AdoredTV at it again - Over an hour long video about Nvidia's business practices.

[Vayra86]

So what you're saying is that by making it marketable to critically review product, thus providing the consumer with all of the viewpoints the manufacturers would prefer were not public, Gamers Nexus are in some way mistreating the consumer?

What insane planet are you living on? What GN have done is find a way to be fiscally viable as a business, without having to compromise their ethics or the function of a review in order to keep manufacturers happy. It is the exact model of what review sites and critics in every industry, not only computing, should be doing - Unhooking themselves from the teat of the people they are supposed to be criticising.

It was always marketable to critically review products, don't act like GN figured out some magical way of doing that. Written reviews have done this for quite some time now, including TPU. The reality is, most of the time, products are quite fine and generally, reviews are insanely boring. Motherboards for example. You can do a roundup and conclude 95% will provide precisely the same performance, in a price range from lower midrange all the way up to enthusiast level. Look at the Z370 roundup on Anandtech, its a good example of that, and it represents the real world where most parts are OEM based.

The kicker is, its marketable to critically review products EVEN without making companies hate your guts. The reason 'tubers get removed from the free stuff lists is because of tone of voice and feeding the hype or hate trains. That is also what @cadaveca was referring to with his example of ASUS and working with them on improving stuff. The real progress doesn't happen in the open playground but in constructive dialogue, well outside the range of sweaty keyboard heroes spamming comments under a video.

 

[lexluthermiester]

all of the viewpoints the manufacturers would prefer were not public

Information that is already pubic.

Gamers Nexus are in some way mistreating the consumer?

Mistreating? You must mean misleading. More on that in a moment..

What GN have done is find a way to be fiscally viable as a business, without having to compromise their ethics or the function of a review in order to keep manufacturers happy.

What they've done is made money from providing misinformation and creating needless aggravation by twisting facts and the truth to fit their narrow, agenda based narrative.

 

[GlacierNine]

It was always marketable to critically review products, don't act like GN figured out some magical way of doing that. Written reviews have done this for quite some time now, including TPU. The reality is, most of the time, products are quite fine and generally, reviews are insanely boring. Motherboards for example. You can do a roundup and conclude 95% will provide precisely the same performance, in a price range from lower midrange all the way up to enthusiast level. Look at the Z370 roundup on Anandtech, its a good example of that, and it represents the real world where most parts are OEM based.

I think you struggle with the word "critically". It does not mean to baselessly harp on a products flaws. It means to look at all aspects of a thing and take account of them when forming an opinion.

Again, the purpose of a review to the consumer, is to provide them with the information they need, to be able to make a purchasing decision that addresses their particular needs. I can certainly review, say, a Crosshair VI, and come away convinced that that the board is an excellent board. But I would not be writing a critically sound review of that product if I didn't address, for the benefit of my audience, the fact it is also a very expensive motherboard that most consumers do not need. I would also be doing a disservice to my audience if I were not able to identify areas of the board that were exceptionally good in the price class, and areas of the board that were sub-par. Even if my review were to be greatly positive, no product is perfect and those flaws should be appraised.

Conversely, if I reviewed either of the ASUS PRIME motherboards based on the A320 chipset, I would not be writing an appropriately critical review if I did not judge it by appropriate metrics - In this case, price, robustness of build and design, and the inclusion of appropriately desirable features rather than features of no real value to the kind of consumer that buys an A320 board - For example, I would be critical of an A320 board that had a 10 phase VRM, as it would be cost in the product that doesn't pass on an appropriate benefit to the consumer when the board is not capable of overclocking. Despite the feature being, in theory, a good thing, it is not appropriate for that product or class of product - Conversely, the "downgrade" of the ASUS A320M-A which has a 6 phase VRM, is an appropriate and laudable thing in that price class, presuming the cost has been reduced in that area in order to provide a greater benefit elsewhere.

It is very true that both of these products are suitable for their intended audiences, however a review *must address their flaws and suitability* to be worthwhile. Simply working on the basis that "most boards are suitable" is making a mockery of any reviewer's assumed purpose - to help the consumer.

Information that is already pubic.

Mistreating? You must mean misleading. More on that in a moment..

What they've done is made money from providing misinformation and creating needless aggravation by twisting facts and the truth to fit their narrow, agenda based narrative.

