[H]ARD|OCP beating their chest...again

[screwballl]

2/1/08 user: bubbaizkewlio696969 rating: 1/5 stars
Review: ya dis dingy iz suchh a peese of craop... i put er into the part and it dun wark!!11111!!1one neweggg sxors for nawt telin me dese suk

[Capper]

exactly!!!!

[H] posts some great stuff, and believe it or not, I'm not so much bashing their reviews....its just the "Our reviews are the only honest ones" type attitude.....like i said, different people value different things, and the more points of view you take in before buying a product, the better.

Also, remember that those bigger sites, they are there to make money....whether they say so or not....its not about paying for a server to them, its about making money....which is fine......but you really shouldn't be criticizing everyone else if you are doing this for profit.

[screwballl]

you must conform or we will claim you all suck

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by Capper

The only reviews I'll flat out tell you guys to avoid are those awful Newegg user reviews.

Say what? I can't base my case reviews with the comments people leave on Newegg's site? Screw this, I'm packin' my bags!

[Pete]

Wait wait wait... what do you mean my shit don't stink. I just took a dump and it smelled like flowers! Even the next guy that went in was so amazed he uttered a praise to god... Literally said, "Oh my God!"
"Yes" I told him. "It smells THAT good." and just walked away so he could indulge in the sweetness that is my shit before he could say anything else.

Kyle has always thought he's above everyone else. Even some CEO's of companies... which will remain nameless... have called him "Snake" and "Scorpion." Even to the point where they would avoid Kyle at shows or meetings.

I will say that there are some good, smart, people at [H] but you know the saying... One rotten apple...

[Quakindude]

Sounds mostly to me like [H] is trying to convince themselves that the way they do benchmarks is superior. Have they been told by so many different people now that their "real world" gaming tests aren't the only tool in the box that they are now left to trying to justify their efforts to themselves to make everyone feel better about the job they're doing?

Any one who has been around the intarwebby looks for many different view points and modes of testing. They want to get a feel for their next purchase from many different angles, just like walking around a car and kicking the tires, checking under the hood, so on and so forth. But [H] seems to be preaching that all you have to do is, "Read the window sticker we've posted with OUR performance data and that's ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!"

[RA1D]

a Pete sighting, quick everyone take a screenshot! how's it going man?

[screwballl]

just a car salesman in a different profession

[MantaBase]

The actual review was pretty good. Could have used a common bench or two for cross site comparison - and they really need to say what their methods are if they want it to be taken as anything more than subjective.

Good review though - until Kyle opened his mouth at the end.

Ya know - if you are good, you typically don't have to tell everyone. He could have said what he needed to say in about 1000 polite ways. Instead, he chose to degrade others in the community. It's like he never learned to stop trolling.

[MantaBase]

I just took a fine toothed comb out and have to take back what I said.

Their method:

Practice practice practice, literally. We take the same path, the same options, the same actions. We run our results several times to get consistent run-through's. Keep in mind thiough, this is only for the graphs.

Our actual determination of the highest playable settings is not just done in one level of the game, it is in fact done in SEVERAL levels of the game, we play them, and get a good feel for them on each video card. For example in Crysis, we test several levels from the early beach maps, to the assault crysis level, to the ice maps, to the final boss level, to find out what setting works well throughout the entire game. The graphs are just there to backup and represent our experiences. We don't use the run-through to determine the highest playable setting, we actually play the game to figure that out. It takes a LOT of time.

That's what makes us different.

So to summarize, the playable settings represent the highest-playable settings for the entire game, determined by actually sitting down, playing the game, and taking notes. We then do a run-through, in an intense level, to visually represent and backup our experiences.

That means its a very subjective test with a large number of variables - both human and machine. It has value, don't get me wrong - but it really doesn't tell you much unless there is a large difference in performance. They give no standard deviation for run a through. You have no idea what the error is. Heck - they can pick and choose which runs they want to compare.

I like the concept - but the execution as it stands is pretty poor. Turn your head the wrong way in a game and you skew the results. And the funny business with "best possible settings" has me confused. Best based on what? FPS? IQ?

I've spent too much time on this already.

Manta