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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.
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week I had a call from Christine Brown, Senior Manager, EMEA Communications at AMD to let me know that the company had withdrawn their sample from KitGuru labs and that we would now not be involved at all in the launch next week.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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Wow. Good going AMD at destroying your reputation. Honestly, can they not resist one week without taking a good annoucement and driving it into the ground.
Well Kitguru has always been negative to AMD. Yes current AMD cards offer less performance BUT they are a lot cheaper – so there is no point of telling people they have less performance again and again. The price/performance ratio is fine. No need to talk about AMD negative again and again.
haha, they cannot afford any negative press. Their entire future hinges on the success of HBM, Fury, and Zen.
so what amd are saying really is we say jump you say how high or no products for you, pathetic
Screw you AMD. Talk about creating biased reviews for your products.
You should give samples to everyone, creating a more balanced reviewer base for the new GPUs.
This is very dissappointing to read about
not at all. read again. they gave no conditions and neither asked for any article to be removed or edited in any way. i dislike them not giving any samples but it is still better than companies who do this and then demand you take down articles they view as negative
Well to be fair, the 970 price / performance / power consumption / temperatures were all just amazing…AMD is also very well known for their bad drivers, lack of support, and even in the witcher story where they blamed Nvidia for their poor performance, after having ignored the company for a year that was actively trying to contact them….
Saying that they have less performance against [competitor’s card] isn’t talking negative if that’s the case. It’s putting forward a fact, and that fact should be stated in reviews that pit AMD cards against the competition.
If KitGuru didn’t state that, then they wouldn’t be unbiased.
That’s disappointing. I’ve been an AMD fan for a long time. If they’re really basing review samples on previous reviews…wow.
Bravo for your stance KG, I applaud it. Don’t let these dicks push you around 8) As for AMD, you’re doing it allllllllllll wrong guys!! Last thing you need is negative publicity for being douche’s, that’s nVidia’s job 😀 I just crossed Zen off my list (and the multitude of gaming systems I build a year and advice I give!!)
but they are still are trying to coerce kitguru and other reviewers into producing biased reviews
Actually is not only the Witcher 3.
Have you ever heard of nVidia Gameworks?
It’s only nVidia optimized so on AMD card the performance is shitty.
Negative is OK.
Fags is not.
Except the only piece of GameWorks tech in Witcher 3 is OPTIONAL.
Lel AMD.
Just tweeted @amd_roy this url, hopefully he can get someone with common sense involved…
They will get the sample from AIB sooner or later 😉
“NVIDIA HairWorks for stunningly realistic fur and hair that moves with the creatures movement as well as environmental effects such wind. Clothing on the monsters and Geralt move naturally even in the midst of battle. Flags, banners, and drapes that décor the towns buildings wave in the wind or with Geralt’s swinging sword nearby”
PhysX Clothing:
• Geralt’s Clothing
• Monsters
• Flags, Draperies, Banners, Curtains
• Boat sails
NVIDIA HairWorks:
• Geralt’s hair and beard
• Monsters hair
• Bears, Wolves, Horses
GameWorks Destruction:
• Fences
• Barrels
• Furniture
• And much more!
NVIDIA HBAO+:
• More accurate, more detailed Ambient Occlusion shadowing in every scene
PhysX in Witcher 3 is CPU based. HairWorks and HBAO+ are optional. Destruction = PhysX.
Say what? I bought my Sapphire R9 290X 8GB based on the review here and I come here for all my AMD news as its very unbiased and the reviews are great. wow, what a loss, I don’t trust many review sites, but Zardon’s reviews are great. this is very surprising – I always considering KG and AMD to have a good relationship as they get everything to review, and do it well.
I never felt Kitguru a biased reviewer and what happened is unfortunate. Biased reviewers that come to my mind is Tom’s hardware and the now rip Xbitlabs rest are ok atleast.
i doubt that’s it. if that were they case they would have made demands. it could be that they really have very few cards for press and reviewers and prefer to give them to people who are a bit more optimistic about amd.
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/367qav/mark_my_word_if_we_dont_stop_the_nvidia_gameworks/
This happened with every GameWorks videogames,in particular Watch Dogs (that was the only game that Titan Z was performing better than R9 295X2).
Pcper, legit reviews also come to my mind. Those nvidia marketing sites should recieve lifetime ban.
Well, there are point to be negative against AMD products. CPU and GPU´s are so behind from market leaders. Okay, new GPU´s might be great after many years but what i fear is drivers. AMD may have good products with decent price but drivers sucks big time. I only hope they get great cards now cause that push pressure on Nvidia and all that is good for “us” 🙂
You can’t blame them really. There are a few big publications firmly in the Green camp who make it really hard for AMD to gain positive perception for their products. They can’t afford (literally) to let that happen on a large scale this time as this is a precarious moment in the company’s history.
Optimising for 1 architecture =/= sabotaging another architecture. Watch Dogs was a completely shit optimized game anyway. And AMD had no driver for W3 for weeks and weeks.