1 - That information would not be public without reviews that actually address the flaws. Take a look at other H500P coverage around the web. Bitwit, Paul's Hardware, Linus Tech Tips, etc, did not comment on the poor airflow of that case, or at least glossed over it as rapidly as possible. They also barely mentioned the poor mechanism for the side window, the poorly designed/attached front fascia, the cheap feeling plastic, or the creaking. In the absence of GN's coverage (or similar, I don't follow every tech site, I'm sure other people did their jobs properly too), there would have been hardly any awareness of these issues save for a comparitively invisible core of people on forums who had bought the case and were providing much less structured and much more subjective criticism.

2 - I know what I said, thankyou very much.

3 - I would absolutely adore an actual example of misinformation and needless aggravation, fact twisting or truth twisting. From GN. I'd also absolutely love to know exactly what narrow agenda is being served by any examples of such you can point me towards. Or rather, I should say - I would love to know how that "agenda" is unjustifiable or morally bankrupt, as you seem to be implying.

 

[Vayra86]

I think you struggle with the word "critically". It does not mean to baselessly harp on a products flaws. It means to look at all aspects of a thing and take account of them when forming an opinion.

Again, the purpose of a review to the consumer, is to provide them with the information they need, to be able to make a purchasing decision that addresses their particular needs. I can certainly review, say, a Crosshair VI, and come away convinced that that the board is an excellent board. But I would not be writing a critically sound review of that product if I didn't address, for the benefit of my audience, the fact it is also a very expensive motherboard that most consumers do not need. I would also be doing a disservice to my audience if I were not able to identify areas of the board that were exceptionally good in the price class, and areas of the board that were sub-par. Even if my review were to be greatly positive, no product is perfect and those flaws should be appraised.

Conversely, if I reviewed either of the ASUS PRIME motherboards based on the A320 chipset, I would not be writing an appropriately critical review if I did not judge it by appropriate metrics - In this case, price, robustness of build and design, and the inclusion of appropriately desirable features rather than features of no real value to the kind of consumer that buys an A320 board - For example, I would be critical of an A320 board that had a 10 phase VRM, as it would be cost in the product that doesn't pass on an appropriate benefit to the consumer when the board is not capable of overclocking. Despite the feature being, in theory, a good thing, it is not appropriate for that product or class of product - Conversely, the "downgrade" of the ASUS A320M-A which has a 6 phase VRM, is an appropriate and laudable thing in that price class, presuming the cost has been reduced in that area in order to provide a greater benefit elsewhere.

It is very true that both of these products are suitable for their intended audiences, however a review *must address their flaws and suitability* to be worthwhile. Simply working on the basis that "most boards are suitable" is making a mockery of any reviewer's assumed purpose - to help the consumer.

We're saying the same thing here, just wording it differently I think. The examples you give are being put to practice for decades now, always have been, so I do not see the problems here. You have to understand though that there is also a target audience for each reviewer and even each class of board - and reviewers seek to best serve that target audience. Because let's face it, that Crosshair example? Nobody needs that for ANY use case except maybe LN2 and extreme cooling OCs. Just like how people don't need a car that can shoot to 0-100 km/h in a few seconds, its literally useless in most situations yet people still want it. I have said this before and I will say it again: the problem is with the receivers not the senders. People need to learn to read, analyze data objectively and base their conclusions on that - again, all you need for that is benchmarks and a good testing methodology and in that GN is doing nothing special at all. And most if not virtually all serious reviewers do put things in perspective, but most people just didn't read it. The format matters, and the video format cán be an advantage but it really isn't because its too much like TV, where those who scream loudest get attention.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

It was always marketable to critically review products, don't act like GN figured out some magical way of doing that. Written reviews have done this for quite some time now, including TPU. The reality is, most of the time, products are quite fine and generally, reviews are insanely boring. Motherboards for example. You can do a roundup and conclude 95% will provide precisely the same performance, in a price range from lower midrange all the way up to enthusiast level. Look at the Z370 roundup on Anandtech, its a good example of that, and it represents the real world where most parts are OEM based.

The kicker is, its marketable to critically review products EVEN without making companies hate your guts. The reason 'tubers get removed from the free stuff lists is because of tone of voice and feeding the hype or hate trains. That is also what @cadaveca was referring to with his example of ASUS and working with them on improving stuff. The real progress doesn't happen in the open playground but in constructive dialogue, well outside the range of sweaty keyboard heroes spamming comments under a video.

What you are saying is all those reviews that show critical flaws yet gave the reviewed product high even raving marks is ok to do. You can clearly see where a sponsored review is going to give a product a good showing before even watching or reading it. The reviewer has already agreed to giving a good review by accepting any kind of gain, more or otherwise, which makes the review bias and IMHO not worth a grain of salt.

