New build

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

I always think this. Remember when MPC reviewed the 2007WFP. They found nothing wrong and rated it super high. Then at the Dell forums we got a 60ish page (when I last checked a long time ago) thread about the well-known banding issue found on these monitors.

I think Josh is right. Press items are tested and stuff maybe to make sure they get the best review. I don't think all companies do this though, because MPC has to sometimes ask for replacements because they aren't working well.

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by wtcnbrwndo4u

I think Josh is right. Press items are tested and stuff maybe to make sure they get the best review.

This happens quite a bit, and is one reason we put some much emphasis on the feature-set in our reviews, rather than all-out number crunching performance and overclocking headroom, etc.

[Dread]

I always kind of thought the practice of sending 'cherry' examples of all hardware to reviewers was an industry standard. Did nobody else think this?

A vendor would be a fool to at least not pre-select samples being sent for review. How embarrassing it would be to send off a DOA CPU (or anything else) to MPC or HL for a review?

In my mind, all benchmarks and reviews are taken with a healthy teaspoon of salt. I just assume that those are the best possible results and my experiences with the same product will fall short in the retail world.

As for the OP, what is the outcome of your new build? Have you built the system yet, and if so; how is it running?

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

Originally Posted by Dread

I always kind of thought the practice of sending 'cherry' examples of all hardware to reviewers was an industry standard. Did nobody else think this?

A vendor would be a fool to at least not pre-select samples being sent for review. How embarrassing it would be to send off a DOA CPU (or anything else) to MPC or HL for a review?

In my mind, all benchmarks and reviews are taken with a healthy teaspoon of salt. I just assume that those are the best possible results and my experiences with the same product will fall short in the retail world.

Well, I knew it, but it's not fair to the end user. They read about a CPU being able to do this and when they buy one, it can't.

This will be a very nice system congrats!