Why is tom'sHARDWARE so biased against AMD GPU's???

[mick500]

Just wondering why tom'sHARDWARE articles and reviews are so biased against AMD GPU's??? Are they paid by Nvidia?? Some of the stuff they come up with in the articles are ridiculous and fanciful, even failing to switch the r9 290x to uber mode for the review and calling it a cherry picked card?? If i were AMD i would never send tom's another product to review after that incompetence mixed with insult.

 

[imran27]

Most reviews are OK, but in case of AMD, THW overlooks many things and doesn't take into account the future scope offered by the product, such as R7/R9 have mantle support and BF4 will now or or tomorrow is gonna use it andit is definitely going to perform better than anything but how much better depends on its coding efficiency and optimization done by developers. Also, AMD's 8-core processors didn't receive too much appreciations from THW (may be a little, but the same was not observed when it comes to Intel/nVidia) they overlooked its future scope and forgot how computing moved from single to dual core procs and then to quads, does THW think that it's impossible for computing world to move to octa-cores??? Does THW also think that no developer or company wants to develop multi-threaded or heavily threaded apps/softwares??? Well the fact is that many software companies are now towards making their softwares multi-threaded and there you can't overlook the AMD's 8-core beasts. Many software companies have come-up to support AMD's dGPU/iGPU acceleration even this wasn't under consideration.
AMD doesn't design its products that are best at that time, it designs to be better performing for a long span of time, support increases and so does performance.
Just remember it was AMD that launched world's first x86 dual-core desktop processors and what was dual-core good at that time, did any software use dual-core?? NO, so would you say that they were bad, not at all, they were future.
AMD launched the world's first x86 based 64-bit processor, who used 64-bit at that time so they were bad at that time right?? NO, they were future.
Now also AMD did the same thing, world's first native 8-core desktop processor, first processor to support modular architecture and many other things, it may be under-performing now but wait for a while, let the landscape of computing change and you'll then realixe that they were the pioneer of future

 

[bystander]

You can't give a review about a products future, when you don't even know how that future product is going to perform. Mantle may be good, it may not be, it may even be spectacular, but at least for some time, it will barely be useable by anyone. You can't expect them to predict. That's the sign of a biased review, one that predicts the future based on nothing.

When Mantle is released, I'm sure they'll show BF4 Mantle performance in the review, which will result in different comparisons. Until then, you can't review R9 cards based on Mantle.

 

[lmaonade200]

when you build a computer, it's generally ill-advised to future proof when you cannot predict the future, so why would a computer hardware site go against advice that it likely gives out?

and you countered your own post with that last line: "but wait for a while, let the landscape of computing change and you'll then realixe that they were the pioneer of future"
so wait until it happens, then THW can report on it

 

[imran27]

Definitely no-one can predict the future, but you do have an indication of the direction in which the gaming and computing industry is moving, more and more softwares are starting to support gpu acceleration and multi-threading, I know that multi-threaded is advantage to AMD's big cores as well as Intel's i7's but since we also take into account the cost of that performance.
I'm surely not telling THW to predict future performance and I neither told to do so you can see I told future scope not performance. They should have mentioned the fact that software companies are starting to increase their thread counts and suppor for GPU accelerations. Just think that you saw a normal THW review of a product and it seems to support many things that are new and not prevalent and based on that THW says as of todat this is not best performing and you go out and buy a product that is lesser in spec bu better in perf as of today and after a few months, may-be a year most softwares are supporting that same tech that you rejected, so what do you do now?? Go out and buy a new part???
Future prospects are very important, like if someone is about to buy a dual-core I wouldn't suggest him because it has had its time has no future. Remember, GPU accelerated solutions are increasingly gaining popularity and in this region AMD has always been better. Gaming performance might be marginally less or more than the competition but the compute performance is far more better.

 

[lmaonade200]

but recently THW has done a good job of that, just look at it's R9 series reviews, the first look at the GCN graphics chips. They mentioned all the developer partnerships and everything, even something most people find trivial like TrueAudio.

Mantle cannot be commented on other than it's going to be used in future games because there are no real life instances of it being used yet :\

Also, I personally think THW gave a really good review for the R9 280x, it was practically glowing. And I totally understand why THW would recommend Intel over AMD for CPUs atm because they are much stronger, in benchmarks it's almost unfair, i5's handily beat the FX 8350 around even in applications that are touted to be "multithreaded," this will probably change in the future, but you can't exactly benchmark something that isn't happening yet.

Future prospects are important, but as a publication that is supposed to report on tech news, you can't go around playing with speculation, that's a surefire way to lose viewership. I mean you can say the same for Nvidia, their new Geforce 800 series is supposedly going to launch this year, and will have ARM CPU cores embedded in them for more raw computational power, but THW can't exactly write an article on that either because no one has seen what it can do, same with AMD features.

 

[rolli59]

It is funny to read all the comments here and see how many people were not around when AMD was the CPU performance king with the Athlon 64 and later the Athlon X2 and Intel only had NetBurst architecture. Same can be said about ATI's 9800PRO/XT cards and Nvidia trying to catch up with the FX5800 and the later improved FX5900. Then roles were totally reversed and people were bashing Tom's the other way around.

 

[Pedge]

I'm fairly new here, been lurking around the past 6/7 months but from what I have gathered from here and other sources;
AMD = Better performance/price ratio
NVIDIA = Better performance and *generally* more reliable
I have only tested my own system with a GTX 770 and R9 280x, while they are both very similar and trade blows in performance, the AMD card ran around 10-15°C hotter in the exact same environment. Now this is the only reliable data I have, but with others I have spoken to it tends to be a trend.

As mentioned before, in recent articles THW suggests getting a couple of AMD GPUs above NVIDIA, such as the high-end R9 series.