 

[GlacierNine]

We're saying the same thing here, just wording it differently I think. The examples you give are being put to practice for decades now, always have been, so I do not see the problems here. You have to understand though that there is also a target audience for each reviewer and even each class of board - and reviewers seek to best serve that target audience. Because let's face it, that Crosshair example? Nobody needs that for ANY use case except maybe LN2 and extreme cooling OCs. Just like how people don't need a car that can shoot to 0-100 km/h in a few seconds, its literally useless in most situations yet people still want it. I have said this before and I will say it again: the problem is with the receivers not the senders. People need to learn to read, analyze data objectively and base their conclusions on that - again, all you need for that is benchmarks. And most if not virtually all serious reviewers do put things in perspective, but most people just didn't read it.

I fundamentally disagree with the bolded statement here.

I keep saying this, over and over - the purpose of reviews is to serve the consumer, not the manufacturers.

It is possible to read a substandard review and read between the lines to determine the flaws and weaknesses of a product, but if a consumer must do that in order to be informed, then the reviewer has either failed in their purpose or has abandoned it intentionally.

It's also somewhat bizarre that, given my harping on about case reviews, you ultimately mention and rely on benchmarks for the purposes of your point, given that TPU's case reviews feature absolutely no benchmarking and I have consistently praised GN in this thread and others, for doing any benchmarking of cases in a marketplace where most publications seem unwilling to measure any objective element of performance for this class of product.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

We're saying the same thing here, just wording it differently I think. The examples you give are being put to practice for decades now, always have been, so I do not see the problems here. You have to understand though that there is also a target audience for each reviewer and even each class of board - and reviewers seek to best serve that target audience. Because let's face it, that Crosshair example? Nobody needs that for ANY use case except maybe LN2 and extreme cooling OCs. Just like how people don't need a car that can shoot to 0-100 km/h in a few seconds, its literally useless in most situations yet people still want it. I have said this before and I will say it again: the problem is with the receivers not the senders. People need to learn to read, analyze data objectively and base their conclusions on that - again, all you need for that is benchmarks and a good testing methodology and in that GN is doing nothing special at all. And most if not virtually all serious reviewers do put things in perspective, but most people just didn't read it. The format matters, and the video format cán be an advantage but it really isn't because its too much like TV, where those who scream loudest get attention.

This should NOT be the reviewers job to target an audience. A reviewer should review without bias, like thats actually gonna happen...

 

[Vayra86]

What you are saying is all those reviews that show critical flaws yet gave the reviewed product high even raving marks is ok to do. You can clearly see where a sponsored review is going to give a product a good showing before even watching or reading it. The reviewer has already agreed to giving a good review by accepting any kind of gain, more or otherwise, which makes the review bias and IMHO not worth a grain of salt.

No what I'm saying is people need to read the body text and not the conclusion plus a number. Which the vast majority evidently fails to do. The world of today is filled to the brim with examples of that.

Even a flawed product can be great in many ways. If the flaw doesn't affect your use case, for example. Many product 'flaws' are tradeoffs. Either in cost, or in advantages in other areas, which can also be an aesthetic aspect. Its up to the reader (receiver!) to decide how important each pro and con really is.

This should NOT be the reviewers job to target an audience. A reviewer should review without bias, like thats actually gonna happen...

I disagree. As long as manufacturers have target markets and quality/premium feel is valued by different types of customers, reviewers need to adapt to that. As with all forms of communication, it needs to be suited to the moment and subject matter. A good example is game reviews and the endless discussion on ratings on games. A casual gamer has a completely different frame of reference than I would have, with ~20 years of experience on many platforms and broad knowledge of concepts and mechanics.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I would absolutely adore an actual example of misinformation and needless aggravation, fact twisting or truth twisting. From GN. I'd also absolutely love to know exactly what narrow agenda is being served by any examples of such you can point me towards. Or rather, I should say - I would love to know how that "agenda" is unjustifiable or morally bankrupt, as you seem to be implying.

I could do that, but why? The only one arguing the point in favor of GN is you. Not worth my time to prove. Even if I did, you would rationalize and marginalize everything I say like you've been doing to everyone else. So no thank you. Seems to me like something else is going on here. I have a theory; GlacierNine=GamersNexus. It would explain a lot here.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

No what I'm saying is people need to read the body text and not the conclusion plus a number. Which the vast majority evidently fails to do. The world of today is filled to the brim with examples of that.

