Very interesting read

[Jazzz]

Hmmm check this out

http://www.tomshardware.com/blurb/02q3/020825/index.html

[Helevitia]

Just finished reading it. I'll say the same thing I say aout all of this crap. Who ****ing cares!

Dave

[Jazzz]

lol

[Helevitia]

btw, jazzz, my comment was not directed towards you, sorry if you took it that way.

Dave

[K6-III]

Sounds like it really doesn't matter........

[Dilitante1]

sounds like like he is airing dirty laundry of others to improve self image....


my .02$

[Dr Mordrid]

Naw....he's just mad that the other sites went with and are making hay out of stuff he passed on....

Besides, Toms been such an Intel suckup of late nothing would suprise me....

Dr. Mordrid

[seether]

As opposed to Van, the guy who's zealotry gives amd users a bad name?

[Dr Mordrid]

As opposed to common sense. Sure Van is an AMD flunky just like Tom is an Intel flunky.

That Anand has suspended his use of SysMark 2002 after his tests confirmed what was in AMD's complaint is telling too.

This one may well have legs and help those P4 owners with their lawsuit to boot.

Dr. Mordrid

[DGhost]

as much as Tom has and always will be an Intel nut, if he practices what he preaches i really gotta respect him for not letting his website become a huge sounding board for companies.

doesn't change my opinion of his website (i told the IWill rep my opinion of Toms Hardware after she asked if i read it), but it is still somewhat respectable.

[Dr Mordrid]

Toms site isn't a sounding board for companies and is "somewhat respectable"?

His graphic card tests are done by an nVIDIA flunky and he hasn't criticized Intel since they started sliding him hardware left and right. Pfffftttttt.......

The *only* thing I've noted of use on his site of late are his mainboard articles, and sometime I wonder about the conclusions reached there too. Tom (and most others) have totally missed the PCI bus performance issue and SiS's advantages with high bandwidth devices.

Only Vans Hardware caught the SiS PCI bandwidth advantage by ping-flooding a couple of gigabit NIC's while simultaneously running HDD benchmarks.

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

I remember 96' when I listened to a raving AMD lunatic and got me my first K6 200 and saw the light! (pun intended )

Guess who the AMD zealot was?

Tom Papst that introduced the K6 with the title "The return of the Jedi"
And later the P2's with "The Empire strikes back"

And he still uses Quake3 to bench CPU's

Why?

Because it makes P4's shine

But honest, it runs quake 3 great

But he has dropped UT because it makes AMD shine.....

But the thing that really made me considder THG as stupid was the "Toast those AMD's" tests

[William]

I prefer benchmarks based on compression personally wav-mp3, mp3-wav, doc-zip, zip-doc etc. etc. Something where I'd actually notice increased performance (in a day to day situation I mean)

[seether]

I wasn't defending Tom, I was pointing out that there's too much of the pot calling the kettle black going on everwhere online.

There's always going to be some sort of favoritism skewing reports online (and in print), you see it here, at hardocp, van's, Tom's, etc...

I didn't say anyone who likes/recommends amd is a zealot - I said van's zealotry gives amd users a bad name - definite difference.

You know there will always be groups of people who won't be happy anytime their favorite products are put into less than perfect light.

And he still uses Quake3 to bench CPU's
Why?

Because it makes P4's shine

That's no different than someone complaning about any site that benches with UT as being biased towards amd then, is it?

Seriously though, who here still frequents most big review sites for education instead of entertainment aymore anyway? intel, amd, get what you want and enjoy - neither company is going anywhere any time soon and both have their merits.

I prefer benchmarks based on compression personally wav-mp3, mp3-wav, doc-zip, zip-doc etc. etc. Something where I'd actually notice increased performance (in a day to day situation I mean)

I agree, but I also personally feel that right now too much fuss is raised over nominal percentage differences. Things havent been as interesting as they could be for a long time now. Maybe once we get 3GIO, HT, or whatever incarnation next then benches will become more fun again.

[Indiana]

Just that in some cases those performance differences aren't nominal. When compressing big archives with e.g. RAR, you can see quite a healthy time-reduction between different CPUs (AMD vs. Intel vs....) and even big differences between different RAM-types.
Doing DivX here, I do care if I get ~13ps HQ encoding (on my XP1800+@2000+) or a mere 9-10fps (Northwood 2GHz). You can do the math yourself, but I'd say it IS a worthy gain if the encoding of a two hour movie takes ~230 minutes instead of ~315 minutes.
If you have other preferences (like games based on QIII-engine), the P4 might beat the XP, so it all depends on what you're doing.


P.S.: No wonder that Tom can understand the changes that have taken place between SysMark2001 and SysMark2002, since this is basically what he (or more his "editors") do in nearly every one of their articles: run a few hundred tests and then handpick the ones that deliver the results you want to see and solely publish those.
Anytime you see a sudden change in the relative performance between two competiting CPUs/gfx-cards/whatever between two revisions of a benchmark (like it undisputably is with SysMark2001/2002) MUST leave you with scepticism. It basically means that either the previous version or the current version is flawed - a third possibility is, of course, that both tests are crap. Same goes for the sudden / strange changes in the ranking between AMD and Intel in the 3DMark series where both manufacturers had been given unrealistic advantages in some versions.

"Tell us what you're paying and we will make sure our benchmark will make your product shine..."
But at Toms Hardware this reads like:

"...Until then, our excellent editors and the rest of my nowadays brilliant Tom's Hardware team will make sure that you can continue to enjoy Tom's Hardware..."

ROFL