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This morning I woke up to complaints from many readers regarding a post made by one of our European news team last night – Anton Shilov. This post took place when the UK team were all in bed. This article was entitled ‘AMD begins to sell DDR4 memory modules for Intel and next-gen platforms' and can be found HERE.
In this article Anton said ‘AMD’s Radeon R7 DDR4 memory modules are not performance champions, but fans of AMD’s Radeon graphics cards and modders make purchase decisions based on design and visual aesthetics, not on performance.'
I have edited the original article this morning as soon as I was awake and in a position to do so. It is important to say that this is NOT a ‘universal' opinion of KitGuru or a view the other 10 writers I have working for me share, and it certainly does not reflect any views I hold as Editor In Chief.
My hardware team have invested a lot of time recently into working with AMD and have reviewed the Fury X, Fury, and NANO – the last of which was sampled officially by AMD for launch day after we resolved previous issues. All our reviews are accurate, detailed and it is content I am proud to stand behind.
That said I do feel the news team have dropped the ball with this AMD DDR4 article last night and as such I accept full responsibility and have taken action internally. I appreciate your understanding regarding this and if we offended any AMD hardware owners then I sincerely apologise. My concern is that an outspoken opinion or badly worded statement from one writer can be deemed as an ‘opinion of KitGuru'. Which it isn't.
it is worth pointing out that If you have any feedback about KitGuru content then you contact me directly at [email protected]. I will try and answer everyone.
Thanks for listening.
Allan ‘Zardon' Campbell
KitGuru Managing Director and Editor In Chief.
so is he fired?
“fans of AMD’s Radeon graphics cards and modders make purchase decisions based on design and visual aesthetics, not on performance” – Quite funny really, but a bit underhanded. Definitely fire that one, or at the very least a warning with all future articles requiring editor in chief approval! Not good picking sides when it comes to hardware!
That statement comes from a contrary to the standard of journalism. It is hard to say sorry for yourself this time.
Nice! So fast reaction
Fair play, I actually missed that article but well done for taking swift action. Just got to be so careful what you write in public eh Anton!
Oh my. What springs to mind is that perhaps this is an example of why AMD hesitated sending samples in the past. Ohh well, at least it’s sorted now.
As an aside i think a reflection on Kitguru’s mission is prudent. We have the Fudzilla’s and Wccftech of the world but Kitguru doesn’t have to imitate them. Sometimes the temptation for entertainment takes precedence but there’s still success in conveying all sides to a story.
Nice to see you valuing impatiality so highly, kudos and well done on such a fast response.
Lol @ people saying the guy should be fired, the fellow posted an unpopular opinion that was barely harsh enough to bruise even the softest of egos. Get over yourselves, his job should be rightfully safe and secure.
I thought it was a fair point well made lol, fair play to kit guru for their continued professionalism though.
Fired ? No.
Warned ? Yes
Fired if same error again ? Yes
We all have personal opinions. A tech site must stay unbiased. He let his inner nvidia fanboyism to leak.
I do not think anyone should be fired, but he should know what they did was wrong and unprofessional. But I am glad to see this matter was handled quickly.
i agree with him, give him a payrise 😉
Damage has done. That guy must be reprimanded.
kitguru.net lost all credibility. advertisers should quite and of course dont sent them free hardware
He showed bias when he is supposed to write unbiased articles. If anything his job should not be secure as his integrity is now compromised. This has very little to do with egos and everything with professionalism. The fact that you have to toss it on peoples egos being hurt shows that you have no argumentation that is actually relevant.
And that is why non of his future work can be considered as unbiased. He has done something someone in his position absolutely cannot do; show bias.
No article he writes can ever be considered objective again and a warning won’t fix this, he has damaged his own credibility.
My point is that its not a sackable offence, and yes egos are bruised too easily these days, seems i’ve bruised some by saying egos are easily bruised *sheesh*
It is a sack-able offence because his future work has lost credibility which means he will not be able to perform his job as expected, also you have no insight in their contracts so even if his future work hadn’t lost credibility it could still be a sack-able offence. It is quite interesting to see that you claim other people are led by emotion while you are using your own opinion as argumentation.
