*UPDATED 9/5/2018* Tom's Hardware's Editor in Chief's Controversial RTX Article

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, asus killer said:

just because it's an opinion clearly marked as an opinion it would be no less weird as a doctors writing an editorial defending smoking is good for you. And if it were satire it was stupid because you can't tell either way and people reading may end up believing it.

It might be marked as opinion now, but there is debate as to whether it was when it first was published.

[asus killer]

29 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It might be marked as opinion now, but there is debate as to whether it was when it first was published.

i already pointed out the video of the tech jesus was posted on YT the same day and it already was in the opinion section. more than that i have no idea. But if they altered it was immediately not a couple of days later

[Quadriplegic]

8 hours ago, Domo said:

The price is a bit high but it's new tech. AMD Rays won't be around till 2020.

Frankly, current cards can support raytracing as well, with the help of DX12

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

He is the editor in chief of a respected review medium, and as such should have professional integrity. What he did here is threw all of that out of the window, and wrote a really bad consumer advice article which says to the consumers "You should have blind fate in a product, based on nothing". That is literally the opposite of what both he, and Tom's Hardware should stand for. 

Not even to mention calling his colleague names. 

Well it's an opinion piece, not really an advice piece. The Ray Tracing really is that good, and it probably will work out well if cryptocurrency hits again to buy at RRP. The article is meant as an introduction on what you can expect on the 20-series and how and why this will impact applications. A good writer knows their audience and writes for them, and not for a general group. Most users at Tom's Hardware know that preordering is silly and will always take a tech article like this with a grain of salt. The very reaction to the article proves this. Maybe playing devils advocate here, Nvidia gave him a bunch of money to write this - and he can probably write the article without losing too much as a result, because people know it's baloney. 

[Bouzoo]

24 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Well it's an opinion piece, not really an advice piece. The Ray Tracing really is that good, and it probably will work out well if cryptocurrency hits again to buy at RRP. The article is meant as an introduction on what you can expect on the 20-series and how and why this will impact applications. A good writer knows their audience and writes for them, and not for a general group. Most users at Tom's Hardware know that preordering is silly and will always take a tech article like this with a grain of salt. The very reaction to the article proves this. Maybe playing devils advocate here, Nvidia gave him a bunch of money to write this - and he can probably write the article without losing too much as a result, because people know it's baloney. 

How is this not an advice piece? He literally says go and buy the cards to be an early adopter. Multiple times. The article is called "Just buy it". 

This is not an introduction to RTX. We are ways past that and Tom's already had their introduction piece. 

He may be the best writer/journalist on the world, it doesn't matter here since this article is literally the work of a madman. The arguments that he uses, the arguments to show that he is right are with no backing and no proper reasoning for that matter. Needless to say again that he calls his coworker names. Even if this was an opiniated piece, that is a big NO. A good writer would watch for credibility and his professional integrity. When a lot of other mediums question your sanity that should raise a flag. 

And for the record, I don't believe NV paid him anything. 

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Hilton123 said:

Hi here! I am new

You can make a topic in the "off topic" section if you want to say hi, not in the first thread you come across  read the coc!

3 hours ago, Quadriplegic said:

Frankly, current cards can support raytracing as well, with the help of DX12

In theory yes, in practice no. Or rather, not at a playable framerate. Think of it like hardware accelerated h265 - it's not that your cpu can't do it, it's just that dedicated hardware is much faster.

[GeoffLucas]

Exceptionally stupid article.  TH has lot all the credibility I thought they ever earned with me.

On 8/25/2018 at 4:37 AM, leadeater said:

That...my brain does not compute...

Here it is, from the nVidia CEO himself...

4:47 below:

To be fair, though, Huang was making a point about how much more power efficient it would be to run a server farm off of new GPUS, so you save money from lower energy costs.  This point doesn't carry over to gamers in general as we're not running a server farm, though, so I wasn't sure why they were talking about it in the launch event for a consumer card.

