Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Lephturn on July 15, 2002, 12:22:32 PM
-
Tom's reviews are mostly crap, and have been for quite some time IMO. I still check the site once in a while, but honestly I take anything on that site with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila. It's been so long I forget what it was that allowed me to come to that realization.
When I want the real deal I go to http://www.hardocp.com and http://www.anandtech.com. Anand has had the best video card roundups lately too, including CPU scaling graphs for all the different cards. Very good info.
-
D'oh, how did I manage that little gem?
This was supposed to be a reply in a different thread. Sorry.
-
LOL
I agree completely. Especially after this Giga-Mmmmppphh! Ow ow, the pain :D
-
You AMD guyz still pissed eh? hehehe.
I like Tom's. They've always been accurate with the technical details. His opinions can sure be a hard pill to swallow though, depending on the current mood.
I didn't like it when he started preaching the praises of AMD (over-and over-and over- etc etc etc)... but I still use (and used) his motherboard/CPU reviews, comparisons and benchmarks as a trusted source. Hasn't steered me wrong yet.
-
AMD guys still pissed at what? Not sure what you are referring to. Both AMD and Intel have strengths and weaknesses in there chips. I like both, one or the other depending on the situation.
I'm not an AMD "guy", though I use an AMD chip at the moment in my gaming box. My server box still runs a BP6 with dual Celery 366a running at 400. I'll purchase whatever seems to be the best bang for the buck. Right now that's AMD, at least here in Canada. The price differences are much greater here than in the US.
The reason I stopped reading Tom's is twofold. First, he uses benchmarks I don't give a crap about much of the time. Synthetic benchmarks suck. Second, they often draw silly conclusions from the data. For example, a mainboard round-up where one board bests the other by less than 2% turns into one "totally crushing" the other. Yeah right. I didn't and don't own either of those boards, but the fact that I have to look at the article and ignore everything but the data. I don't need to do that, there are better sites out there that draw reasonable conclusions form the data.
-
Ahh heck, you don't gotta explain anything to me. Just that your post came right in the middle of ALLOT of badmouthing of Tom's thats going on.... led me astray (and I missed the part where you said you were meaning to reply to another post). Coincidence I guess.
I find the situation really funny myself. Ya got AMD freaks all over the place all pissed off at THW because (IMO) he said it "like it is" from his standpoint. And then ya got all the Intel freaks all lovey-dovey with THW for the same thing. The funny part is, a Year ago (and at least the previous year at least) the "view" at THW was exactly the opposite of what it is now. The only difference is... THW wasn't catching such a load of BS.
-
Tumor,
I'm not an "AMD" guy either....like Bloom, I use whatever suits the role. I have several Dual Pentium servers hosting websites, for example.
But I heeded the advice of "Tom" and bought based on their endorsements. The Giga (OUCH! Pain!) just outright sucked, and its not that I'm the one guy out of thousands to have such an issue. As Bloom pointed out, lots of folks are having trouble with this brand/model and has Tom updated his article based on that new data? Nope.
Will I still read Tom's? Sure. But based on what happened to me, and their lack of updating their review based on the woes that are going on, I'll certainly think twice before buying based solely on their grand reviews. The credibility is gone.
-
Have you guys ever read Sharky Extreme's site? They do decent reviews on hardware, etc also. They are geared more for the gaming crowd, so be prepared for a lot of stuff on overclocking, etc as well as general reviews. To date, any of their advice I have taken has been spot on. Either way, you might want to give it a try.
http://www.sharkyextreme.com
-
...and Sharkey's monthly high and low end gaming machine recommendations picked part by part are quite useful.
F.
-
Originally posted by LePaul
Tumor,
But I heeded the advice of "Tom" and bought based on their endorsements. The Giga (OUCH! Pain!) just outright sucked, and its not that I'm the one guy out of thousands to have such an issue. As Bloom pointed out, lots of folks are having trouble with this brand/model and has Tom updated his article based on that new data? Nope.