 

[bystander]

Definitely no-one can predict the future, but you do have an indication of the direction in which the gaming and computing industry is moving, more and more softwares are starting to support gpu acceleration and multi-threading, I know that multi-threaded is advantage to AMD's big cores as well as Intel's i7's but since we also take into account the cost of that performance.
I'm surely not telling THW to predict future performance and I neither told to do so you can see I told future scope not performance. They should have mentioned the fact that software companies are starting to increase their thread counts and suppor for GPU accelerations. Just think that you saw a normal THW review of a product and it seems to support many things that are new and not prevalent and based on that THW says as of todat this is not best performing and you go out and buy a product that is lesser in spec bu better in perf as of today and after a few months, may-be a year most softwares are supporting that same tech that you rejected, so what do you do now?? Go out and buy a new part???
Future prospects are very important, like if someone is about to buy a dual-core I wouldn't suggest him because it has had its time has no future. Remember, GPU accelerated solutions are increasingly gaining popularity and in this region AMD has always been better. Gaming performance might be marginally less or more than the competition but the compute performance is far more better.

But if you don't know how Mantle will change things, what can you say? And if Mantle is a huge smashing success, how many games will it support in the first 2 years? You probably won't see more than 4 this year. 4 games is just a drop in the bucket of games you'd buy. Is BF4 with Mantle support, when it comes out in a couple months, going to cause you to go out and buy a new GPU? Is 1 game worth that much to you?

As games show up with Mantle support, they will show up in reviews. They will show unbiased results.

 

[hypergon]

Nitrous engine has full mantle support and some titles are planned with it already, so mantle is a feature to consider...
Just have a look at the star swarm demo

 

[Mousemonkey]

Just have a look at the star swarm demo

And compare it to what? A standalone video that had a bit of animation in it but no with and without comparison seemed a tad pointless to me.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

As of this moment, there is no concrete proof on what mantle will actually do vs non mantle...they won't even tell what hardware they are using in their demos...does that not seem remotely shady to anyone???

 

[hypergon]

Those dudes here http://wccftech.com/amd-mantle-demo-game-gpubound-cpu-cut-2ghz/
Say that's a 290x and a 8350. Still something like a real time comparison with fps/CPU usage/etc. Would be less 'shady'...

 

[mr91]

I agree @ this point Mantle is just helping with their marketing - We will see what it does to BF4 in the near future however it could take years for a bug free experience that improves game play if Mantle survives. I hope I'm wrong because the more competition the better it's for us Gamer's...

 

[Avro Arrow]

I really don't see the bias of which you speak. I'm agnostic and want the best card for the money. For a long time that has been NVIDIA, but of late the performance of ATI at a much better price point, with the third party cooling solutions is quite compelling. That said, I would just as soon have an NVIDIA if it was priced well, EVGA if possible -- I have good memories of many of their cards. So I guess I have some bias, although I currently have an ATI in my main machine.

I unselected that BA -- I would hope that posters would allow the OP to pick the BA unless there was a clearly correct answer, which there never is for these types of threads.

Yeah, it's a strange thing. I wonder why Tomshardware allows it. I think it best answer selection like that should only be available for threads that are at least a week old. Even then, Yahoo! Answers voting system is for more effective at avoiding best answer trolling.

 

[rolli59]

I really don't see the bias of which you speak. I'm agnostic and want the best card for the money. For a long time that has been NVIDIA, but of late the performance of ATI at a much better price point, with the third party cooling solutions is quite compelling. That said, I would just as soon have an NVIDIA if it was priced well, EVGA if possible -- I have good memories of many of their cards. So I guess I have some bias, although I currently have an ATI in my main machine.

I unselected that BA -- I would hope that posters would allow the OP to pick the BA unless there was a clearly correct answer, which there never is for these types of threads.

Yeah, it's a strange thing. I wonder why Tomshardware allows it. I think it best answer selection like that should only be available for threads that are at least a week old. Even then, Yahoo! Answers voting system is for more effective at avoiding best answer trolling.

This has been discussed over and over again in the forum feedback with the community manager which does not want to change it. Only a few old timers chimed in and pretty much got ignored.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

A site like toms that reaches so many people is not biasis. They review what they get since by compaines. so If less amd cards are since that doesnt make them not like amd

 

[smeezekitty]

I really don't see the bias of which you speak. I'm agnostic and want the best card for the money. For a long time that has been NVIDIA, but of late the performance of ATI at a much better price point, with the third party cooling solutions is quite compelling. That said, I would just as soon have an NVIDIA if it was priced well, EVGA if possible -- I have good memories of many of their cards. So I guess I have some bias, although I currently have an ATI in my main machine.

I unselected that BA -- I would hope that posters would allow the OP to pick the BA unless there was a clearly correct answer, which there never is for these types of threads.

Yeah, it's a strange thing. I wonder why Tomshardware allows it. I think it best answer selection like that should only be available for threads that are at least a week old. Even then, Yahoo! Answers voting system is for more effective at avoiding best answer trolling.

+1
People other than the OP or maybe a mod should not be able to pick the best answer until atleast the thread is a few days old.

TH seems to be breaking things more and more

 

[sniper360]

This has got to be the funniest thread I've read in days. AMD from my noob-like viewpoint is that they are heading in a different direction with APU's and performance, but lacking the money it takes to put all the engineering together to make reliable software/updates. Tom's cannot be blamed for the differences. My current rig is all AMD (I've also had Intel). The AMD equipment overheats easily unless you buy extra goodies to keep it cool. Bottom line. Other than that, AMD is cheaper to performance in some models on the higher end. Next time I buy it will be Intel because more time has been put into testing/engineering/support.