Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money

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nick5k

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Aug 14, 2017
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1. Wait for the reviews
2. Wait for the Benchmarks
3. See if your games or the ones you want to play support it.
 

pokeman

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I'm not into the whole any attention is better than no attention. I do not understand why this article hasn't been redacted.
 

jankerson

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Yeah I remember those. :D
 

Rogue Leader

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If the entire post and 42 warnings we posted above weren't enough heres another.

We got it, you're annoyed by the article. If you keep posting "tom's sucks" or "why do my posts keep getting deleted" or "Avram should be fired" and not adding to the actual conversation your posts will keep getting deleted and if you keep doing it you'll eventually be banned. I already banned one person today who thought they would be clever, we have no problem banning more people.
 

bit_user

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It seems this article, itself, has become news:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3301293/components-graphics/why-preorder-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti.html

And after the preface, the author actually attempts to rewrite it.
This is the article Tom’s Hardware should have run, with a headline that’s framed much less controversially.

But I actually disagree with this. Instead of publishing Why You Shouldn’t Buy Nvidia’s RTX 20-Series, followed by the counterpoint Just Buy It: Why Nvidia RTX GPUs Are Worth the Money, I would have weighed both the pro's and con's in a single article.

The only rationale I can see for doing otherwise is if the second article wasn't originally planned, but hastily written in response to complaints from Nvidia that the first article was too harsh.
 

mapesdhs

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I know, but often that link doesn't work properly, it brings up a version of the site that looks more like the US setup, and the login mechanism fails.


 
Aug 30, 2018
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Preorder is a win win as a Best Buy Elite member. I have 90 Days to return it without question or penalty, and costs nothing until I pick it up. So whats the harm? If it completely changes the game I got it first, if it blows I can play with it for 3 months and take it back. All the risk is on Best Buy the way I see it.
 


I dont think anyone could of said it any better jimmysmitty. Thats why I visit toms because im looking for fact's and good advice about something. Not an opinion on something were all waiting on and clamoring for details about it.

If it an opinion, I would like it to be about something that's been in someone hands for a bit and get their thoughs on it.

Great example of that from Avram: "Why I Returned My ThinkPad X1 Carbon 3 Times (And I'm Not Alone)" https://www.tomshardware.com/news/lenovo-laptop-quality-control-issues,37510.html

As a reader, I get to see what that author is going though and I can make a wiser choice if i really want that product or not. This GPU opinion/op-ed doesn't feel that way at all and feels like it just pushing people to do something they honestly shouldn't.

Overall, I dont think tom's needs a "devil's advocate" opinion article to a different article they just done as that just confuse people looking for sound advice and does make the site look bad from my perpective for that reason.

Also, can we get "Op-Ed:" or "Opinion:" in the title of these articles like we used to?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/comcast-internet-essentials-free-amnesty,27372.html
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/iphone-5c-bad-value-analysis,3619.html

Sure we have "(something here) > opinion" above the title on the page but unless you click the link, you cant really tell if it's opinion nor what kind of opinion it is.
 

mapesdhs

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Various editorial responses have understandably focused on the idea that the site wishes content and conversation to be factual. Problem is, the original article that has created so much ire was itself not factual. Likewise, responses have cited a prohibition against personal attacks & suchlike, ie. the way in which people have responded to the article, yet the article included a barely veiled insult towards a TH employee (of course some responses have been worse, some without a doubt unreasonably nasty, but the base contradiction persists). What's amplified the reactions though is the senior position held by the article's author; one cannot escape from the inevitable inference many will take that the quality of the article must reflect on the site as a whole, whether that's true or not.

Lastly, though one may personally believe (for IMO it is indeed a viewpoint) that multiple posts saying much the same thing deserve to be deleted, someone here did point out that doing so does greatly dilute the degree to which the tone and general degree of opinion is being expressed. Afterall, in an election, one doesn't reduce all identical votes for each candidate to 1. ;) I don't know about the rest of you but these days, after using the site for so long, I kinda filter out a lot of the replies, as I find myself looking for certain names that I know from past reading tend to post things that are worth my time, such as jimmysmitty and ledhead11.