I agree the world is full of gullible people. Here is a fine example; Back in the day of MaximumPC magazine ( with free discs!), a lot of associates concluded that thier reviews were always 100% accurate so eventually just skipped everything and went right to the end and just read the conclusions and bought hardware based of those ratings. They eventually stopped doing things that way. #hardknocks

I could do that, but why? The only one arguing the point in favor of GN is you. Not worth my time to prove. Even if I did, you would rationalize and marginalize everything I say like you've been doing to everyone else. So no thank you. Seems to me like something else is going on here. I have a theory; GlacierNine=GamersNexus. It would explain a lot here.

I dont agree with you on some points, but yet agree with @GlacierNine on many of his in this thread, does that make me a GamersNecus employee.

Remember if you are pointing phingers as someone, 3 are pointing back at you.

 

[GlacierNine]

I could do that, but why? The only one arguing the point in favor of GN is you. Not worth my time to prove. Even if I did, you would rationalize and marginalize everything I say like you've been doing to everyone else. So no thank you. Seems to me like something else is going on here. I have a theory; GlacierNine=GamersNexus. It would explain a lot here.

So in other words, you have no intention of making a cogent point or an argument worth anyone's time, and instead you'd rather advance unfounded conspiracy theories that wouldn't even change the substance of this debate even if they were true.

For the sake of making a clear statement about it - No, I have absolutely no affiliation with GN or any other tech review site. I don't even work in the tech sector. I have no horse in this race besides the one running for the benefit of consumers.

I could of course advance the opposite conspiracy theory of you - While I have provided to the best of my ability, reasoned argument for why I believe GN really does have consumers interests at heart, you have attacked them repeatedly without substance or evidence. I would not be unjustified in questioning whether your interests lie with an involved party in this discussion - Although, of course, it would be baseless of me to accuse you of that, and besides which it would only form a distraction from the actual discussion that is ongoing.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I disagree. As long as manufacturers have target markets and quality/premium feel is valued by different types of customers, reviewers need to adapt to that. As with all forms of communication, it needs to be suited to the moment and subject matter. A good example is game reviews and the endless discussion on ratings on games. A casual gamer has a completely different frame of reference than I would have, with ~20 years of experience on many platforms and broad knowledge of concepts and mechanics.

Yes manufacturers have target markets but its still not the job of the reviewer to do that for them. A good reviewer would focus on doing an accurate and honestly unbiased review, not play nurse-maid to manufacturers wishes. Trust me when I say I dont watch LinusTech for the reviews.

I think game reviews are whole other class of ... let leave that for another thread sometime.

 

[Vayra86]

I fundamentally disagree with the bolded statement here.

I keep saying this, over and over - the purpose of reviews is to serve the consumer, not the manufacturers.

It is possible to read a substandard review and read between the lines to determine the flaws and weaknesses of a product, but if a consumer must do that in order to be informed, then the reviewer has either failed in their purpose or has abandoned it intentionally.

It's also somewhat bizarre that, given my harping on about case reviews, you ultimately mention and rely on benchmarks for the purposes of your point, given that TPU's case reviews feature absolutely no benchmarking and I have consistently praised GN in this thread and others, for doing any benchmarking of cases in a marketplace where most publications seem unwilling to measure any objective element of performance for this class of product.

You've never seen me saying I go to TPU for my case reviews though. But for hardware components such as GPU, motherboards, yes, I do. There are many more written reviews that do case reviews very well and include tons of data. Much more so than GN does too - that doesn't make their reviews bad, and you won't see me saying that either - but it certainly isn't new or special like you make it sound. Its not a unicorn. Rather, GN is possibly closest to a written review's quality level in a broad sense. But still falls short of it most of the time, simply due to the format and its position in between the screaming nerds like Linus.

If GN wants my vote, what they need to do is provide a detailed written review and tone it down on the screaming headlines. Until then its same shit different name to me.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

***

It's also somewhat bizarre that, given my harping on about case reviews, you ultimately mention and rely on benchmarks for the purposes of your point, given that TPU's case reviews feature absolutely no benchmarking and I have consistently praised GN in this thread and others, for doing any benchmarking of cases in a marketplace where most publications seem unwilling to measure any objective element of performance for this class of product.

When it comes to cases, what is there really to benchmark? How do you bench a case with water cooling? I can see Airflow being an issue like some Fractal designs and others. Do you benchmark PSU placement? I mean you are talking about actual benchmarking vs a feature review not just some guys opinion of this or that case feature?

