Discussion New Charts: The Good, Bad, or Ugly?

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Tell me your thoughts on this chart style (not the numbers, the style).

UPDATE: Nope, we're not doing green anymore. Look down to this post to see my "final" take on this chart. Thanks for the feedback!

A few disclaimers: Testing is not yet complete, though I have basically finished the Nvidia RTX 40/30-series cards. AMD, I have seven more 6000-series cards to test. Intel, I need to do Arc A380 still.

The highlighted cards are just to show what highlighting looks like. Most reviews wouldn't have this many cards, but the GPU benchmark hierarchy would have everything current.

That is all. Do you like this look, or prefer the "old" style where Nvidia is blue, AMD is red, and Intel is reversed blue (so grey averages and blue minimums)?

If you don't like it at all, what colors would you prefer I use? Keep in mind that while doing everything as one color except for a highlighted card, it's very difficult to scan and see where AMD, Intel, and Nvidia land. Ideally, I want to at the very least make those three distinct from one another, and the "gold" highlight border seems the least offensive way of doing a clear highlight.

 

[USAFRet]

There is no obvious marker as to what the colors mean.
Some are pinkish, others varying shades of green, others dark red.

One brand, one color.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

There is no obvious marker as to what the colors mean.
Some are pinkish, others varying shades of green, others dark red.

One brand, one color.

Generations of hardware.

Green = Nvidia, 40-series has lighter inner bar, 30-series has darker inner bar.

Red = AMD, 7000-series has lighter inner bar, 6000-series has darker inner bar.

Blue = Intel, only one generation so far.

Gold outline is for “this is the card under review.”

 

[USAFRet]

Ah.
Still not obvious without the explanation.

Too much going on.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I think coloring should be the cards of interest vs everything else, rather than separating by brand.

Otherwise the gold outline doesn't really pop out enough for me.

 

[Lutfij]

A color key to explain the GPU's maker would help two fold. As opposed to superimposed bars, I'd stack them below each other, lower FPS and higher FPS.

 

[USAFRet]

Otherwise the gold outline doesn't really pop out enough for me.

That.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I think coloring should be the cards of interest vs everything else, rather than separating by brand.

Otherwise the gold outline doesn't really pop out enough for me.

Here's the problem. My current coloring looks like this (well, this has shades of blue/red for Nvidia/AMD):

Here's without any generational differences, which means you can't pick out the RX 7000-series or RTX 40-series:

That's not terrible, and there it's just the one "card of interest" as an example. But what happens if we do everything except cards of interest the same color? You get this:

Now you can absolutely pick out the RTX 3080 highlight, yes, but if you want to look at literally anything else it becomes useless.

Basically, bare minimum I think I need different coloring for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. What colors and how to do that is the question I'm trying to answer. And if possible, make things at least mostly useful for colorblind people — who may end up seeing something closer to the last chart regardless. I will say that, perhaps, it would be nicer to make Intel a green or something hue rather than having that go to Nvidia, since Intel only has four GPUs right now.

Also, keep in mind that at some point there will be charts with all the current and previous generation cards, which means all the 40/30-series, 6000/7000-series, and Arc A/B-series. When you have 40-ish cards in a monolithic chart, you have to have some coloring scheme. What's best for that purpose? Blue and red is good if you only have two general categories, but what about three brands to differentiate? So I'm thinking about what things are going to inevitably become by next year.

 

[USAFRet]

And if possible, make things at least mostly useful for colorblind people — who may end up seeing something closer to the last chart regardless.

Possibly highlight the model name text as well as the bar?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Possibly highlight the model name text as well as the bar?

Sadly, there’s no way to do that programmatically in Excel. I looked into that previously. All the text labels end up with the same formatting. The internal labels can be changed, but not the axis labels.

A color key to explain the GPU's maker would help two fold. As opposed to superimposed bars, I'd stack them below each other, lower FPS and higher FPS.

Stacking takes up more vertical space. It only works if I keep to fewer cards in a chart.