This is still a negative direction of the AMD image. In the past Nvidia and other companies got flamed for similar behavior. Now when AMD does it, why would it be OK? Really not the way to gain trust by customers and review sites!
The only thing I can think of is where the benchmarks are being done and typically AMDs best ones are only included in power usage, thermals and noise. Alot of places then phase these cards out in the FPS on games. I have seen that on several comparisons (I have been looking for to long to recall if kitguru did). Still very surprised that they removed support though
Unfortunately AMD is well known for doing this to what it perceives as the smaller review sites. Often being negative to them is just not publishing news about their marketing pushes and little reveals into the run up of the cards to produce hype. Alienbabeltech.com was basically killed off by this move by AMD as they couldn’t get traffic after AMD refused to produce hardware due to negative coverage (coverage incidentally around the frame time scandal that they later admitted was a real problem and subsequently fixed).
I applaud your stance on this matter KitGuru. One can assume that anyone that IS involved in this AMD launch hardware to review this go-round isn’t as objective in their hardware analysis.
AMD does make a big mistake here! The situation has several problems for them. I try to name a few ideas:
1.) AMD can not deliver HBM in sufficient quantities and is now cutting several review sites. They combine this with reputed journalists who are not biased or blinded and report the truth.
2.) The ‘new’ 300-series is literally nothing but a 200-series with slightly higher clocks and more RAM attached. This could result in a serious image loss, so AMD might try to do as much damage control as possible. Everyone who states this truth is on their list in my opinion. Sad because AMD could have avoided this situation themselves with really updated products.
3.) AMD behaves as if they were the market leader. With roughly 20% market share the reality looks otherwise. Now is the time to gain trust, not to try some monopolist tactics.
I don’t get it at all! What do the guys of AMD hope to gain from this? A serious journalist will never let himself blackmail. Though I do understand that AMD is on the verge of dying if their Fiji and Zen products do not hit big. To shun the IT-press will not gain them any traction at all. Well, the attempt could make it worse.
Their hopes for the future hang on a small thread. HBM could be overhyped and not as good as claimed in generation 1. Fury is too expensive for the average gamer and Zen is too far away to be relevant soon.
If you look at this startingposition, it makes it really hard to stay optimistic. AMD will most likely fight with their teeth if necessary. But I am not entirely sure if they know who their real enemy is.
AMD recieves a lot of negative press for a single little mistake they make, while nvidia casually lies about 970 specs to review sites and public, gimps kepler performance in drivers just to show maxwell performance in a better light, disables OC in gaming laptops which were specifically advertised for overclocking. Where are all those news? Yeah swept under the rug.
AMD wants to improve their image. They cannot do that if “professional” review sites keep spewing nonsense about AMD cards running hot (aftermarket cards disagree for more than a year now), inferior drivers which is also not true (single configuration is actually more stable atm than nvidias drivers, cfx lags behind).
Where are the FCAT results? You know the crusade everyone started when nvidia had “smoother” gameplay. Frametimes on AMD cards are MUCH BETTER than on nvidia 9xx series now and FCAT test suddenly dissapeared.
Props to AMD, I’d give lifetime ban to PCPER, legit review, toms hardware and a few other shill sites.
… and I really considered to go back to the Red-Team, but that is now a big NO-GO for me and hopefully plenty of other users as well !
Any reviewer want to be one of the first to cover new hardware. Traffic to the site will also drop greatly the more time they have to postpone the reviews while waiting for samples from other sources
well this post is proof that AMD is right about negativity about AMD as a brand
Quite right Kitguru.
Okay what exactly happened to warrant this kind of behavior from amd? And tbh when it comes to bad pr, amd is a saint compared to nvidia
Pathetic AMD is underdog, releasig mainly slides, delays and rejection their own ‘revolutionary inventions’, like mantle, truform, 3dnow, and many others. They WANT that press will perceive all of this as bright future and awesome news. These liars can cheat ourselves (as they do non-stop), but not us
yeah nvidia is so honest, and u are not a fanboy at all
Just because you didn’t read something doesn’t mean it wasn’t reported on. Nvidia disables overclocking in laptops: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-disables-overclocking-of-geforce-gtx-900m-graphics-adapters/
Nvidia refuses to admit guilt with GTX 970 fiasco: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-will-not-admit-guilt-of-the-geforce-gtx-970-scandal/
KitGuru has also taken a look at almost all of the aftermarket 200-series boards and praised many of the top performing coolers. The reviews are easy enough to find…
Aren’t you falling into a apology stance too much? In the past AMD was never perfect. They always had some flaws here and there and that is OK. We got their products cheaper than the competition and the potential buyer could decide which was more important to him.
All the review sites did was to work out the differences between the products and come to a conclusion. The buyer could agree with this or not. So far so good! Now suddenly AMD wants to present themselve as premium brand and claims to be equal or better than the competition. This is so very untrue because they still have lots of flaws from their “underdog-days” and seem to not work them out properly or fix them entirely.
