Things I want in a review

[P5-133XL]

Anandtech rant

One of the things I most want to know about, in a tech review, are the gotcha's of which the above rant gives a plenty. I rarely see them in print, because of the number of reviews that are there simply to sell the product and not give a good critical review. It's all too common to do diligent research and then get gotten by a gotcha that should have been reported everywhere, but wasn't.

 

[time]

W o w.

Terrific link Mark, and I couldn't agree more with your sentiments.

 

[MaxBurn]

Isn't that the whole point of doing reviews, to find that stuff out so people can steer clear?

True, so many reviewers have sold out.

 

[LiamC]

But all reviews and that includes AnandTech's seem to be no more than fluff pieces these days. Props to Gary for writing it, but I bet it will be a one-off. Gary will toe the corporate line or leave.


On the same note, for the last three weeks I have been struggling with a Gigabyte issue. I bought a couple of unmanaged Gigabit switches (D-Link DGS-1005D). When I connect them up to my Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 rev 3.3 (F12 and F13i BIOS) motherboard, my SATA drives fail with a "Delayed write error". All the drives (Samsung HD-401LJ, HD-403LJ, WD 5000AAKS) pass all their respective full diagnostics. Disconnect the D-Link switch and use a Belkin Fast Ethernet switch and the problem does not occur. I have used the latest Marvell Yukon drivers from Gigabyte and the much more up-to-date drivers from Marvell and the issue still occurs.

I have had a ticket open at Gigabyte for nearly two weeks now, and it hasn't been read, let alone investigated.

No more Gigabyte for me...

 

[snowhiker]

AT article quality

Gary's article is a step in the right direction.

It seems a review site's article quality is INVERSELY proportional to the amount of advertising on the site and AT is a prime example. While AT is still a pretty decent site, it doesn't "seem" to be as "good" as it was 3, 4, 5, 6 years ago. It's seems that Anand has dialed back his direct involvement in the site and is just raking in the cash. And there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[ddrueding]

And there is nothing wrong with that.

I agree, but that means that the reader must perform due diligence to evaluate the credibility of the site. Considering a sites reputation lasts far longer than their quality, it makes it difficult to sort out.