Author Topic: Best hardware review sites? (Read 753 times)

Pei · « **on:** April 28, 2003, 10:16:11 PM »

Tom's seems to gone out of favour, any other good ones?

Tarmac · « **Reply #1 on:** April 28, 2003, 10:44:58 PM »

http://www.anandtech.com/

Used it and Tom's when researching stuff for my computer.

Exile · « **Reply #2 on:** April 29, 2003, 12:20:55 AM »

HardOCP is pretty good as well.

bloom25 · « **Reply #3 on:** April 29, 2003, 12:25:28 AM »

I can't say I care much for Tom's anymore. They tend to be the type of review site to run 5 tests and declare one piece of hardware "dominates" another. I'm sure the benchmarked data is accurate, but the tests they run on CPUs in particular are poor choices. They run a mix of tests where the tests are highly optimized for AMD and the next highly optimized for Intel. These types of tests don't tell you anything. I still look at Tom's, as occasionally they write a decent enough article, but there are better sites out there. The big problem I have is that I think Tom's gives better reviews to their sponsors. I can think of a few motherboards which were piles of garbage that got awards on Toms. (Gigabyte boards somehow get great reviews - I personally have had problems with all 3 systems I built in the past with their boards.)

Anandtech is a very good review site (http://www.anandtech.com). They tend to be very fair in testing. They run a mix of real life and synthetic benchmarks. Some of these are optimized for one CPU or another, but at least it's not just 5 tests and a bad conclusion. Anand himself is a pretty bright guy as well and his conclusions are usually on the money IMO.

Aces Hardware (http://www.aceshardware) is another good site, but it is written for a slightly more knowledgable audience than AT or Tom's. The articles they have are generally very insightful and the benchmarks they run (usually a lot of them) are very fair and balanced and IMO help you to understand the performance of what they are working on. The authors on this page are the most tech savvy of any major review site I regularly visit.

Hard OCP (http://www.hardocp.com) has reviews and news. Their reviews are typically well written, but to be honest I think they are biased toward AMD CPUs a little bit. (Not to the point of dishonesty though. It just seems like they pick gaming benchmarks where AMD CPUs generally beat out their P4 equivilants.) HardOCP is definately geared toward the hardware enthusiast.

Ars Technica rarely does reviews, but when they do they are the most technical I've yet seen. (http://www.arstechnica.com) They have a good forum and keep up on tech news that often doesn't get noticed by other sites.

Other reviews sites I can think of are: http://www.sharkyextreme.com, http://www.amdzone.com (possibly biased

), tecchannel.de (I can't remember the exact address), and extremetech. There are many others as well.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #4 on:** April 29, 2003, 06:57:26 AM »

It is a grab bag.

As bloom25 pointed out, there is no one site you can really use to get consistent results from. It is best to use several sites.

One day one site does a whiz bang job, the next day they do a lousy job.

Take a look at HardOCP's 9800Pro vs GF FX. It's one of the few sites that went out of the way to set the cards image quality to match before benchmarking them. This makes for a truer comparison than what most sites do these days.
But HardOCP is rather biased towards AMD and it shows.

bloom25 lists some good sites and if you have time it is worth looking at all of them when doing comparisons for the purpose of purchasing products.

qts · « **Reply #5 on:** April 30, 2003, 05:07:17 PM »

I've found that you need to look at the reviewer, not just the site. Too many in my experience have turned out to be college kids or even younger with a significant lack of experience. For example, with graphics cards, how often and how much does 2D performance get mentioned? To continue the example, the Radeons dominate the GeForce cards in 3D, but the Radeon 9700 Pro doesn't do 1600x1200x32@100Hz whereas the Gf4200 does. For those interested in keeping their eyes healthy, this is important. Yes, I know about 75 Hz being considered flicker-free, but for some of us when viewed for an extended period, 75 Hz - even 85 Hz - still strains the eye. In business in the UK, Health & Safety is a legal requirement.

It is also necessary to beware marketting. Again, younger and newer reviewers are more prone to be affected. Witness the treatment of 3dfx and FSAA until Nvidia came out with FSAA. For a more modern example, look at the Opteron vs P4 comparisons. How many have tested with > 4 GB RAM?

Pei · « **Reply #6 on:** April 30, 2003, 06:30:03 PM »

thanks

Skuzzy · « **Reply #7 on:** May 01, 2003, 07:04:38 AM »

qts, what monitor do you have that will support 100Hz at 1600x1200? The professional series of monitors I can find will only support up to 88Hz at that resolution.

qts · « **Reply #8 on:** May 01, 2003, 02:36:40 PM »

Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510. It's a 22" CRT. My eyes are important to me.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #9 on:** May 01, 2003, 02:48:16 PM »

I'll have to check it out. I have only one eye that works, so it is important to me as well.

Never heard of that brand before. Oh,..I would go with the 9700Pro anyways, simply due to the lack of dot crawl I see on NVidia cards. Pixel sharpness is also important.

Sparks · « **Reply #10 on:** May 01, 2003, 03:22:22 PM »

Just out of interest checked it out myself Skuzzy.

Site is

http://www.iiyama.com/web2002/top.htm

Think the 510 has been replaced by the VM pro 514. Shows a spec of 1800 X 1440 @ 92hz and recommended 1600 X 1200 @ 100hz.

Price in UK was nearly 600 pounds

don't know about states.

Sparks

EDIT - just checked stateside price - $600 - 1/3 less than us

Skuzzy · « **Reply #11 on:** May 01, 2003, 04:29:30 PM »

That is some impressive specifications. I think I know what to get for my birthday now.

Thanks guys!

mjolnir · « **Reply #12 on:** May 02, 2003, 07:41:49 AM »

Here you go Skuzzy, $550 plus S&H.

http://www.neutronexpress.com/index.cfm?t=pif&id=214868

Reschke · « **Reply #13 on:** May 18, 2003, 11:18:33 AM »

Same Link new price

Quote

22 IN Vision Master Pro 514 HM204DT 0.24AG 2048X1536 TrueFlat CRT Monitor

Manufacturer IIYAMA
Mfg. Part # HM204DT
ITEM# 214868
Unit Price $593.97
Availability In Stock

Free shipping if you do the 5-8 day route also.

minus · « **Reply #14 on:** May 18, 2003, 04:28:58 PM »

wheaaa , this is not just ,:mad: i payed for my HM204 DT a 785 Euro damit