 

[Lutfij]

I thought you were doing a complete revamp, not a slight DLC'ish update to the existing charts. I figured that out late, sorry

On a visual standpoint, perhaps the new (proposed)chart looks weird to me with the colors since I'm so used to seeing the existing colors for a long while.
Blue and red is good if you only have two general categories, but what about three brands to differentiate?
You should pick out three colors that complement each other - that way it's pleasing to the eyes and you tend to make the chart more, em, tasty. If you want, here's one scheme, grey white and gold, the highlighter can be a thin red or black box. You could also use a color gradient but TH being primarily red, white and black/grey would be another consideration. Perhaps if I had a sample of your data/info I could try and concoct something on my end and see if my suggestions are at all practical. That being said, out of the charts shown above, to me, the one in blue looks visually appealing and easy to consume for the end user. Clear and concise, to the point. Your eyes don't wander to see what you're dealing with.

As for the point about color blindness, you might want to reassess that arena as not everyone is colorblind to one spectrum of the color palette.

Sorry, if I said too much.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I thought you were doing a complete revamp, not a slight DLC'ish update to the existing charts. I figured that out late, sorry

On a visual standpoint, perhaps the new (proposed)chart looks weird to me with the colors since I'm so used to seeing the existing colors for a long while.
Blue and red is good if you only have two general categories, but what about three brands to differentiate?
You should pick out three colors that complement each other - that way it's pleasing to the eyes and you tend to make the chart more, em, tasty. If you want, here's one scheme, grey white and gold, the highlighter can be a thin red or black box. You could also use a color gradient but TH being primarily red, white and black/grey would be another consideration. Perhaps if I had a sample of your data/info I could try and concoct something on my end and see if my suggestions are at all practical. That being said, out of the charts shown above, to me, the one in blue looks visually appealing and easy to consume for the end user. Clear and concise, to the point. Your eyes don't wander to see what you're dealing with.

As for the point about color blindness, you might want to reassess that arena as not everyone is colorblind to one spectrum of the color palette.

Sorry, if I said too much.

Well, ideally we keep red in there because Tom's Hardware has red as a theme color and it's in our logo. So if I use red it makes sense to have that be AMD.

My thinking is that trying to show generational cards in the same colors, minor differences from each other, it makes it easy to parse that data. If all you're doing is looking for "where does card X land in the grand scheme of things?" then having everything one color except the highlight card works. But again, what happens in our larger GPU benchmark hierarchy charts where nothing is highlighted? Having just one color means everyone needs to look at the labels to find out which card goes where, and there's no way to think, "I just want to see Nvidia" without spending a lot more time. Which takes me back to multiple colors.

I can do blue, red, and grey as an example. Is that better? I mean, it might be an okay palette and it keeps me away from green and red being in the same chart. Who takes grey, though? Intel because it only has three cards, or Nvidia because Intel is traditionally blue? Either way, that would look like this:

I think of those two, the first (Intel grey, Nvidia blue) looks better, and that might be the best solution. So then it's either the one above, or perhaps this alternative which has the lighter colors inside.

Here's another sample, this time with ALL the GPUs (more or less... RTX 20-series is still missing). Also, the legend at the bottom isn't correct but I'd fix that before going final.

What do you all think — is that last one the best of the bunch? That's what I'd want for the GPU Hierarchy charts (besides the tables, obviously). For most reviews, I'd be limiting the charts to maybe 8-12 cards and could have bigger text with one card being highlighted. Right now I'm leaning toward either this last chart from this post, or the first one — the main difference being whether the darker bars are for the average or the 1% low.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The third and fourth ones out of the bunch look better. The second one has too little contrast in the gray bars

What about making the card of interest a different colored bar rather than using an outline?

 

[Tac 25]

I like the style of Minecraft (DXR) graph. it's clearly visible which ones are Nvidia, AMD, and Intel cards.

also liking the graph where only the card of interest is singled out with gold outline - this kind of graph would probably work well when discussing a newly released gpu?

 

[Lutfij]

I really love these;

Spoiler

Spoiler

they are visually very sound and has the info people usually look for at a glance. Perhaps a lighter shade of black/grey combo but it's great as is, IMHO, ofc.