I get the reasons why the deletions have been done (well, some of them anyway), but really it only makes things worse, partly because many will assume (rightly or not) it's just damage limitation, but mostly because doing so doesn't confront the elephant in the room: the original article was badly written, ie. repeatedly saying it's an opinion piece isn't a rationale for justifying its initial publication. Everything that has followed since, whether intentional or not, makes it seem like the article - and thus its content - is being defended. Thus, I think what's going through a lot of peoples' minds is this: the claims and conclusions in the article make no sense; nobody at the staff level seems willing to state they think the same thing; therefore people inevitably infer that either the other staff agree with the article, or they disagree but aren't willing to say so (at least not in public). If it's the latter, and if it's only that way because the author is someone so senior, then no wonder the average reader may conclude that the ship has a poor captain, whether that's a fair conclusion or not. In other words, if other staff aren't prepared to critique something, the average reader will figure why bother.

Insults, repetitive posts, meme pictures and all the other stuff aside, I'd simply like to know whether the other staff agree with the content of the article, because I can't see how anyone who values facts, reason and evidence could. I doubt I'm alone, because quite likely many are thinking, well if other key people have the same weird ideas about how to judge the merits of buying something, how can one trust anything here? This is what some have said about the article reflecting badly on the site as a whole; it's natural human behaviour. We're all strongly Baysian at heart, whether we like it or not. People will infer things about the site as a whole based on something written by a senior person.

Note what I said before though, such an article could have been written in a way that explained why some people might decide to buy the new cards at launch, namely bragging rights (and if they can afford it, who cares, it's their money; contrary to what some claim, nobody is gouging anyone, buying a card is an entirely voluntary action), which is not to say one way or the other whether that's a sensible thing to do (impossible to measure the social benefit of such decisions, it's too subjective), but that's not what the article did at all. Point being, something being an "opinion" doesn't mean it's a valid argument; given the nature of sites like this, the article just came across as... bizarre (hence the nature of Steve's GN video response). It'd be fascinating to know whether any other staff read it before it went live, and told its author their true opinions (not that I expect anyone to say). In recent times, much ill has come from those who inhabit an opinion bubble; if any other staff did read the article beforehand, it would be astonishing if none of them were certain that publishing the article was a bad idea, but all the more telling if some did but felt they could not say anything. Telling the king he's about to make a mistake is often a risky move; the messenger might feel they could be harshly dealt with, while the message itself is lost.

Ian.

 

steve15180

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Well said and well done!
 

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@mapesdhs

I am not going to give you my opinion on this article, as mentioned earlier. As for others opinions maybe they will be set forth elsewhere in the future maybe not. This comment section here is part of our forums and as such has a certain set of rules which are available at the top of every forum. Myself and others have reiterated such rules in a few posts here as well after deleting some comments. Which is the source of my comment you replied to above. Another user decided to just keep posting the same comment over and over daring us to delete him. Joke is on him, because we did. At no time is that acceptable in the forum, not here, or any other post. Again these rules are clearly set forth.

Now you can't say I haven't been completely transparent. I said, straight out, if you use foul language, personal insults, etc I'm not going to sit here and edit your post, I don't care if its 1 line long or pages long. I'm going to delete it. Period. I don't care what was said in the article. What was said: "price-panicked pundits" while insulting more-so to maybe the person whom wrote the counterpoint to this article, does not give anyone here the right to call Avram (or anyone else replying here) an idiot, ask him to get a mental exam, etc. This is the same rules in the forum. And again, we are unpaid volunteers. I'm not spending my free time editing out someones post because 90% of it was relevant but they couldn't help but call someone names. We have better things to do with our lives.

I will reiterate: these are the same rules set out in the forum every day, nothing special has happened in this thread. There is plenty of coherent counterpoint to read. We are up to 8 pages of comments here. And we are only deleting what we specifically said would be deleted. I understand what you are saying about how it may look, but I as a moderator will not be relaxing the rules of our forum due to an article in our editorial section that is controversial. Rules are here and in place for a reason, and it allows us to keep the forums here to a higher standard. Whether the quality of the article may bring the sites editorials into question, we here in the community maintain a certain standard and that standard will not be changed, reduced, or otherwise for special circumstances, or any circumstances for that matter.

Note my title, Moderator. Its my job to keep things civil, I don't have an opinion here, because to be a moderator you need to be objective. I am enforcing the rules and I will continue to. Now that we have gone far enough off topic, I hope we have an understanding.
 

mapesdhs

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Yes, I know, that's why I merely said it would be fascinating to know such & such, but that I wasn't expecting anyone to actually say. I'm sure you can agree with the reasoning though. ;)




I sincerely hope they will, for reasons stated previously.