Edited August 26, 2018 by GeoffLucas
Clarity

[GeoffLucas]

5 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Most users at Tom's Hardware know that preordering is silly and will always take a tech article like this with a grain of salt.

Okay, and what about people that are getting into computers for the first time?  What if they base their purchasing decisions on this when something like a discounted 1070 or 1080 would have served them just as well for less money.  

[Guest]

2 hours ago, GeoffLucas said:

Okay, and what about people that are getting into computers for the first time?  What if they base their purchasing decisions on this when something like a discounted 1070 or 1080 would have served them just as well for less money.  

They are in the minority in Tom's Hardware.

[GeoffLucas]

1 hour ago, RorzNZ said:

4 hours ago, GeoffLucas said:

Okay, and what about people that are getting into computers for the first time?  What if they base their purchasing decisions on this when something like a discounted 1070 or 1080 would have served them just as well for less money.  

They are in the minority in Tom's Hardware.

So you're saying that no one can do a Google search to find this information if they're looking to build a new computer???  There a reason that LTT's explanation of i3, i5, i7 has 9.7M views.  People that aren't as familiar with hardware go to these websites to get information when making purchases and while you're tech-savvy enough to know BS when you see it, not everyone is and they are the people that articles like this prey on.

[D13H4RD]

Watching the Gamer's Nexus video and reading the article over and over, I really can't stop laughing and cringing at how ridiculous the article is. Pretty much the entirety of it is ridiculous but I'll leave my favorites;

Spoiler

However, what these price-panicked pundits don't understand is that there's value in being an early adopter. And there's a cost to either delaying your purchase or getting an older-generation product so you can save money. Unless and until final benchmark results show otherwise, the new features of the Turing cards make them worth buying, even at their current, sky-high prices.

So, a GPU that we barely know anything of aside from one or two gameplay videos and marketing charts is worth buying. How do we know this exactly?

 

Spoiler

Let's say you are building a new system or planning a major upgrade and you need to buy a new video card this fall. You could buy the last-generation GTX 1080 Ti for as little as $526, but if you do, you won't be able to take advantage of key RTX features like real-time ray tracing and great 4K gaming performance until your next upgrade.

A GTX 1080 Ti already does gaming at 3840x2160 pretty respectably. Plus, $526 is a really good deal for a GPU that performs admirably well in modern titles at high settings at resolutions beyond 1920x1080. Ray-tracing gone mainstream is about 2-3 years away when pretty much everyone has done it and by that time, NVIDIA's next architecture would've already been out and will undoubtedly perform better than Turing at DLSS and real-time ray tracing.

 

Spoiler

This week, Nvidia showed a demo of Battlefield V where you can see a muzzle flash from another part of the world reflected in a soldier's eyes and the fire from an explosion reflected off of the glossy finish of a car. That's what you'd see if you were actually there and participating in the fight. And you'd also see the world in high resolution, not just 1080p.

No, just stop. This really feels like something a salesperson would say but you and I know that as great as Battlefield V looks, there's still some graphical oddities like fires burning at lower framerates, the relatively low resolution of the flames itself alongside the reflection in the cars. Plus, when you're playing a first person shooter, you're not going to be staring at reflections or looking to see how great the soldiers' eyes look. You're going to be pointing at an enemy player and firing at them hoping you get the kill.

 

Plus, it's common for many FPS players to turn down graphics settings not just for more FPS but also a tactical advantage. Remember Battlefield 3's grass? Turning them down to their lowest actually makes them so flat, you can see prone players trying to hide, of which it seems like they're hidden on the grass's maximum settings.

 

Spoiler

When you’re among the first to purchase a new architecture like Nvidia's RTX cards, you take the risk that the technology won't work as well as advertised right away, that you won't find a ton of titles that support its special features and that the price will drop, making you feel like you wasted your money. However, when you pay a premium for cutting-edge components, you're also buying time, time to enjoy experiences.

Uh, how long exactly until we get a large library of games which support full-on real-time ray tracing? Probably until the next architecture?