 

[DRagor]

RGB attacking even reviews? omg

Seriously though. I'm on the 'more info is better'. That said however changing colors a bit for generations is too much. It really makes the chart unreadable. And honestly is not necessary. Just keep different colors for manufacturers and outlining for current card (different background color for that?) For me blue/green/red coloring is fine.

 

[DSzymborski]

I like the last Minecraft one as well. You have a better contrast of colors there. In some of the earlier graphs, such dark, dull shades are chosen all around that everything just looks kind of muddy.

 

[alceryes]

Generations of hardware.

Green = Nvidia, 40-series has lighter inner bar, 30-series has darker inner bar.

Red = AMD, 7000-series has lighter inner bar, 6000-series has darker inner bar.

Blue = Intel, only one generation so far.

Gold outline is for “this is the card under review.”

Could you NOT differentiate between generations with color? Instead, maybe do some sort of grouping of generations together? I agree with @USAFRet, it's too busy with too much color. Are you giving any consideration to those who may be color blind?

 

[punkncat]

Too busy, not easy to discern what you are supposed to be gathering from the chart.

 

[Math Geek]

i also like the red/blue/grey version the best.

i'm probably in the minority on this take but differentiating the different generations is not that important to me. i spend enough time with all the various models and such that i just know what came out when. i'm sure someone new to the tech world won't have that ingrained, but i suspect many of us would easily know a 3080 came before a 4080 and so on without a bunch of different colors or shades of colors to guide us.

the massive 40+ card chart is mainly for comparing a couple cards (at least for me) so you end up scanning the left anyway for the cards you want to compare regardless. it's usually "i have a 2070 and wonder if a 6650xt is a worthwhile upgrade or not?" or "i see these 2 cards at similar price, which performs better?"

just my take anyway on the idea

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Okay, highlight in green? No gold border anymore, as people didn't seem to like that. I've also tuned the colors to provide more contrast — that was the final step for after I was basically happy with the rest of the look. Does this look "weird" if it's an AMD card that gets highlighted (keeping in mind that highlights will probably only be in reviews where there are 12 or fewer GPUs in the charts). I'll give an AMD highlighted example as well... and I actually darkened the red a bit more because it was too bright IMO.

 

[Math Geek]

that's actually a great adjustment to me. the green stands out making it easy to see the card in question and where it stands in the stack. even a couple lines green, for instance stock speeds and oc'ed, would still easily stand out in the chart.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

i also like the red/blue/grey version the best.

i'm probably in the minority on this take but differentiating the different generations is not that important to me. i spend enough time with all the various models and such that i just know what came out when. i'm sure someone new to the tech world won't have that ingrained, but i suspect many of us would easily know a 3080 came before a 4080 and so on without a bunch of different colors or shades of colors to guide us.

the massive 40+ card chart is mainly for comparing a couple cards (at least for me) so you end up scanning the left anyway for the cards you want to compare regardless. it's usually "i have a 2070 and wonder if a 6650xt is a worthwhile upgrade or not?" or "i see these 2 cards at similar price, which performs better?"

just my take anyway on the idea

Yeah, people disliked my generational highlighting so I think that's out. The idea was to make it easier to see like "lighter green is Nvidia 40, medium green is 30-series, and darker green is 20-series." So if you wanted to focus just on the 40-series, you look at the three (for now) light green bars. I find it potentially helpful when I'm looking at these charts, but it's a lot easier to just do three primary colors with a fourth for highlighting and call it a day. That's what I did before.

 

[DRagor]

Okay, highlight in green? (...)

Like that one much. Although Intel being grey/grey is bit strange. Can't we have it at different color?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Like that one much. Although Intel being grey/grey is bit strange. Can't we have it at different color?

I absolutely could do a different color, which is the point of this thread. LOL. But the question is: What actually looks okay? Green for anything other than a highlight seems to be too much, and the same goes for yellow/gold/orange. Darker blue maybe? Or inverted blue compared to the Nvidia colors? Here's a darker blue for Intel version. I should note that the Arc cards won't always be clumped together like this, though! Minecraft is a bad game for Intel right now. Let me toss some other game in as well to show how it looks when Intel is higher up in the mix...

(I think I like the grey better.)