That's what I meant by various deletions making sense, but I can't make a blanket statement because, like any ordinay user, I can't see the totality of what has gone, though I certainly do recall a lot of unwarranted personal attacks as you say. Others though, if reported correctly (like the RTX on/off = full/empty wallet meme image, that sounds quite funny), well I don't know, I can only surmise that people are not recalling such posts in their entireity; as you say it's not practical to edit everything.




Indeed, and I don't do such things, though I notice some mods do tend to just edit shorter posts and add a warning. I guess this becomes impractical for longer posts.




I think the issue people have with that particular part of the article is the apparent contradiction, ie. the standard it appears to set, a standard that as you say is not permitted in the forums.




I agree, though discourse on the net does tend to be mentally unfiltered in a manner one would never experience in real life, people just blurt out what they think because they can. A degree of thickened skin is essential for surviving net life; the net is like a giant old style talent show, always a few who'll hurl spoiled fruit whenever the opportunity arises, especially the very young who lack the necessary empathy to comprehend how personal attacks can affect others. Even in academia, this can go to the extreme; decades ago, one mathematician was so lambasted in relevant media by colleagues over a new theory he'd published, he commited suicide. Sadly, we live in an age where shouting at the sky, and at each other, has been normalised.




I've seen worse. :D




In that case I'm sure relevant discussions will be going on behind the scenes internally.




Indeed; now if the article had applied the same critical objectivity... :)




Hmm, I don't think this is off topic (except for forum management issues of course); by that I mean, in the context of how and why people are responding to the article, many are freaking out partly because a trusted building appears to have chunks falling off, ie. it's quite rational to query the foundations of a building before stepping inside or choosing to remain within.


Btw, as a general thought, the mainstream media in general has spent more than three years normalising the practice of personal attacks and insults when responding to those with whom one disagrees (ie. how conservatives and traditional middleground liberals have been treated, in real life but especially on the net); I can't help wonder if this new MO has fed through into discourse in general, such behaviour becoming the accepted norm in college life, etc. People are becoming bad at talking about things, they just respond based on their spur of the moment feelz, irony being the base rationale of the article was also emotional, ie. the dubious bragging rights of early adopters. The problem with internet discourse is it lacks the complexity of face to face interaction which would normally act to control how people talk to each other IRL, but I think these days people are even worse at doing it now that we have multiple generations who don't know how to communicate without resorting to emotion and sophistry (which correlates nicely with the rise in perceived self importance among the young; the mobile and social media era, especially over-sensitive millenials, and yes I know hash tag not all, etc.)




Of course. 8) The older one gets btw, the more one ends up realising how little so much of all this really matters in the grander scheme of things. I'm in the process of sorting out 24/7 nursing care for an elderly relative, the cost of which for just one week is quite a bit more than a 2080 Ti. :] It's certainly made me rethink how often I buy new tech and why.

Ian.

 

Arjuna79

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Nov 26, 2015
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HAHAHAHA
You are out of your freaking mind. Unless you are asking your butler to take your Bugatti Chiron to go fetch a couple of these 2080 Ti's, they are not worthy AT ALL.

Ohhh, raytracing, new shiny! What games are you running NOW that need/benefit from it? ZERO. NONE.

Does it allow 8k gaming? Guess not, at playable frame rates.
Does it fix bugged and wrong reflections in GTA Five? Or any game for that matter? No. You need RTX support, or to patch the games, or both.

Does it allow 144fps at 4k? No, not yet, I don't think so. Benchmark those.

Does it improve games that I already have? No, the FPS drops to 30's when you can enable RTX in the already launched games.

It's the new Bugatti, but no roads today can survive the car without melting...
These boards are REVOLUTIONARY, but not really an evolution outside of the expected. Yes, they are faster than the previous ones, but only with the new techniques turned OFF.
 

bit_user

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That's interesting, because a post I just made that consisted of a factual observation was just deleted. Please explain which of its rules was violated, so that I know for future reference.

Thanks for your time & efforts to moderate these forums.
 

Your post added nothing of substance to the conversation, and, could easily be interpreted (by some) as inflammatory. Therefore it was deleted.
 

mapesdhs

Distinguished


I'm struggling to think how that could ever be objectively measured. Someone even saying much the same thing as someone else can still be relevant, because it can show a viewpoint is not merely a minority opinion. Oherwise, the degree to which (for example) a company receives complaints about a product or service would have no import, one complaint would have the same weight as a hundred.




