Friday, August 30th 2024

AnandTech Shuts Down, an Icon of Tech News and Reviews Rides into the Sunset

AnandTech, a tech publication that practically everyone in the computing industry is aware of, announced that it is shutting down. Named after its founder, Anand Lal Shimpi, AnandTech was founded in 1997 by the then 15-year-old Anand, and went on to become one of the top sources of PC hardware and gaming news and reviews, particularly in the golden age of PC (the 1990s and the 2000s). It is one of the key sites that inspired the founding of TechPowerUp. Anand and his crew have remained our friends and peers throughout this time.

Some of the biggest tectonic shifts in the tech world were parsed through Anand's keyboard. At age 32, Anand left the publication he founded to pursue a job with Apple, handing it to his friend and editor, Ryan Smith, and publisher Purch, which was later acquired by Future PLC. The site would continue to maintain the highest standards of reporting and evaluation for the following decade. AnandTech says that Future PLC will keep the site up and running, so all of its invaluable content remains accessible. We will dearly miss you, AnandTech.
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151 Comments on AnandTech Shuts Down, an Icon of Tech News and Reviews Rides into the Sunset

#26
dirtyferret
WirkoCompetent PSU reviewers are so rare ... and then E. Fylladitakis was given air coolers and fans to write about. Something was not right here.
luckily he still does PSU reviews for Toms
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#27
jpvalverde85
F to pay respects, visited daily at the good old times, things changed when Anand left, but the coupe de grace was Ian leaving, that felt like a slap yet the path was already set inside that corporate organization. Farewell and thanks for all the fish guys, I sincerely hope to read your journalism somewhere else. If you're into deep written tech analysis give a visit to Chips and Cheese.
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#28
Chaitanya
Thats a shame, many photography sites with equally important legacy have shut down in last couple of years. Atleast in case of those photography sites they either found new owner or new owner archived it and made it available to users.
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#30
Prime2515102
I can't say I didn't see this coming. When a site only publishes 1-2 articles a week they're bound to go under.
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#31
Princess Garnet
This is surprising to me, but maybe that's because I'm not privy to things going on beneath the surface, so maybe this was already apparent or something. When it comes to tech sites, I actually... never really have ones I regularly visited. Instead, I'd just come across them when searching for something, and in the 2000s in particular, Tom's Hardware and Anandtech tended to be two that I came across the most.

It's a shame to see such places closing down while these more modern "theoretical comparison" type sites continue to survive. You know the types of ones I'm referring to (bottleneck calculators, UserBenchmark, and other theoretical only comparison websites). I wonder what this says about us? As the years pass, are we becoming more lazy, uninformed, and just wanting a dumbed down, singular number answer, even if it's very prone to being wrong, instead of actually learning and informing ourselves? Just another example of how things change over the years, I suppose?
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#32
Parn
Sad to see another tech oldie site bid farewell following Toms and PCPer, two other major tech sites that I used to visit. Hope TechPowerup is here to stay.
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#33
Crazybc
Sad day Indeed . I trusted there reviews and read a lot of articles on that site. Its too bad these sites are slowly closing down as they were a great source for real information. Not the hyped up one sided stuff you see on the social media sites.
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#34
Makaveli
ParnSad to see another tech oldie site bids farewell following Toms and PCPer, two other major tech sites that I used to visit. Hope TechPowerup is here to stay.
We have lost many Tech report, Hardocp.

lol I don't include PcPer in that list.
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#35
TheLostSwede
News Editor
oxrufiioxoI'll have to pour one out for them, but this seems like where a lot of written only tech/gaming sites are going, tech heaven....
Even the video content is dying, as people don't have the patience for long form content any more. It's really sad that people have such short attention spans these days.
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#36
Makaveli
TheLostSwedeEven the video content is dying, as people don't have the patience for long form content any more. It's really sad that people have such short attention spans these days.
The new gen have the attention span of a fly.

Which is easy to use against them lol.

Just put a nugget of critical information in a 10 page document and its too many pages to read. "I'm not reading that its way too long"

Literally takes 5 mins to read...
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#37
Mr. Perfect
I'll miss them, but haven't really been reading their site lately either. Years ago they just stopped reviewing GPUs, then more recently Ian Cutress left and they lost all of his CPU knowledge too.