 

Spoiler

Life is short. How many months or years do you want to wait to enjoy a new experience? You can sit around twiddling your thumbs and hoping that an RTX 2080 gets cheaper, or you can enter the world of ray-tracing and high-speed, 4K gaming today and never look back. When you die and your whole life flashes before your eyes, how much of it do you want to not have ray tracing?

Um, my life is already ray-traced, thank you very much. Like having ray-tracing in my games is nice but it's not something I would have on my list of life accomplishments.

 

Spoiler

The 15-inch Apple Studio display, one of the first flat panel monitors, cost $1,999 when it came out . . . in 1998. Today, you can get a used one on eBay for under $50 or a new 24-inch monitor for under $150, but if you bought one at the time, you had the opportunity to use a fantastic new technology when others didn't.

Yeah........no. I got my 25" 1080p 144Hz monitor for $250 about 8 months ago. Not too long ago, even a TN version of a 1080p 144Hz panel would be much more expensive. But it doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

 

If anything, that RoG Swift monitor that costs an arm-and-a-leg will probably be mainstream with a lower price after some time, and by that time, more people will be able to enjoy it. I get it, being an early adopter is great but I'm more interested in seeing how the tech matures enough to the point of going mainstream.

 

Spoiler

The time you spend waiting and complaining about it being overpriced is time you could be gaming with the most realistic user experience available.

Or I could just be playing TF2 on my GTX 1060, which still performs really well anyhow so..... *shrugs*

 

Spoiler

That's why, this week, so many users, including our own Derek Forrest, are advising shoppers to hold off on buying one of Nvidia's new RTX graphics cards.

However, what these price-panicked pundits don't understand is that there's value in being an early adopter.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure by that point, Mr. Forrest would probably sit very far away from this guy if they happened to meet each other in a coffee store.

 

It doesn't matter if it's an opinion or what. He is free to express his views and such and hell, if he thinks that NVIDIA's new RTX GPUs are worth buying, then he's well within his rights to go out and throw all the dosh on them. But as the editor-in-chief of a major publication that has built up a reputation with computer enthusiasts (a lot of it thanks to their generally awesome forums), he should know that the reputation of the publication also rests in what he writes.

 

You don't just diss off a colleague just because he thinks the RTX GPUs aren't worth it just yet. And you also don't just tell people to spend a load of money on something that we barely know about and one where detailed benchmarks have not been released yet. The sheer irony is that he's basically dissing the entire publication by essentially saying that whatever benchmarks that will come (even from them) are essentially useless as the cards will already perform great.

[ravenshrike]

I will say that the one thing raytracing could do really well at is horror/thriler games and story oriented RPG's. But for FPS's its utility is marginal at best. 

[D13H4RD]

30 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

I will say that the one thing raytracing could do really well at is horror/thriler games and story oriented RPG's. But for FPS's its utility is marginal at best. 

Especially in competitive environments

[D13H4RD]

So I've been talking to someone about this. 

 

As it turns out, this is far from the only BS article Avram has written. He wrote this one for example. 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/853-windows-10-settings-you-should-change.html

 

His articles are either clickbait, overly sensational opinion pieces or just generally crappy news articles. To quote him 

Quote

it feels like they just recruited someone with an editorial background, but who has no tech experience

And the really funny part? Tom's Hardware is owned by Purch Group under Bestofmedia. And who else is owned by Purch? 

 

ANANDTECH

[asus killer]

2 hours ago, ravenshrike said:

I will say that the one thing raytracing could do really well at is horror/thriler games and story oriented RPG's. But for FPS's its utility is marginal at best. 

i will assume you don't look at your opponent's eyes in FPS? your insane

[RagnarokDel]

On 2018-08-25 at 10:59 AM, mr moose said:

 

we do, visual acuity, there is a point at which the human eye can no longer resolve individual pixels on a screen because it's resolution is not high enough.

Our eyes resolution is however many photons can enter our eye in height x width. Spoiler alert, it's considerably higher than 8k.

[laminutederire]

3 hours ago, RagnarokDel said:

Our eyes resolution is however many photons can enter our eye in height x width. Spoiler alert, it's considerably higher than 8k.