No real argumentation from your end so you toss it on the egos being bruised pile once more. Just because people don’t share you opinion and use argumentation does not mean they are led by emotional motivation.
Of course it’s a sackable offense. He’s a journalist and he violated literally the first rule of proper journalism. It wouldn’t matter if he had said “The R9 Fury is a worse performer than the GTX 980 Ti” because Kitguru has dozens of unbiased benchmarks that can back that statement. But what he said about “fans of AMD’s Radoen graphics cards” is not proven and may even be completely false.
Sorry mate you’re not on the ball with this one, it’s not a sackable offence and being let go on the basis of that article will have legal consequences. Claiming he has lost credibility to a point where cannot perform his job as expected is conjecture with no adequate evidence or solid facts… I guess you could say it’s your “opinion”
One bad apple, let’s burn the orchard.
Lets word this a different way, the guy won’t get sacked over this.
You are delusional. Dropping a low blow like that one is an instant ‘get a new job, blogger’ as far as I’m concerned.
Kitguru is visited by quite a lot of people and they have a reputation to maintain, so every single article should be professional and unbiased.
Anton should start selling hamburgers with this attitude and kiss his precious Intel/Nvidia components every night.
// I’m not an AMD fan, but I root for them for the sake of competition and buy their products when they seem the best bang for the buck, like every sane person on Earth.
Sure, but that still makes you wrong, I never claimed I was the one making the decision here.
Bravo, Allan.
“The guy shouldn’t get sacked over this” – guy doesn’t get sacked, somehow that makes me wrong?
It is not my opinion, he damaged his credibility as a journalist, if his employer decides not to sack him that is up to the employer, but your claim that it is not a sack-able offence is wrong.
It is not my opinion here, it is argumentation unlike yours which is opinion. Accept the fact that you were wrong and that your first comment was complete nonsense. Whatever happens to Anton is up to KitGuru management, but it does not change the fact that what happened here is in fact a sack-able offence and it does not require someone with a bruised ego to say that, which is what you were saying in your first comment.
Quoted you since you don’t even take the time to read what you wrote:
‘My point is that its not a sackable offence’
Yes, you are wrong.
It’s a completely unnecessary comment aimed at millions of people. The problem isn’t that it’s an “unpopular opinion”, it’s just a petty insult that has no place in a somewhat serious website.
It’s good to know that it is not a universally held opinion among the KitGuru team. It was not only completely out of place in what should otherwise be an objective article, it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that AMD owners prefer aesthetics over a performance or price/performance metric. (Only recently has AMD actually begun to place focus on aesthetics regardless, which nVidia has done for a very long time)
Oh you mean just like cinebench should not be trusted because of intel bias and money yet everybody still looks at it as the be all end all ipc bench… internet is composed of morons and sheep
As an AMD fan I wasn’t offended. It’s nice that you wrothe this apology it goes the show that you really care about quality of your content and readers. 🙂
As for guy who wrote it. He should NOT be fired at all that’s BS. He didn’t write it with the intention you mentioned IMO
So now you have to apologize for saying truth?
It wasn’t the truth. You just want it to be because you’re prejudiced.
^this.
As an AMD fan as well, I wasn’t offended. I found it to be in bad taste, and apparently aimed at attempting to insult a vast swath of people, and it has very much changed how I approach (and will approach in the future) articles written by Anton. It seemed to me like something I would expect from Nick Farrell at Fudzilla, or just about anybody in the comments at WCCF, but not something I would expect from a writer at the generally much-more-credible Kitguru.
I don’t personally think that one sentence is worth firing an employee, though I would understand if they did – if such an alienation of a percentage of the site’s readership affects their business and their finances, then it’s a business decision, not an editorial decision.
Regardless, it’s being handled internally, and I doubt we’ll be seeing such things in the future.
Your next reply is going to be proof that its a sackable offence, because until then you’re a random bloke spouting that it is without evidence.
By your comments history you are AMD fan. So your opinion is prejudiced too.
There is similar topics about Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft… but only AMD supporters attacking authors.