If a company wants the premium status, there are no spots for tolerance. The customer wants a flawless product for the money he pays. When the same company says “hey, we are premium but you are not allowed to rate us”…. it’s so wrong on every level. Strangely enough Tom’s Hardware and PcPerspective are sites which put alot of work into their articles. The deeper they dig, the worse for companies as AMD.
The press was always negative towards AMD. I wanted to see AMD doing this to some sites, but I was expecting to read this article at Tom’s Hardware site, not KitGuru.
Anyway the press was always covering up Nvidia and Intel, attacking AMD in every way possible. AMD should have started doing it far earlier. A few lawsuits would also be nice. I just don’t know if it is justified in the case of KitGuru.
PS I am not attacking the freedom of the press. I am attacking the biased stance of the press with AMD being the favorite punching bag for every f$^&&%$^*() hardware site and at the same time they where kissing Nvidia’s A $ $.
JMO
AMD’s philosophy is ‘if you don’t like your image, destroy the mirror’
It is better to wait few days more, for true unbiased benchmarks.
That could partially be the case but AMD said in black and white the reason KG wouldn’t get any new GPU hardware was because they had been negative towards them (AMD).
Do they still have any reputation ? Doubt
AMD is a pice of junk anyway….. crappy designs that eat power like nothing.. 275w.. you must be joking.
No, not really! AMD has pulled back their early samples as some forms of bait. The tech-sites have to change their style to match the wishes of AMD (=not neutral / unbiased).
Worst aspect here is that AMD did not even state what was wrong. So the tech-sites have to write in general more “positive” about AMD products to gain their samples back in theory. But then AMD could take them away again and the game continues forever.
AMD practically tries to influence the review sites and this is not what we want. If there are negatives about a product I want to know about them, not be fooled by some company bribes.
Return this R9 280X 8GB. AMD says that review was negative, and you were probably cheated by reading benchmarks here.
I always liked AMD, I have a “dragon” system at home (ah yes the funny names from the past) and I remember the strong armed tactics Intel used and ended up getting a billion dollar fine over.
But this is very poor of AMD, I wasn’t happy with all the re-brands but pulling review models to threatening people into giving a positive spin on products is outrageous. A Boo to you AMD.
http://www.gamestar.de/hardware/grafikkarten/amd-radeon-r9-390x/test/radeon_r9_390x,889,3087218.html
german gamer website predicts : shitstorm is brewing
amd is doing this to a lot of sites not just Kitguru ..
http://www.eteknix.com/things-go-from-bad-to-worse-for-reviews-of-amd-radeon-fury-x/
I don’t understand this move from AMD. KitGuru has been more excited than ever for AMD with the launch of Fiji line up. And yes AMD did some negative stuff like rebranding 2011 Graphic Cards, slow unoptimized driver updates, slow product release, cut down in R&D and release of uncompetitive products.
Its a great card, love it. I was waiting on the 390X review of the new Sapphire card here. I hope they even get that. Why would AMD do this? I came here from Tomshardware as their reviews lately are bad. been reading KitGuru for 18 months and I love it. Wanted FIJI but knew it would be too expensive for me. Now I will never know if its going to be good – I only trust a few review sites.
the 300 series is just a rebranding with more memory.
AMD bulldozer all over.. shitty design that needs a lot of power.
cut ur crap nvidia fag !!
Yeah Nvidia is good at sweeping it’s failures under the rug while giving some money under the table for good “reviews” and all of the paid shills that came out to defend nvidia during the 3.5GB fiasco
I’m following several review sites, but if I have to honestly think about it, I’m actually reading only here at KitGuru. In the other sites I just look at the benchmarks. Bad move by AMD.
Have you seen eteknix’s articles the last days? They are not just negative, they are full of attacks on AMD.
As I point out in my post there, they betray themselves for that negative stance the last days when they say that they already knew they where not getting a sample. So, just because of that they attack AMD in numerous articles with titles full of irony. Now, when a publication is willingly attacking a company, throwing objectivity out of the window, just because they are not going to get a sample, what can we think about them? Can we trust them?
I am fan of AMD, but when I am posting news about Nvidia or Intel hardware in a hardware forum that I am posting, I keep my opinions away from the news. They seem to be unable to do that.
JMO
KitGuru did a negative news story on the 3.5 GB fiasco. Why do you have to go “nVidia does shit” way too instead of acknowledging that what AMD is doing is wrong?
lol… I am getting a 2nd Titan X instead… sounds like I won’t get a chance to get one since I live in NZ.. limited product .. was going to get a Fury X when it launches.
If only there was a point when they could regain a lot of market from nVidia… Any point in time recently that nVidia may have screwed up *cough* 3.5 gb *cough*.
yeah me too, I was excited about the launches, now I really feel let down and deflated about it all. very depressing a company I love acts like this with the good sites like Kitguru.
