AMD Withdraw KitGuru's Fury X Sample over "negative stance towards AMD" (Updated with response from AMD)

[Sammael]

Regardless of what is actually happening there, the fact that people are so quick to dismiss the issue by discrediting KitGuru, tells quite a story. It is even more ironic when you realize they are the same people who insisted until their faces were blue to wait for KitGuru reviews for the Fury and 300s.

 

 

Nothing is stopping kirguru from doing a fury review.  Nothing.  If they are the people you or others trust more for whatever reason, it should not matter whether the review is done right before launch or a few days later.  

[silberdrachi]

I think Totalbiscuit has one of the best review policy, if a company can't provide a copy of a game. He buys it himself and writes it off as a business expense. This is how it should be done the review world. 

 

This is how reviewing was done before companies started sending copies out to big sites. Its still how smaller sites run. Not every company will run around trying to send copies of their product to every reviewer under the sun. Yeah they said they would seed them one, but if they do actually have a limited supply of review units (not totally uncommon) then it makes sense.

 

Plus who gives a shit about pre-reviews anyway, 99.9999% of the time its done on beta drivers with limited support so the numbers always fluctuate a little bit. Especially when benchmarking new games. And personally i think pre-ordering before getting in depth benchmarks on something that costs 650usd is a bit stupid in general, and thats speaking from experiance. I bought my 290x on launch day and god damn i wish i wated the 2ish months for after market cards to come out. Because i didnt wait for better full reviews i had to get a custom cooler solution for my card.

[patrickjp93]

AMD needs every penny right now to stay above water through 2020. This explanation of fewer press events, invites, and samples paints a different picture than AMD simply trying to avoid unbiased or "negative" press.

[nunya bus]

What was this thread about again....  i forgot 

[Misanthrope]

I also want to point out how all of this hinges on KitGuru's uncorroborated claims about what he was allegedly told on a phone conversation. You're ranting about freedom of press from interference, that tells me you want to be taken seriously, yet you base your accusations on uncorroborated claims, the most unprofessional way to go about this?

 

You know I'm sure it did happen, and as much as it burned your ass to hear that from an AMD rep if it was not in a written communication not subject to NDA you should have been the bigger person and let that go, because let's face it nobody should trust just your side of the story.

[Biggerisbetter]

Nothing is stopping kirguru from doing a fury review.  Nothing.  If they are the people you or others trust more for whatever reason, it should not matter whether the review is done right before launch or a few days later.  

 

KG is a little butthurt over the loss of clicks and revenue. Its not about me the consumer, it never has been and it never will be. 

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

Nothing is stopping kirguru from doing a fury review.  Nothing.  If they are the people you or others trust more for whatever reason, it should not matter whether the review is done right before launch or a few days later.  

 

That is my point though, the people who were putting a lot of faith in KitGuru are the same people who are attacking it now.

If you people want to talk about double-standards, this takes the cake!

[infamous_last]

Well, his console comments were kinda either lies or ridiculous. There are hardly any 720p games on the current consoles, and expecting 4k gaming in a $400-500 console in 2012 is just plain stupid when you can't even get a truly 4k-ready graphics card for that price in 2015.

Actually I found his comment that consoles didn't really improve a great deal between generations to be fairly spot on, maybe 4K was a stretch comparison but a solid 1080p should of been a given.

 

As far as performance at that time goes, I'm 4K gaming on a GTX780, which came out approx 6 months before the current crop of "next gen" consoles... sure I can't have all the settings on max but it's far from a bad experience.

Cost me the same as a console would of and it's certainly a better experience @ 4K than found on next gen consoles when attempting to play at 1080

[Humbug]

Actually I found his comment that consoles didn't really improve a great deal between generations to be fairly spot on, maybe 4K was a stretch comparison but a solid 1080p should of been a given.

His comments about the current gen consoles (linked below) not being an advancement over the 360 and ps3 are absolutely rubbish and it makes him look really, really bad and ignorant. Like some Internet troll.

https://youtu.be/QFWgc8qjQwk?t=11m6s

 

-Does he not understand that the new consoles are rendering far more complex scenes with way more detail than last gen games? You can't just look at resolution and framerate.

