Tomshardware finally sold out <rant>

silis

The bum.
Joined
19 Feb 2004
Messages
63
Ok.

I've been building computers for close to 12 years now. Much of the configurations I've built were based on advice from sites like tomshardware, sharkyextreme, firingsquad, hardocp, etc.. and recently, I was actually able to test an article [tomshardware] wrote. And from my independent tests, I have found that they are full of bull****, blah blah blah rant rant rant..

I wrote them an email concerning this, and SURPRISE!! no response. I was wondering if anyone else had problems with innacurate articles from hardware review sites. Anyways... on to my story.

If you read on tomshardware.com (motherboards section.. overclocking: 875 = 7205 + X. http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030429/index.html

You will find that [toms] claims that the Asus P4G8X mobo (granite bay, 7205 chipset) is capable or running at 800Mhz fsb. They even have screenshots of this. They claim that it will not only WORK... but that it works on STOCK parts.

Well.. this is where they are full of ****. It doesn't work. :mad:

Last Christmas, I purchased a shiney new asus mobo (p4g8x) and with the intent of upgrading the CPU, bought fast ram. Really fast ram. (Kingston blah blah..) Check my sig.... you can see the system I bought. As you obviously can tell, this all runs at 533fsb with the possibility of running much faster. According to toms, they pushed my system (with mega cooling) to 4.1Ghz stable - so they claim... who's going to argue???

I just bought a 3.0c to see if it would work in my system. Of COURSE it does... just not at 800fsb.. (from now on, i'll state teh true fsb... not this quad crap intel uses... 200Mhz fsb = 800fsb quad) Well, i've done some serious overclocking in my past (remember the old cels??) and as such, I have some know-how on overclocking the fsb (and tweaking the mem timings.).

Anyways. the FASTEST the system will RUN, even if for a short time. is ~178. The FASTEST the sytem will Boot (not completely to windows though...) is ~194. And the kicker is that i swapped the cooler on my northbridge from passive to active.

I even followed the steps THEY used... (after my own testing of course :))

UGH... at least I was able to sell the 3.0c cpu.

Any others call the bluff on some of these sites???


OT: That ram acutally will run at 1.5... I couldn't figure out why about 2-5 times/month my games would crash (mostly Diablo 2) - found out I had tweaked my ram to 1.5 and forgot to change it back... now at 2.0, everything runs fine. no crashes yet..
 
damn. they changed the front page of their article to state 180 top speed... read on and you will see the bit about their claims of 200... jump to the conclusion...

at least they fixed one of the pages in the article.. a day f*cking late and a dollar short.
 
Guys, overclocking is a crap shoot. You get a die (cpu or chipset) made on a good day it overclocks sweet. You get one from a bad day and it runs hot at rated speeds. No guarantees.

If you read the articles on Toms they often tell you they had to hand select parts to make a certain speed.

PS Every test house sells out. They have to or they don't get anymore free boards to test. Read the reviews. How often do you see "This Part is a POS never buy one". They allways wealse word revieews and if something is inferior they talk about "special features and bundled HW & SW".

Read the reviews for the technical content and form your own techical conclusions.
 
Heh. yea. good point. It just really pissed my off they threw their bit out with "concrete evidence". Its a good thing this was the only thing I've every really listened to. I mostly just read for the info about new stuff.. At least they fixed the first page in the article......
 
tom's has been crap for ages... I just read them for non cpu/video card related reviews... no use for anything else...

as for oc'ing... its always a shot in the dark.. no real guarantees...
 
I was gonna say that they sell out to the other side every couple of weeks :D
 
Speaking of them selling out is it just me or have they taken on a concilliatory tone towards Intel when AMD has a better product? They used to gloat about it.
 
if u ask me all review places are crap last time i trusted a review was 3 yrs ago i was tryin to build up a decent system then everyone of them went go this particular asus mobo even friends were saying it soo i got it and it was nuthing but a lemon, never did anything that it was supposed to it was amazing the power went to it thats how stable it was even when i replaces with a mates parts everything on it to c if it was a compatibility problem i was lucky i was able to get my money back after jumping down the suppliers throat n threatening them with legal action after you take your product back and they dont even wanna know ya or even look at it.

soo yeh thats my 5cents worth :p

i recon the only way to find out whether something is decent nowadays is to be able to c it in action whether it is muking around with a friends component etc as reviews as we all know mean nothing today, hell i could make up my own site and make up fake reviews :p
 
Umm, actually the best way is to post in here and see what experience the members have had. If there is a POS out there we hear about it eventually.
 
I know overclocking is good an all and it's a cool way to get free speed but don't you think some people go on about it to much, especialy toms hardware. Infact, my sisters husband actualy underclocks his cpu, not much though it would run stabler because it would be cooler (I know, add more cooling when you overclock). Though don't you think it's all getting a bit silly now.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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