Well if you look closely enough KitGuru has been always leaning towards non positive feedback about amd products. I don’t think amd will just tell you guys what they said without valid reason. Somehow you guys messed up somewhere. I’m not defending AMD whatsoever, they have been under scrutiny lately and most reviewers say how garbage their products are. You can’t blame them since everybody is persuaded by nvidia how great their cards are and no fault i.e. like hidding the Gimp 3.5gb RAM. Lol nvidia told you guys not to use certain games during benchmark for a reason and most reviewers followed. By the sound of it, AMD just told you are not getting card because they feel you guys are not good enough at this point to review their cards. They didn’t telly you by any chance to hype their card review if they give it to you, am I right? If AMD did then thats a different story.
i fully agree .. i just cant understand y no reviewer out there noticed that 3.5 gb vram .. how strange !!!!!!
Do you know a better tactic for negative reviewers? Give them something they can’t say anything negative about. Because whatever AMD boasted around recently was “low power, good price, good performance, good temperatures” – so nothing negative to be said… or is it? They’ve been “a punching bag”? Well… are you a fanboy? If they are called out on their bad decisions I see nothing wrong in doing so. Or do you think reviewer should shut up and say nothing if it’s negative? 🙂
Well watch this:
https://vimeo.com/130535984
And then JUDGE.
Bad journalism at its best.
Nvidia will not admit guilt of the GeForce GTX 970 scandal
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-will-not-admit-guilt-of-the-geforce-gtx-970-scandal/
Wasn’t singling out a site just saying in general it seems everyone wants to pick on AMD lately
Are you serious? I bought my Sapphire R9 290X 8GB here based on the reviews! they gave AMD partners loads of good reviews and said they never liked AMD reference coolers. I agree. I don’t think you even read this site at all, which is terrible as you are just spouting nonsense! KitGuru also pointed out about the GTX970 scandal. No review site found out about that, as it was so difficult, they aren’t engineers. Tech Power up wrote GPUz and they didn’t know either.
Nvidia will not admit guilt of the GeForce GTX 970 scandal http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-will-not-admit-guilt-of-the-geforce-gtx-970-scandal/
amd r not the richest company out there at this moment .. so i think they r doing rather well with whatever resource they have …
If AMD is as stupid to release the same products they had from 2011 to 2013 again (Tonga aside), they deserve this criticism. The GTX970 is not a pleasant issue, but it is only one card not an entire line-up. The difference is miles apart.
The TitanX has been shown to go up to 100 degrees and draws a crap ton of power at the same time.
If nVidia does wrong we pick on them. Maybe you’ve forgotten Titan’s launch (not Titan X). nVidia wasn’t sending samples to anyone, they got all the sh*t from the community they could get. 3.5 gb fiasco? Same story. A lot of people were ready to switch to AMD because of that one, but AMD didn’t have anything ready at the time. This time AMD screwed big time (bigger than Titan’s one because on that one nVidia just didn’t send samples to anyone, not just to reviewers that are negative towards them), you expect the community to not give them sh*t? …
Well IMO they should abandon the processor market if Zen doesn’t turn out a beast and just get acquired by some other company and continue to make GPUs exclusively. That’s where they give more of a fight.
It’s good to see AMD are taking an active view over the blogs out there. Good move by AMD. It’s always tough with biased bloggers, people will picks sides. I don’t have Nvidia or AMD parts, however I can’t help but notice just how ridiculously biased most bloggers are towards Nvidia, matched only by the comments section. To the point that AMD can release these new, fairly priced, water cooled, great products…yet most blogs will just point out the 300 range rehash…even though that rehash appears to perform well at the price point with Nvidia products…it’s almost comical to hear people bash AMD. So anyway good move AMD, there are definitely enough bloggers /web pages out there with biased views – no need to support just one more. Fury is a great product – worthy of any companies production. I’m pretty sure everyone should be happy, Nvidia will catch up with HBM and we should be happy about that too.
And yet unlike Nvidia AMD’s GCN still competes with Nvidias line up today while being compatible with DX12 unlike the 700 series that Nvidia has basically thrown into the trash. The 390 directly competes with the 970 and is better in some cases and the 390x competes with the 980 with the Fury variants going after the 980 ti/Titan
Well , what was Negative stance?
You expect them to say straight forward “you have to take down this and this and we’ll send you a sample”? You know as well as them that KitGuru would share their demands with the community instead of taking down articles and the community will go crazy over this. In the corporate world threats and demands are not given straight forward, they are hinted and sugar coated. “Because of negativity you won’t get a sample” – that you can translate into “If you don’t start giving more positive reviews you won’t get samples next time too”. 🙂
They are shooting themselves
This must delude you a bit now, but stay classy:
-The only factor AMD is competing against Nvidia (or Intel) is …. TADA “price”. They offer stoneage old chips which are only good because we stayed at the 28nm process nodes. When people talk about AMD, they only mean “price per FPS”. With this all other technical aspects are left aside and yes then and only then AMD is competitive.
Take away the lower price and they are technically vastly behind in every aspect. You can talk about this all you want, yet the facts stay true.