There are similar topics about Intel, Nvidia, and Microsoft, but none attacking specific groups of people, the way the author’s sentence attacked AMD users.
Yes, I prefer AMD hardware in general. I currently use an Intel processor. Over the 15 years I’ve been what I would consider a PC enthusiast, 12 of them were with Nvidia cards. I’m happy to admit when AMD hardware is inferior to comparable Nvidia hardware or Intel hardware and to discuss things on the merits.
Anton tried to claim that nobody who uses AMD graphics cards cares about performance. Not only is that demonstrably untrue, it’s unnecessarily insulting. Had Anton tried to claim that everybody who uses Nvidia graphics cards is pointlessly wasting money, I would have the exact same opinion about it – it would be demonstrably untrue, and unnecessarily insulting.
And therein lies the difference. You think what Anton said is true because you’re prejudiced, and you want to insult AMD fans.
Nah, he’s not prejudiced, you’re just an idiot.
But what he said is half true. Fury X vs 980ti. Same price 980ti is faster.
And stop acting childish with bs like this “you want to insult AMD fans”.
The only idiot here is you my friend.
I am in no way condoning or agreeing with his comment, I entirely agree that he shouldn’t have said it, I just don’t think that he should be sacked over something so petty.
And nothing about that says that AMD users don’t care about performance and make their purchasing decisions based on aesthetics alone. That statement wasn’t based on fact. It was insulting, and clearly deliberately so. And clearly the Editor-in-Chief agrees with that assessment.
If you weren’t as interested in (and entertained by) insulting AMD fans as Anton, you’d see that. But instead, you’re here defending him and trying to claim it’s “truth”.
Ooh, you took what I said to you and threw it back to me… Wow, clever.
Please note that this is NOT me taking the opinion that Anton should be fired – I don’t subscribe to that opinion.
However. I’m not sure about European employment laws, as I’m an American. But here, just about anything is a sack-able offense, as long as it’s not a civil rights violation. Tom can’t be fired because he’s black and the boss doesn’t like black people. Jill can’t be fired because she’s a woman and the boss thinks women belong in the kitchen. Rick can’t be fired because he has a boyfriend and the boss is an evangelical Christian.
But otherwise, outside of civil rights violations, the law basically states that any employee or any employer can end employment at any time, for any reason. If I said something to a client that I thought was perfectly innocent, that highly offended that client, my boss could walk right over and sack me, on the spot, zero notice.
(Also note that American laws in the last 40 years have generally been written to heavily favor the employer over the employee. But still.)
You can look for that in my second response, alternatively, since you were the first to make a claim (that it is not a sack-able offence) how about you proof why this would not hold up in court if the contract was terminated (I will give you a hint as to why you can’t, I mentioned that in my second response as well).
The original article, I would agree was inflammatory but I’d still agree with it… Though it shouldn’t have been posted.
The very 1st thing i thought when i saw the original title. ‘that’s sad…’ then the author echoed my sentiment.
I understand as a business you cannot bite the hand that feeds.. yet I will agree with the original tone of the article. AMD making INTEL only memory that is not even ”that optimized” .. is a sad testament of the affairs behind the red doors of doom…
And rolling over because you ”called it” in a editorial … just got you remove from my speed dial tab.
Funny thing is he is right, so only one biased here is you 🙂 look, you MUST be biased in this world or you will file for bankrupcy. More biased news outlets are more profitable, more shared, more everything. Everything is about money. Also you either get products for reviews or you must buy them. You don’t get mentioned in “big” news outlets if you don’t have some sort of “partnership”.
similar topics about Intel, Nvidia, ? what are you browsing? r/Ayymd ?
That is an extremely naive view of how all of this works. You don’t get blackballed just by “not saying nice things” about a company/product. Sure, talk shit and that could change. However, if a company started pulling review products from a news site simply for civilly talking about downsides of a product, you can be damn sure that the consumers will hear about it, and the company will be blackballing ITSELF by shady practices.
You don’t need to kiss ass to stay afloat, you just need to NOT be a total dick.
Nice job on Allan for stepping up to put the fire out on this one.