What is the Giga you keep referring to?
-
Originally posted by AKWarp
Have you guys ever read Sharky Extreme's site? They do decent reviews on hardware, etc also. They are geared more for the gaming crowd, so be prepared for a lot of stuff on overclocking, etc as well as general reviews. To date, any of their advice I have taken has been spot on. Either way, you might want to give it a try.
http://www.sharkyextreme.com
I like Sharkys too, cept for they're a little bit slow getting reviews out and whatnot. Usually the first place I check to see last weeks chip/mem prices hehe.
Tumor
-
He means the Gigabyte GA7-VRX series motherboards. It was recommended by Tom's in their KT333 review. There's a lot of evidence out that Gigabyte's design of the AGP slot powersupply is flawed and doesn't work right with GeForce 4 Ti cards.
I still read Toms, but only for the benchmarks. Their conclusions have been and continue to be biased toward whomever pays them the most for advertising IMO. Anandtech is my current review site of choice.
As for Intel CPUs vs AMD CPUs, some people seem to make it into another Chevy vs Ford type thing. I own (and have owned) both Intel and AMD based systems. I choose between them based on which offers the best performance for the dollar. That used to be Intel back when the Celeron first came out. That explains why I built a Celeron 366 system (now a P3 450 system after I got a used P3 CPU). I also used to own a P2 266, which later was a Celeron 466. A long time ago I had a P1 100 MHz system as well. Recently I've had a Tbird 700 Mhz, which I switched to a 1300 Mhz Tbird. My new system is XP 1900+ based. I did consider a 1.6 Ghz Northwood or a 2.26 Ghz 'B' series P4 for this new system, but the latter was too expensive and the former would have still lagged in performance compared to the XP 1900+ and was less upgradable. I also have the need to run some engineering applications, which do not run well on P4 CPUs compared to Athlons.
I don't consider myself to favor either Intel or AMD, and I think if you look back at my posts you will find I tend to favor the best solution for the money at that time. A year ago that was definately AMD, and two years ago Intel, now it depends largely on what you plan on doing with the system.
-
Oh I see.... Well that explains it. I don't keep up with Via much, it's been since the K6II series since I've run Via and I'm just now "beginning" to feel any kind of confidence buying anything Via.
-
Tom was right about the AMD heat issue. Had a cheap retail box fan stick, and not only burned out the cpu but apparently the MB as well. AMD isn't the price leader for me NOW :) Still like AMD (and Intel for that matter, have 3 of those on the home LAN), First AMD was a nice 386 40mhz SCREAMER!
Charon
-
Some of the newer Asus and Soltek socket A boards have overheat protection now. (Mine does - Asus A7N266-C) It's about time that's been added.
-
Yeah Bloom, when I found out the MB was fried I ordered a Soltek which is OTW. Mother freakin' cheapass retail fan. I ordered a big 2-fan cpu cooler with the new CPU (before I found out the MB was toasted) but it won't fit under my PS :)
Of course, each time I put a cooler on I have to sweat crushing the CPU, but that's another issue.
Charon
-
A investment into a decent heatsink and fan is a really good idea for AMD's or Intel's...period. HSF's don't cost that much for really good ones. $25 or so can get you a top HSF. That's not much when you consider what you are paying for a CPU and a mobo.
There are some HSF's that are a bit pricey, like the MC462 ($70 or so), but this HSF is really only for anyone into extreme overclocking.
Some of the better HSF's are made by Cooler Master, Globalwin, Vantec and Arkua just to name a few.
I personally have the Arkua 7228 on my AMD XP2100 and it ran around 40-42 C under heavy 3D load. I paid $24.99 for this HSF at the Heatsink Factory (http://www.heatsinkfactory.com).
Yes, it does have a loud, screaming Delta 60mm fan on it, but I remedied that by replacing it with a 92mm fan using an adaptor. The 92mm fan moves more air and is less than half as loud. I now get temps around 39-40 C.