Dam what a bad move from AMD D:
Can you provide a translation of the relevant part?
http://www.eteknix.com/r9-fury-perfect-for-the-living-room-we-dont-think-so/
http://www.eteknix.com/amd-has-no-faith-in-its-own-processors/
much more.
Just go on http://www.eteknix.com/ and you will 100% find more.
Why? Because KitGuru didn’t keep quiet about their practice? Lmao…
A good move.
Kitguru probably said the truth about the 300-rebrands as every unbiased side should. AMD made a bad move there and now AMD attempts to redo it attacking the IT-press responsible for doing their job. It’s full self-destruct course ahead.
There will always be excuses for negativity in articles. There is no such thing as perfect hardware, so you can always find something.
The thing is that, the press usually uses double standards and most of the times uses the smaller firm as a punching bag so to sell “objectivity” to the reader, and then kiss the strongest company’s A $ $. Do you believe that if Intel or Nvidia where doing something like this, sites like KitGuru or eteknix could come out with articles like these? To tell you the truth I am not 100% certain that the above dialog is without second thoughts 100% accurate. And if it was Nvidia or Intel in AMD’s position, in my opinion, publications would have kept it a secret from their readers and try to convince the companies that will behave in the future.
And yes AMD is a punching bag. If you can’t find any examples all these last years, then I will have to turn the question back to you. Are you a fanboy?
JMO
For some sites (not KitGuru) it’s a good move.
Kitguru deserved it …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFWgc8qjQwk
Yes those last articles at eteknix, in my opinion, show that they will throw objectivity out of the window really easily.
Facts are never the issue. Wording is.
Talk shit about a company, even if your facts are correct and you won’t get a nice response back.
Why is it that people think you can word stuff the way YOU THINK is correct and never take into account the other end? Even more, I think Kitguru did it on purpose to get hit counts (revenue, right?), so you just have to suck it up now and let that be a lesson for the Editorial fellas who decide to let these sort of things go through.
Cheers!
this sounds a little fishy if you ask me.
NVIDIA ✔@nvidia
@charles_6835 DirectX 12 is coming to all Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell GPUs – so your GTX Titan is compatible! http://nvda.ly/HIT6O
11:19 PM – 21 Jan 2015
Fermi is the 500 series. Your point…?
AMD is a punching bag and they deserve it. If you claim to bring a 4k-card which does Displayport 1.2a only and not even support HDMI 2.0, no wonder they get a beating. Strategies like that are utterly fail. AMD is full of such surprise boxes since quite some time.
Every time they do such a stunt, they get a pounding. Failures as this are to be addressed and critisized by the press. It is AMD’s own fault if they do not fix those problems in forefront of a release. Everyone tells them over and over. If someone doesn’t listen at all, they are not allowed to complain.
Nah, it’s already known that they hit the bottleneck in 4GB shown from WCCFtech benchmark release.
All the crazy titles that consume over 4GB vRAM AA setting was toned down using FXAA or something else.
Never the less it’s a good card but we’ll see a TRUE review without all the toned down stuff.
Nah, AMD is just miffed that their bad trick with the 300-series rebrands did not work. It is no wonder the IT-press runs amok if a company tries to fool them openly. AMD did similar stunts in the past but this time it will bite them back seriously.
Well that’s instantly biased all future reviews of that card and anything else from AMD. Are they saying good things just because AMD might refuse them a review piece in the future? Who knows.
You think KitGuru would take sh*t from nVidia or Intel? Guess again. If one of those companies did what AMD did now, we’d see another article like this, this time around about nVidia/Intel. Companies depend a lot on the reviewers and journalists, not the other way around.
As a customer, I want unbiased reviews without shifting goalposts. I also love how most of the review sites ignore Mantle in their BF4 benchmarks and test it with DX11 but when it comes to gameworks title, they include hairworks and all that blackbox fluff which we all know gimps AMD cards and taints the overall picture of the cards. It’s all about the initial reviews. There’s also AMD to blame for releasing game ready drivers a bit late in some ocasions. But there’s a lot of positive stuff about AMD cards that never gets mentioned. I never said AMD is perfect.
As you can see 290 and 290x were/are premium products, but their image got tainted because review sites kept using results from reference cards even though aftermarket ones were out. 3xx reviews prove that. And these cards sold at 250-350$, that’s how much undervalued the cards were. AND STILL, sites kept recommending GTX 970 (such a great cards btw) and that overpriced turd of GTX 980. These same cards with clock bump and minor tweaks compete with new nvidia cards. I own cards from both camps. I buy whatever provides me the most performance/$
well it’s their own product and they can do what ever they want with it. whining about not getting samples of a product is just plain greedy and stupid. if you “JOURNALISTS” really want to review products, then purchase it. i mean come on….
So, HDMI 2.0 is a disaster and a good reason to attack the company because 100% of enthusiasts and gamers are using 4K TVs and not fast monitors? OK. Let’s swallow this one.