Cinebench? never head of that
Rreally… been living under a rock ey mate??
“My point is that its not a sackable offence, and yes egos are bruised too easily these days, seems i’ve bruised some by saying egos are easily bruised *sheesh*”
Wow just I found the stupidest phrase I’ve seen on the internet.
My point is, he is not dick. He just said how it is. You can ask people what they feel about AMD/INTEL/WHATEVER BRANDs High performance product, they feel good, because they buy same stuff other people buy but it has high performance marketing bs on box/wrap. There are exceptions, but when you look on tech. Specs of that product and understand what that means you can see why he said it. Also another thing is when you say apple is %&£# you get 5million of people then write apple is good, then you get another 5 million people saying yes its £#%. Its tricky to write for broad audience, he learn this hard way 🙂
He’s not right though. I own a 5930K and two R9 290s. Wanna know why? Cuz in a majority of titles two 290’s spanks a 980ti in 4K (which I game at) and they’re like $100 cheaper.
Amd is selling “performance” product for use with another company products because AMD products don’t even support this high performance product. This is what everyone agrees on :). Also, GPUs are leader for this performance brand and other products are benefiting from popularity. I understand price “point”. I solved noise from my computer by moving it to closet. Full air so no expensive water coolers.
The point for objectivity is to either no take a side or not make it part of the conversation– Anton Shilov couldn’t control himself, he had to make his side known which discredited him as an objective writer.
This isn’t about what the opinion was and whose side it took– this is only about the fact that he brought it up, his opinion shouldn’t have been in the article.
It is impossible to “say it like it is” without an opinion, so objectivity leaves that conclusion to the reader, it isn’t the job of the writer.
It’s a CPU-bound synthetic application that has been used in most CPU reviews for over 5 years.
http://www.maxon.net/products/cinebench/overview.html
Unfair dismissal as it’s not outlined within the company rules and regulations “but some bloke on the internet says its valid” wont quite cut it.
If you read your own reply back, I think you’ll find one that tops it.
now you know they get money from intel and nvidia,same as tr.
Companies rules and regulations are irrelevant, it is about what will hold up in court. If you sack one of your journalists because he/she damaged his/her credibility while you are trying to be a reliable source of information it will be considered valid.
Same remains though, you have not shown why it would not hold up in court so you are just talking random crap on the internet.
Anton has been doing this job for years. Even if this particular comment was not very professional it doesn’t negate his reviews all these years, or their credibility in my opinion.
WORK AT HOME::Get $97/HOUR…I just purchased themselves a McLaren F1 when I got my check for $19993 this past 4 weeks and just over 17 thousand lass month . this is really the nicest-work Ive had . I began this 10-months ago and straight away started making more than $97… p/h .learn the facts here now
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Honestly, Anton’s shown that he’s got some major bias and this makes his credibility really suspect to me. It makes me question all the stuff he’s written in the past and everything he’ll write in the future. Plus, the fact that he was able to post it and with straight face just makes me question his character as well.
If he were fired over this, I would feel that it would be a logical and sensible decision. At any rate, Kitguru wasn’t my first choice for tech news, and this incident has made me think twice about even making it a place I’ll even visit regularly.
lmao, people acting emo, when people talking about things they don’t like or don’t agree with, they trip out. way to hear only things you want to hear LOL. if you don’t like it, dont come to this website, article barely made any type of “insult” to AMD fans. heck im an AMD fans people need to take chill pills.
no.one.cares
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Dan, how much ram do 2x R9 290’s have? How’s that crossfire support going?
Given that AMD is trading for $1.83 and they only have like 15% market share, maybe it’s a comment aimed at thousands of people… LOL
no need apology,just write us more those stupid article.
8gb total, 4gb usable, and crossfire has been great. I can play any game i got on ultra with no msaa at 4k resolution fluently.
Reading this clearly confirms to me why AMD refused you early review samples… and I hope they continue to do so for the clear bias in your review teams that needs stamping out
unfair dismissal has to be proven by the ex employee and usually as a result of a campaign to oust them. In this case its very clear what was posted and what it insinuated and it compromised his position as a representative of the company by going against the kit guru company line of unbiased review.