Compote the solid angle ratio of the vision of a computer screen to deduce that we use significantly less sensory receptors to actually see the screen compared to every thing else our eyes can see.

[S w a t s o n]

Gotta keep on diggin!

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, RagnarokDel said:

Our eyes resolution is however many photons can enter our eye in height x width. Spoiler alert, it's considerably higher than 8k.

huh?  Only if you ignore how the eye works.

 

Do people really think the human eye is just a mass of magical biology that has no limits?  Does anyone actually bother to read something written by educated professionals on this before they formulate their conclusions?    The real spoiler here is just because you understand how a computer screen works and the eye is largely an analog device doesn't mean you understand how the eye works or that it is limitless.

[Jito463]

On 8/27/2018 at 5:53 AM, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

As it turns out, this is far from the only BS article Avram has written. He wrote this one for example. 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/853-windows-10-settings-you-should-change.html

According to the comments on that article, it's been edited since it was posted.  Apparently he originally recommending disabling UAC because of its "annoying prompts".  Now, I disable UAC on my personal computer for much the same reason, but I understand the ramifications of that and accept the risk.  Your average computer user is far better off with UAC enabled, and those like me who understand the consequences of disabling it, don't need some clickbait article telling us to do so.

[dalekphalm]

On 8/26/2018 at 7:09 AM, RorzNZ said:

Maybe playing devils advocate here, Nvidia gave him a bunch of money to write this

That would be straight up illegal, since he did not disclose sponsorship of the article.

 

My main problems with this are:

1. Yes it's listed as Opinion, but it initially wasn't clear.

2. He's the Editor in Chief - he should probably have assigned someone else to write it - as it stands, it legitimately looks like he is a paid shill.

3. He actually threw his employee under the bus. He called Mr Forrest a "price panicked pundit" - that's an insult no matter how you look at it.

 

I actually don't think NVIDIA paid for it at all. Why would they need to? They keep getting a bunch of stellar free advertising from many of the big publications, via favourable reviews, people fighting to get review samples, etc.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

That would be straight up illegal, since he did not disclose sponsorship of the article.

 

My main problems with this are:

1. Yes it's listed as Opinion, but it initially wasn't clear.

2. He's the Editor in Chief - he should probably have assigned someone else to write it - as it stands, it legitimately looks like he is a paid shill.

3. He actually threw his employee under the bus. He called Mr Forrest a "price panicked pundit" - that's an insult no matter how you look at it.

 

I actually don't think NVIDIA paid for it at all. Why would they need to? They keep getting a bunch of stellar free advertising from many of the big publications, via favourable reviews, people fighting to get review samples, etc.

This I didn't know. He might not have a future at Tom's, but I don't like the idea of people taking Twitter seriously (Even though it is a record and a little bit finicky when it comes to this stuff - too many people in hot water over what they say casually).

[Spotty]

 

Gamers Nexus has released their News vid with a follow up regarding the censorship on the Tom's Hardware forums (1min55s in) where the German editor of Tom's Hardware was banned from the forums for 100 years after posting complaints about the article.

[ZacoAttaco]

43 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Gamers Nexus has released their News vid with a follow up regarding the censorship on the Tom's Hardware forums (1min55s in) where the German editor of Tom's Hardware was banned from the forums for 100 years after posting complaints about the article.

Tom's Hardware are handling this so poorly. I can't believe the Editor in Chief of such a large media brand like TH would first publish an article like that and then tolerate the way they are discrediting their German counterpart. And the way the forum is suffering as well is just sucky.

 

So glad I chose this Forum to share and learn about technology! Great community!

[S w a t s o n]

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

 

Gamers Nexus has released their News vid with a follow up regarding the censorship on the Tom's Hardware forums (1min55s in) where the German editor of Tom's Hardware was banned from the forums for 100 years after posting complaints about the article.

 

I dont have a twitter account anymore so feel free to tweet this at him i think his handle his @geekinchief