I look for features and airflow path restrictions, airflow itself doesnt matter if you can do simple modding.

How about benchmarking how deep a case can indent the carpeting in, say 1 months time? or even how much dust you can collect vs your vacuum cleaner?

You've never seen me saying I go to TPU for my case reviews though. But for hardware components such as GPU, motherboards, yes, I do. There are many more written reviews that do case reviews very well. Much more so than GN does too - that doesn't make their reviews bad, and you won't see me saying that either - but it certainly isn't new or special like you make it sound. Its not a unicorn. Rather, GN is possibly closest to a written review's quality level in a broad sense. But still falls short of it most of the time, simply due to the format and its position in between the screaming nerds like Linus.

If GN wants my vote, what they need to do is provide a detailed written review and tone it down on the screaming headlines. Until then its same shit different name to me.

The do more in video than written. The written part is usually a summary of whats in the video.

 

[GlacierNine]

When it comes to cases, what is there really to benchmark? How do you bench a case with water cooling? I can see Airflow being an issue like some Fractal designs and others. Do you benchmark PSU placement? I mean you are talking about actual benchmarking vs a feature review not just some guys opinion of this or that case feature?

I look for features and airflow path restrictions, airflow itself doesnt matter if you can do simple modding.

How about benchmarking how deep a case can indent the carpeting in, say 1 months time? or even how much dust you can collect vs your vacuum cleaner?

You already seem familiar with GN's testing methodology, so I'll presume you're asking for a theoretical ideal case testing methodology, where appropriate resources to achieve it are not a concern. I'll spoiler this because it turned into a somewhat mammoth post as I expanded on it and this thread has already veered well off course as is.

Spoiler: Pipedream Testing Methodology

In that case, I would say the ideal testing methodology for a case is to have a quiet, temperature controlled room - Ideally one of a similar standard to say, a studio control room - We're not talking anoechoic chamber, as no system other than a completely passive one would require a noise floor that low, but we are talking about something where the room is suspended to reduce noise, appropriately sound dampened and where there is effective diffusion in place to ensure minimal resonance or unexpected audio phenomena. The room should be a minimum of 10mx10m, so that sound can propagate appropriately and not interfere with measurements.

The noise floor should be kept as low as possible without sacrificing the temperature control aspect.

At the base level, a consistent, high-heat-output system should be installed in the case (Though I'm sure some elaborate test rig could be devised that would replace an actual system, with a controlled synthetic heat output, to eliminate more variance), and the case would be run with it's fans at their lowest operating speed until the system is completely heat-soaked (Which I would define as seeing the system temperatures deviate by no more than 2C over a 10 minute period)

After this the temperature would be measured, and each natural step in fan speed would be tested for a further 20 minutes and the resultant temperatures measured logged and plotted at 1 second intervals. At max fan speed the test would continue to run for as long as necessary, until the temperatures measured deviated by no more than 2C over a 10 minute period, representing the maximal heat soak of the case at full fan speed with the included fans.

Note that by natural steps in fan speed, I mean EITHER, each speed setting on a manual fan controller if the case comes with one, or if the case uses PWM fans, setting the PWM to the minimum amount, and then increasing to 100% over five evenly spaced steps. (So for a 50-100% duty cycle, that'd be 50%, 62.5%, 75%, 87.5%, and 100%)

This sequence would be repeated 3 times, allowing the system to return to ambient between each to provide more reliable test data.

Secondly, the stock fans in the case would be replaced with a set of same-sized reference fans, with known characteristics - all of these fans would be airflow optimised designs, not static pressure optimised. The case would then be re-tested with these to provide a picture of how the case performs thermally as a case, versus as a product entirely.

Thirdly, the case would be tested a final time with the aforementioned reference fans, but with every fan position filled in the case in a standard front-bottom to rear-top airflow layout. This would provide a picture of the theoretical maximum performance of the case in it's stock format.

I did ponder also using an ATX standard (150x86x140mm) PSU, but I will admit this is somewhat unrealistic, as a great number of PSUs in 2018 are FAR deeper than 140mm, including the majority of budget units.

Noise would also be logged throughout at 1s intervals using 5 calibrated microphones - each placed 1m away from a panel on the case, dead center, and 45 degrees off-axis.

