nothing.
And here's the part where companies getting free hardware and start whining.
Nobody is expecting them to wait for a retail version. We ARE expecting companies to send out representative review samples. Sure, they'll pick the ones that overclock best, but if they send them out pre-overclocked, that is bullshit. The sample hardware should be as close as possible to the final product.
Really? Then what's with all the whining. Those
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Really? Then what's with all the whining. Those are review samples, they are representative of the retail samples at a higher clock rate.
No, no they are not, because at a higher clock rate the retail product may not function at all, especially if they have selected all the cards with the very best-binned GPUs on them for review.
especially those cards that are being billed for overclockers at a base stable rate with little product monographs saying that the card itself has had internal testing to xyz speeds.
I think you mean only those cards.
Maybe you should RTFA? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not "sites like reddit" claiming it.
It started with techpowerup article, mentioning exactly what was wrong: cards running at higher frequencies than normal retail versions: Here is it:
MSI and ASUS have been sending us review samples for their graphics cards with higher clock speeds out of the box, than what consumers get out of the box. The cards TechPowerUp has been receiving run at a higher software-defined clock speed profile than what consumers get out of the box. Consumers have access to the higher clock speed profile, too, but only if they install a custom app by the companies, and enable that profile. This, we feel, is not 100% representative of retail cards, and is questionable tactics by the two companies. This BIOS tweaking could also open the door to more elaborate changes like a quieter fan profile or different power management.
http://www.techpowerup.com/for... [techpowerup.com]
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Furthermore, official responses have already been provided by both MSI and ASUS.
While I don't condone such practices, it's worth mentioning that the performance impact of OC mode over Gaming mode is minimal: around 0.25%, well within the error margin of benchmarks.
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Ergo, the company has reason to believe that the minimal performance improvement does have influence on the buyers choice to buy theirs, instead of someone elses rig.
Absolutely, Joe the Buyer will see 1890 MHz instead of competition's 1850 MHz and will buy ASUS / MSI products instead of competition's.
I was merely bringing up the FACT that the PERFORMANCE gain is minimal. I never said a thing about MARKETING impact.
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Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Interesting)
Video card reviewer here.
No, we do not appreciate this. We want to test the out of the box, retail performance of a card. This means I have to go to the manufacturer and chase down a clean BIOS, because due to how GPU clocking mechanisms work, factory overclocks may have altered the voltage table and/or maximum boost clock differently from how the base clock has been modified. Shipping these cards with the OC BIOS makes things harder for us, not easier.
Truthfully, we don't even want to test these OC modes. They're generally a sub-2% overclock. Due to the aforementioned complexities in how GPU clocking works (high loads can be throttled by power or temperature), 2% is within the margin of error anyhow. So all it does is create more testing work for a trivial gain. When we actually want to test overclocking, we go in and manually overclock, which for most cards is going to net a much larger performance increase than these baked-in OC modes.
Instead manufacturers screw with the BIOSes in a misguided effort to end up at the top of the performance charts, beating their competitor by 0.1%. When in reality, everyone would just be better off if they made the OC mode the default mode to begin with.
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SECONDLY, do your job properly, check the settings, IT is one thing for them to trick you
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:4, Interesting)
These cards are specifically built and marketed for overclocking. There are profiles on the cards, and the OC profile is on all retail units, it's simply not the default. Why they made it the default for reviewers or not the default for retail I don't know. But it really isn't an issue. All the cards will reach those clocks.
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Why would you pay the extra money for an OC card and then run it in non-OC mode?
I've got an MSI card, the first thing that I did when I plugged it in was put it into OC and run 3dmark on it to see how high I could push the clocks while it was stable. This is the market that they sell the OC cards into.
Reviewers are not being given cards "boosted" above retail, the market for an OC card is somebody who is going to switch on the OC and use it. It is quite likely that reviewers are being given review samples t
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You inadvertently described the problem with reviewing OC mode; the amount of overclocking possible is specific to each individual hardware configuration.
Minor production tolerances on the graphics card influence how much a GPU can be overclocked and you can bet that the pre-overclocked review cards are absolute "luckiest" in this regard, making them non-representative even for the average overclocked card.
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It's not clear that you understand the word "inadvertently". You should study it. Take the chance to learn something today.
Yes - I "explicitly" pointed out that the bin quality of the review cards is the real problem, not putting them in OC mode by default.
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1. An individual overclocked card is not representative of an average overclocked card.
2. A review overclocked card is likely far better than an average overclocked card due to human selection.
3. As a result, overclocked review cards are not representative of an average cards' performance, regardless whether the average card would or would not be overclocked.
Yet somehow you think this is a good thing? I prefer my reviews to be of products I can actually buy.