It is indeed a sackable offence – do I think he should be sacked.. personally no. But absolutely a disciplinary….and likely his position is untenable and he should move sideways
Well the way I see it is like this, EVERYBODY occasionally makes a mistake, it is how you deal with the mistake that defines the integrity of the publication. In this case I believe that KitGuru, namely Mr Campbell, has done exactly the right thing by both editing the original article and by issuing a public apology to anyone who felt a little insulted.
I cannot dictate what occurs inside the KitGuru office but I would assume that the original author has had a severe “bollocking” and is in no doubt that impartiality is the name of the game for a tech site. Do I think he should be sacked ? No. I believe it was a genuine mistake and not meant to be taken as it came across. However if the author did intend to say that exactly then due to his bias against AMD he should not be allowed to cover any story that could expose his bias again.
KitGuru has always been and still is a great site for all tech related content, I personally will not let this little episode dissuade me from taking their articles as a correct and reliable source of information.
Thank you for the clarification/apology, Allan. As a Radeon card owner in three machines in my home, I can tell you performance DOES matter to me, and so does performance/$. On both counts, I find Radeon cards to be very competitive, and nVidia cards, well, more prone to obsolescence is a polite way to put it. Deliberately gimped might be the more honest version. 😉
No, he DIDN’T ‘just say how it is’. People who buy Radeon cards are just as interested in great performance as nVidia buyers. But they also often don’t want to be shafted. I’m not only satisfied with the great performance and longevity of my three current Radeon cards (including the half-height 7750 card in my HTPC), nVidia’s questionable business practices are also part of that value equation.
If I don’t want to give the Green Goblin a $200 G-Sync tax, AND lock myself into only nVidia cards with that G-Sync monitor, am I merely being a ‘fan boy’, or am I simply avoiding putting my neck in a noose and locking myself into their ecosystem?
If I’m not completely blasé about the GTX970 being marketed as a ‘4GB’ card, only to find out 3 months after release, and tens of thousands of cards sold, that nVidia used a cheaper memory controller so the last .5GB is running at 1/7 the speed of the rest of the memory, just so nVidia could increase their profit margins, does that make me an AMD shill?
If I find out that nVidia GameWorks is really a trojan horse for nVidia to, among other under-handed things, set the default tessellation levels in Witcher 3 so high, to 64x, that only a Maxwell can run the game tolerably, only for it to be revealed that 8x tessellation looks visually indistinguishable from the default 64x, and that the Green Goblin only set the default at 64x so that the first reviews of the game would make Radeon cards look bad, so the legions of the nVidiots would go out in a knee-jerk response and buy Maxwell cards, does that make me ‘in denial’ about nVidia’s supposed superiority?
Basically, anybody who has a modicum of self-respect and brains will take all these and many, many other actions by nVidia and draw a very simple conclusion. This is a company that doesn’t give a damn about their customers, and will stop at nothing, including misrepresentation, willful deception and straight-up cheating, to fatten their profit margins. And then people have the audacity to point out that nVidia is financially prosperous, as an excuse to buy their stuff. Yeah, that’s a smart deduction to make. Wonder HOW they made all that filthy lucre, eh?
It is completely false. I bought my last two Radeon cards because the decisively beat nVidia’s price equivalents in my favourite games, COH, and COH2.
Why bother stating your total ram? you have a 4gb. period.
Wanted to be specific to avoid any potential confusion about my knowledge about my rig. I mean, why ask if you already knew?
Yeah, except in any future DX12 applications, which will utilize the VRAM of both cards independently, providing 8GBs of VRAM…
By the way – he got sacked over this. Literally the day of, as a matter of fact. Anton’s Facebook page showed that he “Left KitGuru” on the very day this article was written.
He’s over at AnandTech now. Either he’s voluntarily keeping his fanboy in check, or AT told him up front to do so.
He got fired. The day this article was written.
He’s over at AnandTech now. Just in case you’ve been a fan of their reviews and articles, might want to start watching the by-line a little more carefully. 😉