For non-noise and temperature benchmarking of a case, I don't have any explicit recommendations - yet. However I do think you could institute mandatory functional testing, for example removing and replacing all screws in a case one at a time in order to check for malformed threads or excessive installation torque. This would be recorded as a simple percentage (Number of screws with issues/Number of screws total*100), with no further comment.

It would also be relatively quick to use a pair of calipers or dividers to quickly check fan hole spacing for compatibility, to measure case clearance between components and fan mounts, to keep a radiator with fittings on hand to test in-situ the practical clearance of say, a top radiator mount. Lots of similar quick yes/no tests that could be put on a checklist and run through to provide objective, fact based observations of certain kinds of hardware compatibility.


This is all, of course, extremely excessive for most people's purposes, and doubtless too expensive to implement in terms of time, wages, material costs, etc. But this is what an ideal at least starts to look like in my head, and most of the industry not only does none of this, but doesn't even attempt to do any of this, and that's really something of a shame. Even simply recording temperatures under load once, with your test system after 20 minutes, would be massively better than we see from most case reviews.

 

[cadaveca]

You already seem familiar with GN's testing methodology, so I'll presume you're asking for a theoretical ideal case testing methodology, where appropriate resources to achieve it are not a concern. I'll spoiler this because it turned into a somewhat mammoth post as I expanded on it and this thread has already veered well off course as is.

OK, but I think you're being highly critical of certain things, while not being critical of others.

Let me give you an example to illustrate a point:

I gave the ASRock X370 Taichi a perfect 10/10 score. It might be the most successful board for that platform because I did. Yet in posting that review, and giving that board that score, I completely wiped out any chance at getting a single other board for that platform from any other brand... there was no point in them bothering when their products obviously were going to get a lesser score... And that review was ready for the day the platform launched to all of you guys.

I cut myself off from a lot of samples and money for doing reviews by posting that review with that score. I took a big risk in doing that, at a personal financial loss.


This is a way of being critical of all other products, without ever having addressed them directly. I took a loss to make that point to board makers that I would find any added features superfluous, and a problem. And I did it, without being negative about all those other products, too. It also made it so now, if I want a board sample, I need to ask for it. The board makers aren't just going to send me every board they make like they used to... but they'll gladly send me exactly what I ask for. Sometimes being critical of an product directly actually has the opposite effect of what you might be after.

However, many may look at that review, have had a bad experience with that board, and say I'm playing favorites. That really could not be further from the truth.

There are many ways to get the success you are after. In business, finding out what works, and what doesn't, and what just leaves things just as they were, usually leads to many of the issues that are complained about by the video in the OP, but again, I find it hard to blame the company as a whole, because there are 1000's of people that work for NVidia, and I can guarantee that not all of them think like that video wants you to believe. I also think there are better ways to approach situations like this. I have a review waiting to be posted... I hope it works out the way I intended.

 

[GlacierNine]

OK, I see your reasoning and I cede that in the scope of your post, it makes a kind of sense. I could still very much take issue with it, so by no means presume I am ceding the entire point, but I really want to bring this discussion back to some sort of more fundamental ground rather than get bogged down in individual events.

So, taking your particular explanation as read, I am left with one particular observation -

I have spent a great portion of this thread arguing that the first and primary purpose of a review is to serve the consumer. I even went so far as to say that "It is possible to read a substandard review and read between the lines to determine the flaws and weaknesses of a product, but if a consumer must do that in order to be informed, then the reviewer has either failed in their purpose or has abandoned it intentionally. "

And yet you have just posted an explanation that doesn't actually mention a single consumer-centric talking point. Not one.

I can certainly see that yes, you have undertaken an action that undermines to a certain extent the willingness of board makers to sample you, and I suppose I'll take at face value your claim that you did this to send a clear message to the industry.

But to consumers, the people who I have contended a review's primary purpose is to serve, this action was invisible. It was a rare figure, but considering the average score of a motherboard review on TPU is 9.1 (Yes, I did the math, 9.104032 to be exact), and the preceding review a 9.2, I contend that a consumer would very much have had to "read between the lines" as I mentioned before, to glean significant meaning from the disparity between that review, and most any other on TPU.

This entire thread, and all of the discussions that have grown out of it, have been focused massively on whether the industry is wont to take advantage of consumers and abuse their trust - from reviewers to youtubers to the companies themselves, this has been the single primary criticism of everyone involved.

I am amazed and surprised that despite the fact you're clearly no idiot, you have managed to respond to that discussion without actually managing to address, how your actions are in the interests of the consumers.

 

[dorsetknob]

I have spent a great portion of this thread arguing that the first and primary purpose of a review is to serve the consumer.