-Does he not understand that the resolution and framerate in console games are choices made by the game developer. They can choose to run at 1080p 60 fps or they can choose to add more detail into the game world and settle for a lower resolution. It's a trade-off obviously and developers make a choice. I could sit here and say that the GTX 970 sucks because it cannot run witcher 3 maxed out at 1080p 60fps. But that would be an ignorant comment because 'maxed out' is a trade-off in itself. I can choose to lower a couple of settings and achieve that 60fps if I want to. The difference is in a console game the dev hardcodes those choices and they tend to choose more eye-candy. None of this 'limited to 720p' nonsense which he said. Besides there are barely any 720p games.

-he's talking about 4K in budget oriented consoles despite the fact that most PC gamers still avoid it due to lack of horsepower

 

Yes yes I know a decent gaming PC is more powerful than the new consoles.  But that wasn't my point at all.

[Carde]

Meh I know some review sites just ask local webshops for samples in return for a mention that they got the sample from set webshop.

 

Still AMD is all kinds of shady atm and I aint a fan.

[Brainless906]

isn't Kitguru a rumour website? , how do we know this is true ?

 

they can always buy one and review it

 

 

they are pretty much a repost site. I'm subbed to them on facebook/twitter and all that shit and most of what they do is just reporting on other websites reports. They are pretty damn small.

 

I'm going to get called out as a fanboy because of this but If i had a limited number of review units there's no way in piss i'd give one to kitguru. This entire thing sounds like kitguru was skipped over for a limited review copy and now he's whining about it.

 

inb4 AMD SHOULD HAND OUT FURY X CARDS TO EVERY REVIEWER IN THE WORLD, THEY TOTALLY HAVE THE CASH FOR THAT.

 

Meh. we'll see.

[Gunjob]

I don't often read KitGuru, so I don't know much about the background. But normally I'd call this a dick move by AMD.

 

However, I am subscribed to their YouTube channel and have watched a few case reviews, the bald guy is extremely prone to saltiness and unfounded criticisms, maybe the word I'm looking for here is 'elitist'. His Thermaltake Core V21 review sounded extremely sour all the way, nitpicking on everything, complaining about irrelevant above-pricepoint features missing, and then at the end his conclusion was "I really quite like it!" lol.

 

So I don't know, I'm definitely not a fan of the guy's communication skills and consistency, I pretty much only subscribed to him because he did a review on both the Thermaltake Core V21 and the Phanteks Mini XL, which were the two cases I was evaluating and no other channels did both.

 

 

But in the end

 

 

 

 

This is true. AMD is not showing faith in their product if they think it wouldn't speak for itself through tests. At the end of the day, the reviewer can sound sour as all balls in a review, but if the card is teabagging the competitor in the benchmarks, it won't matter.

They are pretty awful for bias, I wouldn't send them a GPU if I was AMD. Also nothing is stopping Kitguru from going and buying one. They're a bad site as well in my opinion, only reviews I read are Guru3D (has a FuryX to my knowledge) Anandtech and PCPer, any of those will do. 

[JefferyD90]

well just listen to the guy, he is bitching cause mommy grounded him. As a rule of thumb most publications give AMD a slightly harder time for no reason. Linus Sebastian is one of the better at being reasonable with AMD. I personally don't follow kit guru and probably never will but this quite literally says that he is just butt hurt because AMD is making a move that betters themselves.

Which department at AMD do you work at?

[Curufinwe_wins]

well just listen to the guy, he is bitching cause mommy grounded him. As a rule of thumb most publications give AMD a slightly harder time for no reason. Linus Sebastian is one of the better at being reasonable with AMD. I personally don't follow kit guru and probably never will but this quite literally says that he is just butt hurt because AMD is making a move that betters themselves.

Well I would argue that for the last 7 months amd had been straight worse. And the things like 4 weeks to enable driver support in a triple a title didn't help.

