By now you have probably realized that there is some commotion surrounding AMD's preview of their new Trinity chips. As you can see below, many sites chose to post this preview as it is new information, regardless of the limits that AMD required reviewers to submit to. Before you woke up this morning you did not have the knowledge you do now about Trinity's power consumption and gaming performance, for example Legit Reviews results, and on the 2nd you will get the rest of the results, which is not too far off in the future.
While limiting reviewers to a certain set of benchmarks for a preview is not a popular move for readers or writers, it is nothing new. From Kyle's take on NVIDIA's reviewers guide to the driver wars which have gone on and on and on for longer than it is easy to find links for; there is a dirty side to reviewing. Sometimes companies release new products and go out of their way to ensure that reviewers do not get their hands on before the products are for sale. Of course reviewers occasionally go out and buy those products and once they get them on their test benches it becomes obvious why the companies did not send out review samples. You don't have to like these practices, or accept them, but please realize that it is nothing new when you are lodging your complaints … and do lodge complaints to the manufacturers if you find yourself upset. Here at PC Perspective we want to give you all the information we can, even if it means we can only give it to you piecemeal, you do still get it.
"So far, it appears that these APUs have an advantage over Intel's Ivy Bridge processors when it comes to graphics. The new AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU in these APUs is clearly superior to the GPU found in equivalent and even more expensive Ivy Bridge processors. Additional tests will have to wait until October 2nd, as that is when AMD is allowing full reviews of the new 'Trinity' APUs…"
Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:
- AMD attempts to shape review content with staged release of info @ The Tech Report
- AMD A10 5800K Trinity APU preview @ Guru 3D
- AMD A10-5800K APU Preview (Virgo) @ HardwareHeaven
- AMD A10-5800K / A8-5600K review part one: Trinity for desktops @ Hardware.info
- AMD Trinity A10 5800k performance demonstration @ Kitguru
- AMD Trinity FM2 APU Preview @ techPowerUp
- AMD Trinity: An iGPU Performance Preview @ Bjorn3D
- AMD Trinity A10-5800K vs Intel Ivy Bridge i5-3470 – Discrete GPU Gaming Performance @ VR-Zone
- AMD Trinity APU A10-5800K & A8-5600K Preview @ Benchmark Reviews
- AMD A10-5800K & A8-5600K Review: Trinity on the Desktop, Part 1 @ AnandTech
- AMD's Trinity : An HTPC Perspective @ AnandTech
- Roundup: Intel Core i3 Processors with Ivy Bridge Microarchitecture @ X-bit Labs
- Roundup: Intel Core i5 Processors with Ivy Bridge Microarchitecture @ X-bit Labs
- A Complete List of CPU Sockets @ Hardware Secrets
What if “all the information”
What if “all the information” includes how controlled the article is. I guess I was upset because I always assumed great editors only publish truly independent articles. I admit I am naive now. I never truly understood how media work. I shouldn’t have applied the strict academia standard to media. You are not publishing a paper. After reading all the fray, I flipped my wrong assumption, and things don’t look so bad now. I guess I will still keep reading all the stuff just as before.
Though deep in my heart, I think we can be more transparent between us. For science. (omitted)
Btw, I believe many of you stayed up late last night to sort out this mess. Wish you a good sleep tonight.
I dont blame the reviewers.
I
I dont blame the reviewers.
I blame the Companies for being grimy.
Perhaps readers feel like reviewers have a closer relationship with these guys, and will somehow influence them to do the right thing.
For example; Ryan bringing up the lack of 3 or 4 way SLI support for the 670, i think got a ball rolling in NVIDIA the influenced them to change their mind.
https://pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/GTX-670-and-Case-Missing-and-Returning-4-Way-SLI-Support
It’s the first preview I’ve
It’s the first preview I’ve ever seen at pcper that reads like a review. You guys are my second favorite tech site after techreport. Please don’t compromise your integrity.
An APU is still primarily a CPU. You didn’t discuss CPU performance.
You want to know how to keep your integrity intact? Write a preview as detailed as you like, but do NOT comment on performance. Perform no benchmarks until you can perform any benchmarks you like.
Think about it Jeremy. Nvidia didn’t allow previews of fermi while blocking discussion on power consumption until the embargo. Nvidia didnt allow ‘previews’ of kepler while blocking gpu compute results until embargo. AMD didn’t allow previews of Radeon 7000 series with benchmarks while blocking discussion of drivers until the embargo.
I’m not angry, I’m not going to be rude, and I won’t troll you. But I’m disappointed in you guys.