Where will you be getting your reviews for Ampere and RDNA2?

harmattan

harmattan

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I think this will be the first set of major new releases where [H] won't be around in the past 20 years. Where will you all be going for reviews for the upcoming Ampere (30xx series) and RDNA 2 (60xx) that should arrive Q4? I know Gamers Nexus has kind of taken up the flag of trustworthy and in-depth sources i.e. not just Average FPS and synth benchmarks, in the past few years, but are there others? With the deluge of shills and amateurs out there, what is your list of trusted GPU reviewers?
 
Main:

Gamers Nexus: Most in depth, best at teasing out oddities, differences.

Hardware Unboxed (AKA Techspot): Widest breadth. They put it in massive test effort often with 30+ games and produce very nice comparison graphs. They also dig into their testing, and figure out what went wrong if they get any anomalous results.


I will check others like:

Digital Foundry: Usually a bit slow on card reviews, but they always have an interesting take, and good eye for image quality issues.

Anandtech: I still read for the architecture coverage, but their game testing results have often been way off/inconsistent in recent years. If they get odd results they never try to figure out why, or correct them.

TechPowerUp, for their handy big comparison graphs but I don't actually read their reviews. I don't find them in depth.

I tend to ignore Toms, PC Mag, Ars Tech... and all the minor squawkers, since I don't find they bring anything extra to the table that isn't covered better above.
 
My go-to is Hardware Unboxed (Techspot). I absolutely love their Youtube content, and how they structure reviews. Gamers Nexus is fantastic, but can dig a little too deep for my liking.

I do have a question. If Ampere is slated to release on Sept 17, when do you think the reviews are going to release? Thanks in advance.
 
Yeah I’d also say mainly Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unlocked for main info, and Anandtech for architectural curiosity. Linus’s reviews are usually interesting too (or at least funny), perhaps even JayzTwocents (normally mainly for comical value). Everything else is redundant or just not as good.
 
Everywhere I see a review.

Then cross reference.

I'm not planning on buying one at launch, so I suspect I'll read/watch well over 100 reviews before I actually commit.
 
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Snowdog said:
Main:

Gamers Nexus: Most in depth, best at teasing out oddities, differences.

Hardware Unboxed (AKA Techspot): Widest breadth. They put it in massive test effort often with 30+ games and produce very nice comparison graphs. They also dig into their testing, and figure out what went wrong if they get any anomalous results.


I will check others like:

Digital Foundry: Usually a bit slow on card reviews, but they always have an interesting take, and good eye for image quality issues.

Anandtech: I still read for the architecture coverage, but their game testing results have often been way off/inconsistent in recent years. If they get odd results they never try to figure out why, or correct them.

TechPowerUp, for their handy big comparison graphs but I don't actually read their reviews. I don't find them in depth.

I tend to ignore Toms, PC Mag, Ars Tech... and all the minor squawkers, since I don't find they bring anything extra to the table that isn't covered better above.
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Same list for me.
 
Snowdog said:
Main:

Anandtech: I still read for the architecture coverage, but their game testing results have often been way off/inconsistent in recent years. If they get odd results they never try to figure out why, or correct them.

I tend to ignore Toms, PC Mag, Ars Tech... and all the minor squawkers, since I don't find they bring anything extra to the table that isn't covered better above.
Click to expand...

Toms Europe seems impartial, but Toms U.S. are complete, unrepentant shills. Anandtech and Toms are both owned by the same company, so I tend to be suspicious of both in their coverage and content.
 
Gamers Nexus will be my main source with Hardware Unboxed as a secondary. I will also check out the written reviews at TPU and perhaps Anandtech and Guru3D

Anandtech and [H]ardOCP used to be my goto, but Anandtech hasn't been the same since Anand left and Hard doesn't exist anymore...

Anyone know what happened to the HardOCP site? I know it was initially put to rest when Kyle took a job at Intel due to conflicts of interest, but my understanding is that he eventually had to decline that offer due to personal circumstances.
 
RamonGTP said:
Gamers Nexus will be my main source with Hardware Unboxed as a secondary. I will also check out the written reviews at TPU and perhaps Anandtech and Guru3D

Anandtech and [H]ardOCP used to be my goto, but Anandtech hasn't been the same since Anand left and Hard doesn't exist anymore...