Can you please show me the articles where they point out that Nvidia’s HDMI 2.0 is not exactly the one they advertise? That they did a kind of trick to get 60Hz but with inferior quality?
Can you point out the article about using DP 1.2 and not 1.2a so they can lock their customers on GSync?
There where articles about AMD not giving an WHQL driver the last 6 months, ignoring the fact that there are beta drivers that they are stable. The articles have gone that far as putting AMD with one foot in the grave. Can you show me the article where it says that the latest drivers from Nvidia are full of bugs for all the series that lead to crushes in games and browsing, plus the problematic performance with 700 series? The fact that Nviia is forced to come out with a new hotfix driver every 15 days is promoted by the press as something good.
Can you remember the stance the press took with 970;s fiasco. They where copy pasting whatever Nvida’s marketing department was saying.
Give me a break OK. I could thing many other things, but I am afraid it will be just a waste of time.
You name lots of bad topics, but many of those are inhouse-made. This is not a issue of Nvidia but AMD! Keep in mind that most of the entertaining devices are HDMI based. All new TVs (soon BR-players) already feature HDMI 2.0.
At the same time AMD praises their hardware for 4k and HTPCs.. yeah without HDCP 2.2? Will be fun! I see this is useless to discuss with you…
Reality check, it was AMD who did this embargo and it is not their first time doing it either. Don’t apologize what is never to be apologized.
No we wouldn’t. The 970 fiasco and the way the press helped Nvidia with damage control proved that in my opinion. That was so obvious, that only Nvidia’s fanboys could not see it.
So, what is untrue about this video?
-Didn’t AMD rebrand their 200-series? Yes, they did!
-Isn’t Fiji too expensive for the average gamer? Of course it is!
-Isn’t this whole pre-release a farce and ridiculous? You bet!
If this is bad journalism to you, better go to other sides who do not tell you the whole truth.
Got flamed my ass. When the 970 fiasco came around, people still supported the GPU, saying it’s not a problem bla bla bla.
It has always been a game of who is ahead of the other guy.
Just look back at past reviews, and see how many times AMD had the power consumption advantage. Apparently it has become the most important thing now that Nvidia is finally ahead in power consumption. :p
GCN is a far more advanced architecture than Maxwell, whether you like it or not. If you don’t agree with that, I recommend you start reading up on the architecture.
Nvidia mainly has an advantage over AMD on the gaming side through removing double precision compute from the arch, controlling compute units in smaller groups and increasing throughput with less resources. (cache improvements)
Less advanced, more efficient.
You don’t get it. When AMD makes a mistake, it’s all hell and chaos about it. When nVidia does it, no one gives a shit.
Maybe nVidia pays better? 🙂
Where do you get these facts from? 20% of the market share? I hope you don’t mean 20% of discrete gpu’s as you would be wrong. Could you tell me how you know AMD can’t deliver enough gpu’s ? Do you work at AMD? For all we know it could be easier to produce cards with HMB
How could they claim Kitguru is biased… no this video cleary is not biased. https://vimeo.com/130535984
At the end of the day, AMD have consistently shot themselves in the foot recently, hence all the difficult and tense press that has been going around. If AMD are going to release re-brands they should expect critical opinion. If they are not going to innovate the best they can, they should expect critical opinion. If they are going leave people in the dark above drivers and offer terrible support, the community will get pissed off; Oh – and they should expect critical opinion. This isn’t rocket science folks. AMD thinks this industry as green fields with money falling from the sky, yet they fail to realize that it’s their internal issues and company image which are causing the larger problems. AMD forcing this upon KitGuru shows how little integrity and belief they have in their products. We don’t learn from the positives in life. We learn from our mistakes and criticism, and this should apply to AMD too.
And no, I’m not an Nvidia fangirl.
Here’s a question, why should any developer give samples of anything to anyone? There is absolutely no moral or ethical obligation for AMD to give samples to media outlets. It’s nothing more than marketing, getting the buzz out, and as a developer you want that buzz to be positive. Of course, if you’re to obvious in the outlets you select, then that becomes bad marketing as well. But AMD should not have to provide samples to just anyone, especially not if some of those outlets are being way too critical for no good reason.
If you want to show that you as a media outlet are unbiased, you pay for the product yourself.
There are research and rating institutes out there who publish the numbers every quarter. One of them is John Peddie Research (JPR) who do this frequently. The last numbers state Nvidia had around 77% and AMD ~22% market share for discrete graphic cards.
It is not who delivers but the actual sales. AMD has more than enough of the 200-series in stock because of the bitcoin-crazy in 2014. Problem for them is nobody buys the 200-cards any more but for the extrem low firesale prices.
Now they released the same cards as 300-numbers. Kitguru and other sites stated how unpleasant this is for AMD and in my opinion AMd is miffed about this. To ban release samples to these sites is childish and highly unprofessional.
