Got Apex Parhelia review

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by KillerG
I did not see it as my responsibility to redo eveything as the comparitive cards had new drivers issued in the mean time as well.

I personnaly think that you should have taken the time to redo all benchmark. Already several new drivers were released:
Version 1.03.00.043
Version 1.02.00.042
Version 1.02.00.029
Version 1.01.02.090
Version 1.01.01.083

Not even mentioning the other cards older drivers.

It's your job as a reviewer to review a piece of hardware in a decent manner and this means for me at least using the latest drivers.

[KillerG]

Originally posted by dZeus
The problem is not that we haven't already shown you what we think is wrong with your review.

You have made some ridiculous demands about other cards being tested in SG. I responded. No rebuttal of note.

You have made some ridiculous insinuations that had I used different drivers the review outcome would be different. No rebuttal of note.

and so on....

[KillerG]

Originally posted by KeiFront
I personnaly think that you should have taken the time to redo all benchmark. Already several new drivers were released:
Version 1.03.00.043
Version 1.02.00.042
Version 1.02.00.029
Version 1.01.02.090
Version 1.01.01.083

Not even mentioning the other cards older drivers.

It's your job as a reviewer to review a piece of hardware in a decent manner and this means for me at least using the latest drivers.

Yeah well that is nice. Show me how they would make a difference in the outcome and read the whole thread before jumping in as this has already been addressed several times now.

Idiot. That is for the decent manner bit.

[KillerG]

Originally posted by Greebe
Your review disclaimer should then read "from a typical hard core gamers perspective" , not responding to me with those Q's have already been answered... did you stop to think I (among others) thought they were inadequite or faulted regardless?

Oops, I missed that. That is the difference between you and I.

You think. I test and report facts. If I were to review by thinking alone, I would have to say the Parhelia performs better than it does in the end because it sure looks like it should on paper. At least the paper we are permitted to see. That is known a marketing paper.

[KillerG]

Originally posted by KeiFront
I personnaly think that you should have taken the time to redo all benchmark. Already several new drivers were released:
Version 1.03.00.043
Version 1.02.00.042
Version 1.02.00.029
Version 1.01.02.090
Version 1.01.01.083

Not even mentioning the other cards older drivers.

It's your job as a reviewer to review a piece of hardware in a decent manner and this means for me at least using the latest drivers.

Also, I guess reviewers should continually update every review they have ever published just to be sure nothing has changed? I have though about that in the past but hell, it would be impossible.

Why in the heck do they release so many drivers? Hmmm...

Say, when we gonna get some decent conversation goin' on down in here?

[KillerG]

Well, they've lost their fire! Time to go play some games on the Radeon 9700. I do like to keep abreast of ATIs driver improvements with some casual gaming. The newest Cat drivers installed almost seemlessly, BTW.

See ya later. Bring me the numbers. Or, you all could mail me the screen shots of the new improved AA. That'd be cool.

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by KillerG
Yeah well that is nice. Show me how they would make a difference in the outcome and read the whole thread before jumping in as this has already been addressed several times now.

Idiot. That is for the decent manner bit.

I only read your review today only because the first response in this thread mentioned that you used older drivers. While already different driver revisions where released.
The lastest Parhelia review I've read was the beyond 3d review (you even mentioned that review in your review) it was dated 2 decemeber and it used the latest drivers at that moment. Your review was published the 13th of january and your using drivers that are four months old .
I appreciate the time you put into the review but you could at least tested the card with the latest drivers. Newer drivers not only include speed improvements but also bugfixes.

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by KillerG
Also, I guess reviewers should continually update every review they have ever published just to be sure nothing has changed? I have though about that in the past but hell, it would be impossible.

hmm, there's a huge difference between releasing a review with a four months old driver. Or updating a review every time when newer drivers are released. Offcourse the latest would be a waste of time except when you compare driver performance between revisions like digitlife does.

[dZeus]

Originally posted by KillerG
You have made some ridiculous demands about other cards being tested in SG. I responded. No rebuttal of note.