Actually your wrong
the first and primary purpose of a review " is to Offer an Opinion"

 

[cadaveca]

I am amazed and surprised that despite the fact you're clearly no idiot, you have managed to respond to that discussion without actually managing to address, how your actions are in the interests of the consumers.

That's because I know that no matter what I do, I cannot meet the needs of everyone, all the time. Therein lay the crux of the issue; there needs to be an examination into the actual intent businesses have when making moves that seemingly undermine consumer's confidence, rather than an all-out accusation of malintent.

And actually, the very first example I gave, where in every review I report whether a board is using default Turbo clocks, or running a boost profile, therein deceiving the end user as to actual performance, shows my direct actions in the benefit of all consumers, and honesty from the company. And guess what... they listened and changed things This is something nobody else was talking about. Yet again, it's about your approach that sees results or failure.

I could give numerous other examples, but to what end? I'm not here to talk abut myself really, but to illustrate my point that the only thing I can honestly draw from is my own experiences, because I do know the full details of what happened. Like, why don't you give us examples of how what YOU are doing is in the best interest of consumers? I don't think posting this thread actually does that... in fact, quite the opposite. You can infer all you like in a one-sided conversation, but without approaching the entity in question and seeing their response, any conclusions drawn from a video such as this can only be done in bias.

Actually your wrong
the first and primary purpose of a review " is to Offer an Opinion"

Right, and that opinion doesn't have to be accurate in order for the content to be called a "review". It could be a parody. We kinda strive here to base our opinion on facts, and those facts are generally shown by benchmarks, but what if a brand is cheating?

How come, for all those years, ASUS was cheating at benchmarks (as were others, but that's besides the point), and I was the first to say something? There's something to be said about everyone else missing this, and simply saying that a board performs better because it's better designed, when really, it's some BIOS trickery... There's very good reason I removed most benchmarks from my reviews... again, it's in the consumer's best interests, removing a place where brands were cheating, and not even giving them the opportunity to try...

 

[Vayra86]

for the consumer

The problem with your stance is the idea that 'the consumer' is a single entity with one, singular desire. This is not the case. As I tried to point out with the analogy of game reviews and reviewers. You can clearly see a difference in how experienced a reviewer is, in style of writing but also in the things he does or does not pick up on in the game and even around it. If I put forward some arguments as to why a game still in production is going to be absolute crap, many people stare in disbelief - only to get my point proven after it is released and they fell for it, and got to experience it themselves. A recent example of that is Destiny 2 (and Destiny prior to that). I receive flak for those statements pre-launch, and post launch all I have to do is reiterate what was said earlier, and get nods of approval (ironically, sometimes from the very same people). At the same time there is a (much less experienced) group of younger gamers that doesn't even understand that concept today. Nor would they understand it if I pointed it out. Different audience.

In the same vein, this is true for hardware reviews. Many Youtube reviews get about as far as tossing a crapload of benchmarks your way, but then fail to draw the right conclusions about those benchmarks, and steer the viewer away from the truth. A good example of that is how to gauge CPU performance in games. Many reviewers put twenty shooters in their results (plus, perhaps the obligatory Ashes bench) and conclude all is fine. But they forget a vast group of consumers who don't ever play shooters but prefer, for example, (grand) strategy, heavily modded games, and other CPU heavy endeavours. Its gaming, yes. But it requires a completely different approach from the reviewer. And most Youtube reviewers fail miserably doing that. Call it lack of experience, or lack of common sense, but to me those reviews are worth exactly nothing. Or another TPU-based example: the inclusion of 720p benchmarks in CPU tests. Even *with* a specific explanation as to why those results are included its not enough to silence the idiots who persist its not 'a real world scenario' and thus should not be tested. They want their CPU benches at 1440p 'because thats the monitor they have'. Different audience, different level of understanding of hardware performance. They don't want to analyze data, they want the analysis handed on a silver platter.

Another aspect of reviewing is how you choose to approach whatever you'd pick up on as a reviewer. And for that I will use another analogy: the angry customer that calls the service rep versus the calm customer calling the same service rep with the exact same problem. Its an easy question, but who do you think will get the best service here? And who do you think comes across as credible?