What you just said makes no sense. KitGuru has reported on mistakes made by both AMD and Nvidia so clearly, they aren’t afraid to call out either company. It is not KitGuru’s fault if the general public reacted differently to news reports surrounding AMD compared to Nvidia.
This guy knows it.
Even jayztwocents did a several nVidia vs AMD videos, and quoted it himself:
AMD’s computational power is far superior to nVidia’s.
(source: /watch?v=0W-5qpLyBpA, 3:50)
So, correct me if im wrong, but KitGuru reports the truth about the ‘new’ 300-series being rebrands of the 200-series, and they get told by AMD that they publish ‘negative content’? When the truth hurts, dont blame the messenger, look at yourself.
Kitguru: Intel and NVidia fanboyz GET SHUT DOWN!!!!
Keep up your yellow journalism and soon nobody will send you samples.
Try reporting FACTS rather than OPINIONS.
AMD may have some *sick* hardware. To bad its all wasted due to there lack of driver for WIndows, Linux, OS X… There last Full Driver update was in Oct 2014, and boy do they have a huge habbit of crashing out of no-where, and even bsod the system.. We won’t even talk about AMD and *nix Support
EXACTLY!!!
Maybe as readers we need to follow AMD’s example and just leave!
AMD is desperate. The Fiji cards are their last hope to get back on their feet and they don’t want the usual AMD-bashing that goes on in the media to ruin it. I don’t agree with their methods, but I somewhat understand them.
I heard about all those things plenty of times, tbh I’ve heard much more negative press in terms of shady practices from nvidia (whether they’re true or not is for another discussion) than I have AMD, the 970 fiasco was probably the most circulated thing I’ve seen about GPU vendors. Negativity around AMD has generally been focused on their weak position in the market and rebranding old GPUs.
you must have forgot about AMD first attempt at QuadCores… They screwed that up soo bad that one of the cores was faulty and BSOD ever system they were installed in..
AMD fix. Force all OEMS to Bios lock the faulty core and releases them as tri-cores…
both AMD, ATi Before AMD buy out, Intel, and Nv all have had there hardware issues . ANd it won’t be the last ether..
Kitguru reported on the Nvidia 970 memory issues. its silly how people who don’t come here and read the articles just appear to defend a company – blindly. I bought my Sapphire R9 8GB card based on AMD reviews here, I always read it for AMD news in the morning. There is no fanboyism from Kitguru, certainly not that I have seen, I based purchases on their reviews! I wanted to see 390X reviews here and FIJI (even though I wont be able to afford it). Are we now to believe a few sites who pass the AMD criteria for reviews? What is this criteria? No bad reviews or news stories for 2 years? Its not just Kitguru based on what I have read this morning – but sadly Kitguru is the one I like most.
Of course you can always take someone elses’ work and pass it off as your own.
I am sure that you will not let the opportunity pass to plagiarize another site.
To rephrase your question:
-Was the 3.5GB issue a real problem at all?
Some review sites did put in great effort to even prove this issue to be a problem. Not few of them came to the conclusion it technically doesn’t really have that big of an impact. The loss of trust and somewhat bad communication from Nvidia was critisized more than enough.
And I repeat myself again:
-What is one card against a whole line-up?
AMD did it on purpose. It is a bad trick attempted to con uninformed customers. No matter who tries this, such methods are to be flamed and condamned.
You dont seem to understand. GTX 970 VRAM setup wasnt hidden from us at all. The card was engineered to be have little to zero issues even though they split it up 3.5GB + 0.5GB portions.
That said they still got to taste the wrath of the internet.
Now AMD is hiding their desire to only let biased sites cover the reviews on their products, potentially painting the product better than it really is. And hiding this from the public but luckily KitGuru published this article to speak about it.
Both companies did something wrong. No one of them deserve any props.
Seriously
you are right – I was even sick reading GTX970 news here, Anton posted 3 or 4 articles in a week and I just wanted it to go away as it was all everyone was talking about.
pretty difficult to do that, as it won’t be out for a while , and reviews will hit from partners that AMD want to vet and say are ‘fine’. How do they pick the criteria now? no negative reviews for a year? no negative news for 2 years? I just want honest reviews. I always read Hexus and KitGuru – only two sites worth their salt.
There’s also less ROPs and smaller L2 cache.
The missing ROPs is something I agree should have been mentioned from the start. No doubt.
the thing about the NV issues, is that even after discovered the CARD sill work the same with the same performance when first bought.. Performance didn’t magically vanish one the issue was found..
most people that bought the 970 are happy with price vs performance.. and they continue to get the same performance despite the Memory issue. Also the 970 Didn’t magically lose 512mb of vram. ALL 4 GIG of vram is useable
The GTX980 is a piece of turd? Wow, I always thought it was good – I almost bought one before getting the 8GB Sapphire R9 290X. The price was just too high.
Currently, many nvidia owners are complaining in the support forums about the last 2 Nvidia drivers.
There seems to be a quite intense CTD / blue screen issue with the latest drivers.
Still, the general tune is, AMD drivers are so much worse than Nvidia drivers.