If the review copy contained a $100 bill, do you t
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1. You can't prove that, its simply an assumption.
2. Again, people assume this but there is no proof.
3. You seem to believe this is non-trivial? Certainly this is true of far more than just OC graphics cards...
I haven't said that it is a good, or a bad thing. I'm not some kind of simpleton who would try to reduce it to those terms...
Interesting, if some bizarre, choice of example. I assume there is always some bias and error in reviews. I'm happy as long as they disclose exactly what they are reviewing so t
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1. Maximum overclocking depends on utilizing safety margins due to production tolerances. They are by definition inconsistant.
2. It is indeed an assumption, but do you really think they'd overclock the card, test it and then send it out if they find out that particular card can't be overclocked as much as other cards they've tried?
3. Obviously all hardware has minor differences in performance, those are the margins and tolerances that the drivers handle by making sure that every card runs stable regardless
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So your argument is that a shit reviewer (who doesn't check out the product) writes shit reviews?
Slow clap. Perhaps it is more robust to assume that reviewers make errors, and that an ideal review is one in which the reviewer tells the reader what they reviewed. You seem to have some difficulty with this?
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I've seen this endlessly excused on sites like reddit by people claiming that it just saves the reviewers time since we'd all go into the drivers and overclock them anyways and other variations of that. I don't buy that one bit personally.
That's bs though. Most people don't ever overclock their cards or processors.
Re:Shills, Shills Everywhere... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't feed the professional Russian trolls seeding discord.
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You should ask for a raise. :)
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They were driving a diesel Volkswagen to the job so it seems to be par for the course....
Only for bad reviewers (Score:4, Insightful)
A good reviewer should buy things anonymously for their review, lest they tempt the producer to send them a higher quality product. Of course, it's harder to buy things anonymously when you want the producer to gift it to you. This has been obvious for a long time.
And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Re:Only for bad reviewers (Score:5, Informative)
It's a catch-22 though, and video game reviewers have the same issue.
If you get a review copy, you don't just get it FREE- you get it EARLY. That means you can write a story before someone who has to wait for the product to ship. Since most of the hype occurs before the launch (obviously- if you are super into product X and it is out, you go and buy it and are happy), this means that most of the readers about product X will want to read about it before it launches, be it a video game or a video card.
This gives the companies a lot more power over the "journalist" (if you can call a product reviewer that at all, lol) than you might see elsewhere.
Real reviews are done by places like Consumer Reports. They do blind purchases, don't accept advertisements, and they do their reviews based on objective things decided ahead of time. This isn't nearly as glamorous as luxury items like games, video cards, etc.
just wait for the DMCA to shut down bad reviews (Score:2)
just wait for the DMCA to shut down bad reviews
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An easy and fairly cheap solution would be to buy a few sample retail cards a month or two after the initial review and compare them to the review samples. Then they can call out manufacturers who try to pass them doctored hardware, and give the retail models away in competitions.
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An easy and fairly cheap solution would be to buy a few sample retail cards a month or two after the initial review and compare them to the review samples. Then they can call out manufacturers who try to pass them doctored hardware, and give the retail models away in competitions.
You want bloggers barely paying their rent to buy several retail cards at several hundred dollars a piece, and then give them away? I'm sure they will jump right on that and make themselves destitute to make you happy.
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These sites aren't just bloggers, they are businesses with staff. Maybe only two or three full time people in some cases, but if they can't afford the odd video card now and then then they have bigger problems.
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These sites aren't just bloggers, they are businesses with staff.
Loads of the best-known reviewers are just bloggers, or maybe vloggers.
Maybe only two or three full time people in some cases, but if they can't afford the odd video card now and then then they have bigger problems.
How many hours of minimum-wage employee do you get for the price of a Titan or a GTX 1080? You'd rather have better reviews than employ some poor schmoe? You said multiple video cards per month, that adds up quickly.
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That's not a catch-22. Not wanting to wait for or pay for the retail product is not a catch-22.
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It's 100% the responsibility of the reviewer to verify the integrity of the hardware they are reviewing. When you receive hardware for free, specifically to voice an opinion that somebody decided matters enough to lose a sale, its important to consider the source and act accordingly.
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Wow, thank you. I had no idea. If it takes a shit is the reviewer expected to pay for it too?
Ummm... (Score:2)
What kind of money do you think those review sites make per review? It is going to be a real problem staying in business if every review is predicated on being able to purchase one (or more) of a piece of high end hardware that can cost in the real of $700 in this particular case. It might be a nice idea to think they'd do it out of the goodness of their hearts and just spend their own money to help people but that isn't how things work. They need to get paid and they all have to cope with the rise of adblo
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Ain't no way!!! (Score:1)
These two respectful companies have no need to cheat, their records stand for themselves.
