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AMD withdraw KitGuru Fury X sample over ‘negative content’

AMD's upcoming Fury release next week has been much anticipated – the incredible level of global coverage so far gives a firm indication that this is indeed one of the most anticipated hardware launches of 2015. Many enthusiast gamers are hoping that AMD will become competitive again in the high end against Nvidia, and based on leaked results so far, it would appear this is going to be the case. KitGuru will however not be in a position to handle a launch review for our readership. I try to avoid the complex and frustrating politics which are heavily engrained within this industry, but sadly it is not always possible.
amd_radeon_fiji_card_unofficial
On the 11th June AMD informed us via email that the upcoming FIJI hardware was reserved for KitGuru, as would normally be the case. We subsequently set a plan in motion to analyse the hardware for launch and were awaiting the arrival of the sample. Earlier this week I had a call from Christine Brown, Senior Manager, EMEA Communications at AMD to let me know that the company had withdrawn their sample from KitGuru labs and that we would now not be involved at all in the launch next week.

Christine Browne informed me directly on the phone that the reason for withdrawing the sample was based on ‘KitGuru's negative stance towards AMD'. She said that with limited product they wanted to focus on giving the samples to publications that are ‘more positive' about AMD as a brand, and company. I was not informed during this call of anything we have published that was factually incorrect, we were also not told to edit or remove any content we had published. Based on what AMD had seen via KitGuru editorial in recent weeks it was felt that overall coverage was just too negative.

I did stress the point that KitGuru's news coverage of their ‘updated' 300 product range would in no way alter my ability to accurately analyse their hardware – after all I have been doing it for 13 years now. We approach all hardware reviews from a strictly neutral stance, and then work towards a conclusion, after many days of detailed analysis.

Due to their decision, KitGuru will be unable to deliver unbiased and detailed coverage of AMD's FIJI part to millions of readers on launch day. I will continue to try and work with AMD if I can, however I simply cannot let any company or corporation try and dictate or change our independent ability to cover news, or to share our opinions – even if this means losing product support for big hardware launches such as this.

If we become unable to share our genuine views and opinions out of fear of a company withdrawing product samples then I see no point in being here at all. KitGuru has always had an primary focus to our enthusiast readership and our goal is to deliver accurate and genuine buying advice.

On a brighter note, we currently still have the full support of AMD partners and will aim to deliver content on the new hardware, as soon as possible.

Allan ‘Zardon' Campbell.
Editor In Chief KitGuru.
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768 comments

  1. Those A$$holes killed my GTX 550 Ti by switching the Fans Off right in the middle of GTA 4.

  2. Truely Speaking,I used to own a GTX 550 Ti which was fried by a Driver Update.It switched off the Fans wight in the middle of GTA 4.

  3. Nvidia did it and it affected my GTX 550 Ti.

  4. kitguru is a specialized site, I think .ph4 mean there was no mainstream coverage about nvidia messing up like on msnbc or cnn. However I have seen them do stories about how AMD is failing and will soon lay off all employees for the last 15 years. Any story in mainstream media about AMD is about lost points in stock market or outsourcing their labor. I may be a little hyperbolic but this is my honest depiction of what I see going on.

  5. Seems like you have 8 nvidia fanboys upvoting you.

    “As a result of the backlash, Nvidia changed its policy
    to allow game developers access to the source code as of mid April of
    last year. However according to AMD, this did not alter the situation,
    as game developers engaged in the Nvidia GameWorks program were still
    not allowed to work with AMD to optimize the code for their hardware.
    Something which Nvidia initially denied but later Nvidia’s Tom Petersen and Rev Lebaradian admitted. Witcher 3 developers, CD Projekt Red, reaffirmed this again two days ago.”

    http://wccftech.com/nvidia-responds-witcher-3-gameworks-controversy/
    read before you write

  6. honestly i think its the card itself you’re not happy with as I have been reading lots of reviews suggesting to stay away from all AMD dual-cards.
    I had a 5770 and was going to get a 5970 or 6990 or 7990 but after i read the review and subsequent comments i decided to go for 7970 and I havn’t looked back yet

  7. Im getting the hang of this Logic stuff

  8. Excuse me but I had a 8120 on a gigabyte 990ud5 and I never had poor performance. win8

  9. pcper
    gpuboss
    Im sure you can find some with your natural nvidia bias.
    Its bound to happen. People are all about symbolism so when you connect to a brand it sticks.
    Anyone else thinks its weird that the rivalry in computer graphics happens in christmas colors? (red and green)
    I (passively) think its so that we all spend money every year on one company or another

  10. Say it again:
    “People don’t care about AMD”

    Now you know why there is such a heated debate about this.

    “nor do they care that they got the same product for 2-3 years with price in crease”
    Because the product they were developing was developed the opposite way nvidia releases their product.
    Nvidia focuses on top product and rolls two under the hurdle with it. eg 980, 970, 960
    Whereas AMD decides to build a concept, then increased the hardware on the concept, then reworks the software for the product.

    So by the third year of the “same product” you are generating much better result than you did with the “same product” just a year earlier.
    If you ask me the new age of microtransactions in games has led to companies release sub-par or unfinished products. As such, I think the companies who make the underlying hardware for those halfass developers to tinker with should be held to a higher standard or else they will go the way of “No Man’s Sky”

  11. I still think my fx8120(on gigabyte990ud5) was faster than my fx8370(sabertooth 990 r2.0)

  12. Comparatively speaking. If you saw the AMD defense mechanism back then: “the OS sucks, it doesn’t know how to use the processor properly” – but Intel *and* AMD’s older processors work fine.

    In fact, at the time, AMD’s Phenom IIs were performing better in a lot of workloads.

  13. Maybe you should google things yourself because the first 3 results got were people with nvidia gtx9xx talking about their sparking, smoking, burning cards.

    But honestly lmgtfy is the funniest thing i’ve seen all week and thanks to you sir.

  14. offered a 10% refund on a product that technically couldn’t be sold if advertised as produced.

    So essentially they pulled an AMD and brought a product to pre-sale before the information about the product could circulate and therefore “stealing” market share from AMD by consumers making “informed decisions” based on their “proprietary information”.

    As mentioned in plenty of reviews i have read, most people dont know the difference an therefore rely on Unified rating and Universal measurements.

    GB is a GB is a GB. You cant say you have 4000MBs when you only have 3500MB so why is it that when a competitors product is in direct competition for the first time in YEARS, they decide that 500MBs is irrelevant. If that was the case, we had 1GB ram sticks back in 2001.

    Oh ya and BTW

    http://www.ngohq.com/news/17926-nvidia-blacklists-website-for-posting-honest-reviews.html
    Nvidia blacklists the sites instead of refusing to send samples.

  15. I feel the same about everyone predicting that AMD will fail just so they can be on the winning side of a conversational debate.

  16. there are only about 8 people here who are as objective as you sir.

  17. If i buy a pc with 4 ram slots and 3 are 1 gb and the last is a 0.5. and the 0.5 doesnt work as well as the rest?
    Im taking out the 0.5
    Common sense.

  18. GrimmReaper WithaSpoon

    It couldn’t be. 8370 has (quite a bit) better IPC. Heck, even 8300 beats the 8150, let alone 8120.