That is the language of the SJWs, the irrationality of offense-taking. One should never act as if being offended on someone else's behalf, that is the soft bigotry of low expectations. The listener infers, the speaker implies; that someone might choose to regard something as inflammatory or offensive isn't an objective rationale for concluding it actually is or would be. Interpretation by the listener is why we have such dreadul issues of oversensitivity in western culture these days, everybody has to be protected as if they're children (of course some actually are children, but then it's the parents' responsibility to keep them off the net if need be). If this is the measure by which posts can or can't be made then nobody could be sure of being able to post anything, because there's always someone who will be offended by something, especially in our modern snowflake world. Are we really all so thin skinned? I get it when someone literally suggests that a person should go jump off a cliff or something, but if the supposed offense is of a nature that has to be interpreted by a 3rd party as a matter of inferred projected personal opinion, then it isn't an objective measure and shouldn't be classed as requiring removal, at least not on those grounds anyway. This notion of taking offense is why dankula was almost jailed for merely making a joke to annoy his gf (the nazi pug video), nobody relevant actually complained, instead the authorities chose to believe that someone might or could be offended, which IMO was highly patronising to the very people they claimed to be "protecting".

Please don't turn toms into a safe space. Technical discussions have always had a degree of heat to them, I mean blimey the nature of the beast is that of a largely male dominated domain, so the natural form of discourse isn't going to be braiding each other's hair. :D

People have been calling each other fanboy & suchlike for years, nobody really cares, and if someone's being a jerk then a high downvote count hides their post anyway. Besides, how often does one open up a hidden post just to see what the fuss was all about? I often do, just natural curiosity.

It's also good experience, people learning the basic idea that the best way to deal with a moron is just to ignore them, though sometimes it can be amusing to read a particular back & forth, like Sheldon and Leonard having a punch up. Please don't take away all the fun. :)

Anyway, thats my last on this, I have bigger things to deal with. I hope toms can get back to being a fun place to talk, rant and indeed argue about stuff, without feeling like one is surrounded by one's grim faced parents.

Ian.

 

Rogue Leader

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@mapesdhs

It was very specific information, that was unrelated to the context of the article, that could easily continue this hateful dumpster fire. The person whom posted it understands why it was removed, and based on that I'm sure you can understand why we aren't going to detail it.

There was nothing racist, bigoted, etc. It was just irrelevant to the subject of the article and would have fanned the flames that seem to have finally subsided.

 
Sep 5, 2018
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Has to be one of the most delusional, poorly written, stupid articles I have ever seen in my life. All credibility I once had for TH as a tech news and review site has gone down the toilet.
 

mapesdhs

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Hmm, I think a better way of putting it would be to say the original article is... ultimately ridiculous, ... and its conclusions are epically nonsensical. *cough, wink, nod!*

Saying such things though is one thing, it's quite another matter to properly discuss why people responded as they did, but almost everyone seems to have left the room now...

Ian.

PS. Btw, somtimes flames are a good thing, there are certain plants and trees that can't procreate without them. A streteched analogy, but anyway. :)

 
Bunch of reports coming out today that the NDA has been extended to the 19th, citing delays in getting the cards to reviewers and drivers still not being finalized yet.

So yeah, I'd be pretty concerned about the state of the drivers too. Going to be a nightmare if they're not ready by the time the cards ship, or if there are major revisions right after the reviews go public.
 
Some reports, especially from the site that broke the choke-hold partnership deal that NVidia tried but ultimately dropped due to consumer backlash, have it drivers for reviewers is on a secure site, only accessible to pre-approved reviewers. (its probably as true as the GPP was/is.)



This sounds as bad as the GPP was/is. It also makes any review when they finally are released suspect and any leak highly suspect. It also makes it sound as if NVidia is trying to make sure anybody highly critical of their products won't get a sample to test pre-release (where it has the most chance of harming first day or week sales.)

If we expand on this, and this is admittedly supposition, could some review sites be trying to make sure they stay on the good side of NVidia and be on the pre-approved reviewer list?
 

jankerson

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BANNED
The way I look at it is this:

If these things were actually as good as they say they are then the reviews would have already been out.

NVIDIA wouldn't be suppressing it like they are.

And once released they are all suspect due to all of this.

Have to really look at the reviews carefully and watch more than a few and look at the scores of the cards compared carefully..... ;)

Look for the Fire Strike and Time Spy scores in the reviews of the cards they are compared to and compare those to what they are supposed to actually be.

That will be the real tell.

I remember what the reviewers did with both the VEGA and the GTX 1070Ti. GPU scores on the compare cards were thousands of points lower then they should have been.
 
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