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Wait... (Score:2)
Wait... why do these cards have a "good mode" and a "shitty mode" in the first place, and why is the shitty one called "gaming mode"?
I'm going to guess that for power and thermal reasons that die yield of the chips support a performance envelope range, where one cards "good mode" can never be relied upon to be the same as another cards "good mode", but based on minimum burn in acceptance criteria, all cards are capable of operating in "shitty mode".
And further: that at the bottom of the barrel, "good mode"
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The OC cards have really good fans on them - the "gaming" mode is actually called silent.
Power and heat largely (Score:3)
Dunno if you've ever played with overclocking but the relation between speed increases past a chip['s normal limits and heat increases are not linear. So if you don't need/want the extra power, it is not a good idea to run your card harder than needed, particularly since those fans can get noisy when they spin up.
Support and stability are another reason. If a company rates a chip to a given level, they'll support/replace it there. Past that, maybe there's problems, maybe there's failures.
There can be a diff
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Wait... why do these cards have a "good mode" and a "shitty mode" in the first place, and why is the shitty one called "gaming mode"?
Because there are a lot of gullible people out there who will pay more for something - anything - that has "gaming .... " pre-pended to its description. It makes them feel special, that they are a cut above all the non-gaming people. Even in instances where the difference is illusory, irrelevant or insignificant.
If they are willing to pay a "stupid" tax, why shouldn't they be allowed to?
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No, they have a "we guarantee this performance and if your card burns up, we'll replace it" mode and a "we don't guarantee this performance, and if your card burns up, you'll need to replace it" mode. The latter is faster. Usually. Unless it fries your card.
"perhaps some companies have felt compelled"... (Score:2)
"though perhaps some companies have felt compelled to follow suit after the trend was identified among competitors."
Strange none of the competitors may have felt compelled to make the whole thing public after seeing the first competitor trying to deceive the market.
Sounds a bit like, it would be acceptable for anyone to steal/rape/kill/..., provided they saw someone else do it before them.
Golden Samples (Score:2)
It's standard practice that hardware reviewers are sent 'golden samples', or chips determined to be the most stable and functional. They tend to be the most overclockable, thus leading to exaggerations of how overclockable the chips are in general. Can't find it now but I recall a site having an image macro of Fry with the caption "Not sure if golden sample or super-fast video card".
A few years ago, AMD was found to be sending out video cards (the 290x IIRC) that ran hot and were heavily affected by thermal
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unless there was a woman giving a blowjob in exchange for a positive review, in which case make a fuss about it. everyone should have to pay for positive reviews with cold, hard, equitable cash. this is america.
Buying a TV is the same (Score:2)
Surprise, surprise, Asus is cheating (Score:1)
I remember the days of yesteryear, when Asus put wallhack in their drivers, not once, but twice. Not that those are the previous incidents Asus has been involved with, but those are the ones that made me never forgive Asus.
And MSI has been making crap from day one.
even without scams reviews can be pointless (Score:1)
The review of a laptop will say something like "HP Mobile 2300" but there'll be about 200 variations encompassing cpu/gpu/ram/display tech/hard drive size-speed-architecture/northbridge/etc/etc/etc. You'll never find the one which was reviewed for sale in your country and that's assuming the review actually mentioned the various product id which would enable you to even look for it. So yeah, great, thanks for the 3dbench scores and "this was faster than that pc" but I have no idea what you just reviewed.
What's the problemI? (Score:1)
It's not like they're sending out products regular people can't buy.
It's not like someone buying the product can't enable this option and get the exact same experience.
If they didn't enable this option by default, a slack reviewer may not enable and then the product gets mis-represented.
Consumer Reports (Score:2)
It would also probably drop their demographic age by about 10 years in one fell swoop.
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Car analogy (Score:2)
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Get a Grip, People (Score:3)
The clocks vary by 1-2% between the review and retail products. I can think of far more important issues to froth over on the internet.
The retail products even have an option to kick up to that performance level. Granted, it's not the default, but it's supported and very easy to change.
Manufacturers make far more outlandish claims by carefully selecting benchmarks, and no one even pays attention to that anymore.
Is it bullshit on some fundamental level? Yeah, maybe it's dishonest, and I'm not going to give corporations the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their motives. But it's barely a blip on the bullshit meter.
If the user didn't have the ability to adjust the clocks, then I could understand getting angry. At a 1-2% clock difference, it would still be a minor point. We can adjust the clocks though, so we get the same level of performance at home.
I'm in the market for a video card during this product cycle (waiting for Vega details), and this just doesn't matter enough to affect my decision at all.
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Yes, a lot of the auto "journalists" get specially modified models of the cars they review.