Its those personal qualities that set one review apart from the others and give credibility to all the data provided. Not the five lines of conclusion and the rating of 1-10. And also not the benchmarks on their own. Everyone can run some tests. The strength lies in drawing the right conclusions and the reality is that most correct conclusions are nuanced and drown in a sea of screaming 'tubers. And that harms the review more than anything else across the whole community - it harms faith in reviewers in a broad sense. Case in point: this thread, where we are pointing fingers at presumably sponsored reviewers. Thát is why I have a great aversion to the showbiz approach of a Youtuber.

If you have a consumer centric approach, this is probably the one to use - the right tone of voice at the right time, to the right audience. Not the one where all reviews approach things with no regard for their target audience, making everything stale and most likely misplaced for its readers or viewers. The Taichi review that was talked about earlier - its clearly written not for Joe Average, but for Joe Enthusiast. Mr Average has no use for this board whatsoever and pays twice as much as he could or should. Its not in 'Joe Average's' interest at all to buy that board; does that make it an anti-consumer review?

The do more in video than written. The written part is usually a summary of whats in the video.

If I recall correctly, back in the day GamerNexus' written reviews always struck me as shallow, incomplete, and lazy. Perhaps that set the tone for me... maybe I'll give GN another 'unbiased' look. He's at the very least one of the least annoying tubers to listen to.

 

[lexluthermiester]

So in other words, you have no intention of making a cogent point or an argument worth anyone's time

No. Not in this thread anyway. While others are, it seems clear that the dead horse is well and truly beaten..

 

[moproblems99]

I have to admit, I am amazed by all the experts here at TPU. How could someone go anywhere else?

 

[Space Lynx]

It was always marketable to critically review products, don't act like GN figured out some magical way of doing that. Written reviews have done this for quite some time now, including TPU. The reality is, most of the time, products are quite fine and generally, reviews are insanely boring. Motherboards for example. You can do a roundup and conclude 95% will provide precisely the same performance, in a price range from lower midrange all the way up to enthusiast level. Look at the Z370 roundup on Anandtech, its a good example of that, and it represents the real world where most parts are OEM based.

The kicker is, its marketable to critically review products EVEN without making companies hate your guts. The reason 'tubers get removed from the free stuff lists is because of tone of voice and feeding the hype or hate trains. That is also what @cadaveca was referring to with his example of ASUS and working with them on improving stuff. The real progress doesn't happen in the open playground but in constructive dialogue, well outside the range of sweaty keyboard heroes spamming comments under a video.

Disagree with this... tweaktown review of motherboards shows thermals of VRM cooling and that is how I base my purchase it, and oddly enough the Z370 motherboards across all brands varies greatly, but tweaktown found that MSI used new vrm's and temps were decent even on the budget $120 MSI Z370 boards, so that is what I went with based on those reviews. Gigabyte boards outside of Ultra 7 (or w.e its called) all had like 20 + celsius warmer temps on VRM's across all price ranges compared to the budget MSI Tomahawk which was $120 at the time.

I have to admit, I am amazed by all the experts here at TPU. How could someone go anywhere else?

for motherboard reviews, nothing beats Tweaktown.

for power supply reviews, check out johnny guru, and read the hot testing section, TPU doesn't offer this level of detail, its very interesting to me to read about it just for fun, so those two parts I go elsewhere, everything else TPU is fine for me

 

[Nuckles56]

Disagree with this... tweaktown review of motherboards shows thermals of VRM cooling and that is how I base my purchase it, and oddly enough the Z370 motherboards across all brands varies greatly, but tweaktown found that MSI used new vrm's and temps were decent even on the budget $120 MSI Z370 boards, so that is what I went with based on those reviews. Gigabyte boards outside of Ultra 7 (or w.e its called) all had like 20 + celsius warmer temps on VRM's across all price ranges compared to the budget MSI Tomahawk which was $120 at the time.



for motherboard reviews, nothing beats Tweaktown.

for power supply reviews, check out johnny guru, and read the hot testing section, TPU doesn't offer this level of detail, its very interesting to me to read about it just for fun, so those two parts I go elsewhere, everything else TPU is fine for me

I really have to disagree with you on PSU testing, Aris does way more thorough testing here for TPU/ Tom's than OW does for JonnyGuru, Aris does way more testing, and covers 100% of the possible loading options for a PSU

 

[Space Lynx]

I really have to disagree with you on PSU testing, Aris does way more thorough testing here for TPU/ Tom's than OW does for JonnyGuru, Aris does way more testing, and covers 100% of the possible loading options for a PSU

Yeah but I like the disassembly and hot testing sections, I don't think they do that on TPU, I admit disassembly is kind of unnecessary, I just think it is neat to look inside.