Then, there is the big discussion on Project Cars.
Again, AMD is said to be the guilty party, while a closer look into this issue should be taken and written about:
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/366iqs/nvidia_gameworks_project_cars_and_why_we_should/
Sometimes, it’s not just what you say, but also what you don’t.
If there is an issue with something, call it out.
This also includes items, done behind the scenes and people trying to put blame on others to hide their own plans / actions.
Yeah I want them to do well, I want a 390X, but I need to get good reviews – it might not be much of an upgrade though looking at Hexus stats yesterday on the news page. looks the same as a 290X but just a bit faster? Shame they are burning the good sites to work with others – I would hate to think its just cause they can fudge results. Not sure who to trust anymore after reading all this today 🙁
I was on this site a few weeks ago reading an article that was quite critical of AMD. So naturally I put some comments down and they got deleted again and again. I/Nobody could say anything unless Anton agreed with it. But if I said something critical of AMD it was allowed.
This is just a warning shot for the bigger sites am thinking. Am glad AMD finally gets it that they dont need any pro nvidia review sites one bit. AMD now needs to get their AIB`s under full control.
AMD have been held hostage for far to long by pro nvidia review sites. More and more pro nvidia fanboys are putting up websites pretending to be reviewers.
The GTX980 itself is per se a nice card, but now loses out horribly to the TI version for just a little bit more money.
The TI just made the 980 look overpriced, because the MSRP for the TI is so close to the 980.
If you want facts, wait for spec pages. If not, you’ll have to deal with people sharing their opinions first. And If you can’t deal with KitGuru giving their opinions (they’ve been particularly neutral for a long time), find another news source. :/
And why shouldn’t they? Nvidia do far worse.. AMD needs its AIB under control as nvidia do.
These reviews are killing AMD e.g. 7970 and 290/290X/295X2 and again 3 Series. They are not fair and it shows looking at these cards and their competition today as clear as day light.
Not really suprised KitGuru when you post videos like this: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/amd-fiji-hbm-and-product-rebadging/ — cringe worthy. If this isn’t classed as negative, then I don’t know what is.
Some people just like to bash on the drivers. It is not an issue of one or two faulty or not perfect drivers but the constant support-level over a longer period.
AMD has not proven to be releable for a longer time now. If you are unsteady in your performance and support, you are not 100% trustworthy. The Gameworks debate is more difficult because of this. You don’t know whom to trust.
On the other hand AMD worsen the situation by blackmailing / bribing tech-sites. This will surely not help their cause at all. AMD has still not brought any proof that they are handicapped. Since this didn’t happen the old truth of the court acitvated:
“When in doubt, for the accussed”
We have by the way teh same situation Kitgure at hand. AMD claims their site to not be neutral, but Kitguru can proof otherwise by making it public. Strange indeed how often this happends on AMD’s side… you should think about it!
its not bad for AMD at all. Kitguru does post negatively about AMD so why should AMD not try to avoid unfair negative criticism? Especially when they have a limited number of samples to give out ,why give it to sites that will always say some negative about AMD with no real justification.
Posting this article is another example of being anti AMD. They have every right to screen sites for objectivity and I have noticed the bias for a while now
Come on now… OSX drivers are made by Apple. Neither AMd, nor Nvidia are allowed to make any driver for OSX.
Please have a look at Nvidia support forums.
People are complaining big time about the last 2 drivers.
Big CTD issues and other nice stuff.
Good for AMD . No more shity talk on so called unbiased review sites . After reading tones of reviews on tones of sites I can not agree more with their decision. Carrizo maybe can be trown shit at but Radeon Fury by no means is an inferior product to any other competitor and still it got 5ones of shit . Nvidia has only got good reviews and I find that hardlly to believe when it doesnt deliver perfect industry products
If the reason AMD gave was that kitguru was objective, then it might be a con. The reason however was that they had a negative stance towards AMD, not a con. As a matter of fact, avoid a site like that is doing the consumer a favor.
So, posting the truth now is a bad example if it is against AMD? I will never understand these double standards. If the products are not competitive on every level, every site on the planet can and should write about it.
What AMD does with their review samples is their beer. Not OK is their attempt to bribe sites with their samples. Objectivity is often called from the one behind. A leader will never cry for fair play if he is just better.
“AMD did it on purpose. It is a bad trick attempted to con uninformed customers. No matter who tries this, such methods are to be flamed and condamned.”
Are you trying to imply that Nvidia by accident desgined the 970 the way it’s designed or by accident marketed it as a 4GB card?
eg recently kitguru post an article about AMD dual fury cards. For no reason at all at the end of the article they said its nothing special and compared it to some lame mac pro.
In another article about AMDs future tech they brought up nvidia to show it’s nothing special. When in the similar article for nvidia, not a mention of AMD. Even if they don’t know it, they lean towards nvidia and AMD has the right to avoid such sites.
My Phenom 9850 still works fine, idk what you’re talking about. Never had a problem with it.