Anyone know what happened to the HardOCP site? I know it was initially put to rest when Kyle took a job at Intel due to conflicts of interest, but my understanding is that he eventually had to decline that offer due to personal circumstances.
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He didn't decline it, he took it then had to leave due to family/personal issues (from my recollection). He still posts on here. TheFPSReview has a few of the guys from there (Brent, Dan,?) that are doing reviews now/still.
 
RamonGTP said:
Gamers Nexus will be my main source with Hardware Unboxed as a secondary. I will also check out the written reviews at TPU and perhaps Anandtech and Guru3D

Anandtech and [H]ardOCP used to be my goto, but Anandtech hasn't been the same since Anand left and Hard doesn't exist anymore...

Anyone know what happened to the HardOCP site? I know it was initially put to rest when Kyle took a job at Intel due to conflicts of interest, but my understanding is that he eventually had to decline that offer due to personal circumstances.
Click to expand...

Kyle worked for Intel briefly. More than that, is up to him to say. He decided not to restart HardOCP.com. As for myself and the rest of the HardOCP staff, we all went to thefpsreview.com. We are doing the same work over there we did here. Obviously, we don't have the clout with manufacturers that we had under Kyle, but we've managed to score hardware ahead of time for launches. About the only time we failed to do so was for the Threadripper 3000 series and 3950X launch.
 
I'll come here and see what people here have to say :)

Also, GN and Jay for video content. I do prefer to read tho so TPU and Guru3D for that.
Hardware Unboxed is fine, but I get tired of hearing "CHEEPA" in a Aussie accent 500 times per video.
 
Snowdog said:
Main:

Gamers Nexus: Most in depth, best at teasing out oddities, differences.

Hardware Unboxed (AKA Techspot): Widest breadth. They put it in massive test effort often with 30+ games and produce very nice comparison graphs. They also dig into their testing, and figure out what went wrong if they get any anomalous results.


I will check others like:

Digital Foundry: Usually a bit slow on card reviews, but they always have an interesting take, and good eye for image quality issues.

Anandtech: I still read for the architecture coverage, but their game testing results have often been way off/inconsistent in recent years. If they get odd results they never try to figure out why, or correct them.

TechPowerUp, for their handy big comparison graphs but I don't actually read their reviews. I don't find them in depth.

I tend to ignore Toms, PC Mag, Ars Tech... and all the minor squawkers, since I don't find they bring anything extra to the table that isn't covered better above.
Click to expand...

For Anandtech I suspect driver version issues are behind most seemingly odd results. Unlike most review sites that retest 2-4 cards with each review using the latest drivers, giving the most up to date results but meaning that today's review numbers aren't comparable to the ones in last months review; Anandtech's review pipeline is situated around populating Bench; a once/year (because testing everything once takes Ian a year to complete) snapshot of performance for hundreds of cpu/gpu combinations. That means that except for right at the beginning of a new test cycle they're using different (older) drivers than everyone else; and will show different (typically lower) numbers for any games that have received driver optimizations since the baseline was set.
 
Snowdog said:
Main:

Gamers Nexus: Most in depth, best at teasing out oddities, differences.

Hardware Unboxed (AKA Techspot): Widest breadth. They put it in massive test effort often with 30+ games and produce very nice comparison graphs. They also dig into their testing, and figure out what went wrong if they get any anomalous results.


I will check others like:

Digital Foundry: Usually a bit slow on card reviews, but they always have an interesting take, and good eye for image quality issues.

Anandtech: I still read for the architecture coverage, but their game testing results have often been way off/inconsistent in recent years. If they get odd results they never try to figure out why, or correct them.

TechPowerUp, for their handy big comparison graphs but I don't actually read their reviews. I don't find them in depth.

I tend to ignore Toms, PC Mag, Ars Tech... and all the minor squawkers, since I don't find they bring anything extra to the table that isn't covered better above.
Click to expand...

I really like Hardware Unboxed
 
I won’t. I will likely just buy the latest and greatest Nvidia card at my price point due to needing cuda
 
Dan_D said:
Kyle worked for Intel briefly. More than that, is up to him to say. He decided not to restart HardOCP.com. As for myself and the rest of the HardOCP staff, we all went to thefpsreview.com. We are doing the same work over there we did here. Obviously, we don't have the clout with manufacturers that we had under Kyle, but we've managed to score hardware ahead of time for launches. About the only time we failed to do so was for the Threadripper 3000 series and 3950X launch.
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Do you guys have a you tube channel ?