I have? Like others have pointed out as well in this thread, I would like to call those demands reasonable, and your testing methodogy 'rediculous' regarding the SG thing. (btw. I didn't ask other cards to be tested in SG).

You have made some ridiculous insinuations that had I used different drivers the review outcome would be different. No rebuttal of note.

and so on....

I merely stated that a competent reviewer makes sure that the latest drivers are used available at the time of releasing the review to the public, because those can possible contain bugfixes and speed improvements.

As for 'taking hundreds of hours' to retest everything you did, I guess you're very slow at testing then. Or do you suggest that beyond3d has put years of testing into their review? (btw. an example of a competent review of the Parhelia).

[Hazmat2k]

[Pace]

Just reading this review with eagerness, looks refreshingly long

[Eon]

Originally posted by dZeus
I merely stated that a competent reviewer makes sure that the latest drivers are used available at the time of releasing the review to the public, because those can possible contain bugfixes and speed improvements.

As for 'taking hundreds of hours' to retest everything you did, I guess you're very slow at testing then. Or do you suggest that beyond3d has put years of testing into their review? (btw. an example of a competent review of the Parhelia). [/B]

Granted but do you really believe it would have “significantly” change the output of the review as to make his useless?

I don’t think so.

After all the various review and previews I have read about Parhelia, including with pre-release, production and various updated drivers, I'm still more or less left with the same impression about the product regarding what driver has been used

Excellent multi-monitor support, excellent feature set, good picture quality, some games that support surround gamming and some that don’t, less than perfect FAA-16x algorithm that miss items to AA, that doesn’t AA stencil buffers and that introduce artifacts, ATi 8500/GF4 Ti 4200 native 3D speed, support for only 2x way texture filtering when competing products offer 4x, 8x or 16x way and from time to time they do mention the Parhelia banding problem.

If you can pinpoint which driver update, which our “incompetent” reviewer has not used, has changed something in the above paragraph - then please make it so – as a potential Parhelia customer, my checkbook is on my desk.

[Pace]

the straw that broke the camel's back (at least where Matrox was concerned), the GeForce3 chipset

Hmm, a good start. In what way did the GeForce3 harm Matrox?

[Pace]

Originally posted by Eon
If you can pinpoint which driver update, which our “incompetent” reviewer has not used, has changed something in the above paragraph - then please make it so – as a potential Parhelia customer, my checkbook is on my desk.

So, the drivers wouldn't change your viewpoint. Can you imagine a situation where it might matter to someone?

I was left feeling a bit like I had been slapped in the eye when I first read the final GPU operating speed for the Parhelia. 220 MHz is, quite literally, a snails pace compared to what the top-end ATI and NVIDIA cards are offering. I immediately began to wonder how on earth this GPU would be able to do battle with the likes of the GF4 Ti4600 (300 MHz) and the Radeon 9700 (320MHz) GPUs which are currently its closest rivals for the gamers' dollars.

Clockspeed is irrelevant. Is the Radeon9700 less than 7% faster then a Ti4600? Is a Ti4600 36% faster than a Parhelia?

[Eon]

Originally posted by Pace So, the drivers wouldn't change your viewpoint. Can you imagine a situation where it might matter to someone?

Well again from reading all the Parhelia reviews out there, some with early drivers, others with recent ones and the Beyond3D one with different driver versions, the gain in performance has been very small (with the sole exception being UT2003, but with Serious Sam slowing down!) and the problems I have stated in my previous post are still present.

I mean it’s easy to claim that “oh well your review is useless because you haven’t used more recent drivers”, but the most recent ones don’t seem to do much to fix all the performance and quality problems present since the initial driver release so IMO in this context, it’s a strawman argument.

If recent drivers would have given you a 20, 30 or 40% speed boost, like I have seen in other products, or finally at least enable > 2 way anisotropic filtering - or is this problem hardware based like for FAA-16x deficiencies and the banding problem?