TechPowerUp better not go anywhere! For some reason I just can't get into youtube video reviews, there's just something about charts, graphs and text that let me really focus in on a topic. Someone speaking the same information aloud just doesn't hold somehow.
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#38
Psyclown
That’s crazy and very sad to see. However, I stopped frequently visiting once the architectural deep dives became mostly non existent.
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#39
oxrufiioxo
TheLostSwedeEven the video content is dying, as people don't have the patience for long form content any more. It's really sad that people have such short attention spans these days.
My 2 favorite seem to be doing decently thankfully. Sometimes I loop their videos in my office even though I'm not in there though. I do that to some of the less popular channels that I enjoy also. Probably be cheaper just to support their patreons lol.

We are in the tiktok generation though unfortunately.

The other issue is a lot of people use ad blockers depriving written only sites of revenue. It's the reason I support tpu. I hate ads but feel they deserve some revenue which is less than a coffee out here per month....
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#40
duraz0rz
Trust this random person on the Internet
DavenI've been reading tech review sites including Anandtech since the 90s.

With this news, I'm pouring one out for my homies: Hardocp, Techreport, Xbitlabs and now Anandtech. You will all be missed.
Written reviews are such a rarity nowadays, and the PC hardware scene is much less niche now than it was when HardOCP, Tech Report, Anandtech, and XBit labs were in their heyday. I hope TPU will survive.
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#42
NoneRain
Sad stuff, but it indeed lost its relevance through the years compared to other websites like TPU.
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#43
A Computer Guy
Sad. Who is going to make those nice AMD core to core latency charts now?
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#44
TheinsanegamerN
Frankly, i'm not surprised. Years ago, when their GPU test bench was destroyed in a house fire, and the writers pulled every excuse for YEARS as to why they were not building a new one, the writing was on the wall and screaming that anandtech was a zombie. Half a year ago registrations were closed due to "bots" and never re enabled. They've been going downhill for awhile, frankly i'm surprised it went this long.

More then once I was told by Ryan to "stop bringing negativity into the comments" when I asked when the GPU benches were coming back, when we'd been told for two years they were coming back. Red flag? That's the whole Moscow parade right there!
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#45
Makaveli
NoneRainSad stuff, but it indeed lost its relevance through the years compared to other websites like TPU.
The first major hit was when anand left. Then when Ian left in 2022 that was pretty much RIP Anandtech was on life support since then and the finally pulled the plug today.
b1k3rdudeAs a commenter said, "With this news, I'm pouring one out for my homies: Hardocp, Techreport, Xbitlabs and now Anandtech. You will all be missed."

:-|

web.archive.org/web/20240830133422/https://www.anandtech.com/
Hardocp, Techreport, Xbitlabs, Anandtech and TPU are the top bookmarks on my system for tech sites for 20+ years now.

Hardocp and Anandtech will still live on with their forums active.
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#46
Marsil
probably they may reincarnate as a youtube channel which is much profitable these days
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#47
ARF
MakaveliThe first major hit was when anand left. Then when Ian left in 2022 that was pretty much RIP Anandtech was on life support since then and the finally pulled the plug today.
Hardocp, Techreport, Xbitlabs, Anandtech and TPU are the top bookmarks on my system for tech sites for 20+ years now.
Hardocp and Anandtech will still live on with their forums active.
The most pronounced miss is Semiaccurate, where Charlie used to write with us, from time to time.
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#48
TheinsanegamerN
GodisanAtheistIMO it all started when they never did the GTX 960 review...

Later Ryan's testing lab burned down and Anandtech never did a GPU review again despite promises that they were coming.

Can't run a tech site and not review the one remaining PC component that really brings in the clicks.

Also the tech deep dives, AT's bread and butter under Anand went away.

After a while all you have left are silly phone and ancillary part reviews and some forums... Was a matter of time really.
What really got me, outside of the empty promises and curt responses to when the GPU tests were coming back, was the bass-ackwards reasoning they eventually came up with, that GPU reviews were done by everyone and simply were not worth the investment. Like WHAT? They're a major driver of views to your site! That type of "not enough profit" thinking was strikingly similar to EVGA's reasoning for getting rid of GPUs, despite them being 70% of revenue, and ended in a similar manner.
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#49
ARF
TheinsanegamerNThat type of "not enough profit" thinking was strikingly similar to EVGA's reasoning for getting rid of GPUs, despite them being 70% of revenue, and ended in a similar manner.
They wanted to get rid off nvidia and the dark man.
But why don't they begin to offer AMD Radeons, then, like ASRock, Acer and XFX?
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#50
ir_cow
I'm sure some of you have good memories reading about computers tech on that site too. Honestly it's one of the reasons computers became a hobby and later as a reviewer.

I was just so intrigued by all this new technology year after year. Admittedly, the leaps and bounds have slowed down considerably, but it's still quite interesting to be apart of the continuing evolution of computers.
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