Sometimes you have to review the product yourself because some make an early judgement .. never go back and see the bios / chipset / driver evolve the products like with the RX 5500 XT as I have one now and it's been such a smooth start up and running PCI Express 4.0 with B550 .. the 3600 on 20 . 8 . 1 as to make me forget Polaris
 
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crazycrave said:
Do you guys have a you tube channel ?

Sometimes you have to review the product yourself because some make an early judgement .. never go back and see the bios / chipset / driver evolve the products like with the RX 5500 XT as I have one now and it's been such a smooth start up and running PCI Express 4.0 with B550 .. the 3600 on 20 . 8 . 1 as to make me forget Polaris
Click to expand...

We have a few videos. I don't think they are on a specific channel. It hasn't been our main focus. Most of our videos are supplemental to our long form articles. We will be adding more in the future. I don't have any equipment for it, so I've done none on the motherboard and CPU front.
 
Dan_D said:
We have a few videos. I don't think they are on a specific channel. It hasn't been our main focus. Most of our videos are supplemental to our long form articles. We will be adding more in the future. I don't have any equipment for it, so I've done none on the motherboard and CPU front.
Click to expand...

This is the way to do it. For many reasons, video presentation should always be supplementary to written format for technical analysis. I hate that many modern "reviewers" rely only on video channels.
 
harmattan said:
This is the way to do it. For many reasons, video presentation should always be supplementary to written format for technical analysis. I hate that many modern "reviewers" rely only on video channels.
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Also, background music and shots of graphs are NOT compelling to watch. I get that its necessary information, but I'd rather just scroll or page past it than deal with it for an arbitrary amount of screen time.

I think this is why I like how Digital Foundry presents their data, real time frame data with synced visuals.
 
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Speed up videos to make them tolerable for consumption on hardware reviews, usually 80% fluff and non-important info. FPSreview for video cards are top notch so first stop if reviews are available for next gen. I hit virtually anything else quickly written and if good will go through it including manufacturing info as in white papers, videos. Then of course friendly and [H]ard right here with the [H]ardcore.
 
noko said:
Speed up videos to make them tolerable for consumption on hardware reviews, usually 80% fluff and non-important info. FPSreview for video cards are top notch so first stop if reviews are available for next gen. I hit virtually anything else quickly written and if good will go through it including manufacturing info as in white papers, videos. Then of course friendly and [H]ard right here with the [H]ardcore.
Click to expand...
This what happened to the good old charts with numbers....I can't stand when they make you watch a 20 minute vedio to see numbers.....also I think it's gamers nexes that dude talks way way to much
 
tunatime said:
This what happened to the good old charts with numbers....I can't stand when they make you watch a 20 minute vedio to see numbers.....also I think it's gamers nexes that dude talks way way to much
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I seldom sit through a whole video.

Most of the big YT tech channels now have extensive indexes, so you can just click to the summary with the big charts if that is what you are looking for. Ex:


Flip over to viewing on YT, and click "Show More", you get the full index, and click right to summary slides, or just pick out the games you are interested in seeing in more detail.
 
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Where will you be getting your Ampere?

Scalpers and ebay shills 3rd party shady sites.
 
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tunatime said:
This what happened to the good old charts with numbers....I can't stand when they make you watch a 20 minute vedio to see numbers.....also I think it's gamers nexes that dude talks way way to much
Click to expand...

I think video in reviews should be reserved for editorial commentaries, summation and color -- complementary to the written analysis, hard numbers and visualizations.

Heh, Render-Jesus does like to talk a lot (although I suspect this is how he's grown his base). I've many times thought while watching his video reviews: "Get down to bid-ness, I don't need to be romanced, son!"
 
Techpowerup because they test the most games and of course for their relative performance charts.
Guru3d since been a member there for long time and the reviewer (Hilbert) uses a FLIR (thermal imaging camera) for temps which can detect weaknesses in GPU cooling designs.
Anandtech but they test very few games in their reviews which does not help potential buyers forming a more accurate assesment of the cards.
 
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