I mean look at jayztwocents. He was arguably straight up an amd fanboy when he started up, but the 200 series has had a long and rather troubled run for amd. (Although bitcoin had it propped up for a bit)

Look everything on this thread and about kitguru is hearsay. It is. BUT if in fact, and had him slated for a card and in fact, did remove him from slating because they felt he wasn't giving them the good publicity they wanted... That is straight up an ethical affront (right up there with the 4gb fiasco that amd fanboys remember very differently than the rest of the world). If they removed it for some other reason, I don't really give a fuck or if he just was told he wasn't getting one instead of having one taken away, then I don't give a fuck.

I'm sure more will come out on this topic at a later time.

[Guest]

Ah damn, this is actually disappointing .

 

WHY AMD?!

[RH00D]

I love how everyone is acting like this is some big conspiracy. They only have a certain number of samples to go around, they can't give them to everybody. Do any of you think AMD has the money right now to just pass out flagship cards to everyone and their dog? Also, Kitguru saying AMD is trying to dictate? Seriously? LOL. Absolutely nothing is preventing Kitguru from going and buying the card and reviewing it. Nothing.

[Dietrichw]

I love how everyone is acting like this is some big conspiracy. They only have a certain number of samples to go around, they can't give them to everybody. Do any of you think AMD has the money right now to just pass out flagship cards to everyone and their dog? Also, Kitguru saying AMD is trying to dictate? Seriously? LOL. Absolutely nothing is preventing Kitguru from going and buying the card and reviewing it. Nothing.

And shockingly this is similar to the 295x2 where Linus borrowed a sample from Austin Evans because AMD didn't have enough to go around at first. Later Linus got one from AMD and had two 295x2s on hand

[Joe_Easy]

ultimately I prefer AMD reserving stock for actual AMD users and fans.

 

10 EMEA review samples plus what another 10 in North America (probably more) to review a new card should give people a pretty unbiased and broad range of reviews.

 

They can't all be fan boys or they wouldn't have an audience.

 

I'm not a moron (usually) who can't distinguish when a reviewer is unproffesional and biased.

 

Even Linus, who received a load of Titan Blacks from nVidia for his render machines, doesn't hide that fact and includes it as sponsorship but he is still fair and balanced.

 

 

As a review site, journalist, content creator...especially in tech where science, data and facts are easy to verify there are no secrets....you have your reputation, you have more to lose than AMD stands to lose by being biased...

 

Sounds like sour grapes from Kitguru and yes, respect the companies you want FREE products from to help your business...doesn't mean you have to ignore the rebrand but don't be an arse about it

[Northstorm]

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/2xgiml/were_thinking_of_adding_source_quality_dots_to/

 

(kitguru most reputable source :lol: )no bias in your sentence at all

That I personally know of (please read "I" there) I'm not saying that it's the worlds best, but I haven't PERSONALLY seen shady stuff from then, I'm not saying that it isn't there, I wouldn't know, but for my part, I haven't seen any.

And where did I ever say I wasn't unbiasd?... When did I make that claim?... Please read what people write, not what you think they mean.

But for the record, I consider 3DGuru a VERY reputable source too.

And just to do a bit of counter arguing... Are you really quoting an opinion piece on Reddit as a reputable source... That's a bit... Ironical, to say the least, isn't it? :rolleyes:

[heeroyuy79]

in the video posted he appears to be overly butthurt because he did not get to see the shiny toy and then went in a wee bit of a tirade and yes he did make references to nvididia wood screws

 

lets say you work for a company and you make some product and you tell a reviewer you are going to send them the product to review and then you see the reviewer get overly pissy because they did not see the shiny toy at an event in a video put up after you told them they were getting one and going on about something being a con and fake

 

would you want that reviewer who would appear to have a massive negative bias against your company (enough to make a video with wild conjuncture and speculation to the point of absurdity - if one was to not get the references to nvidias wood screws over them not getting to see the thing at an event that one time) to review the product? (and yes i know person in video is not the person over there who does the cards but they are all under one name and as such are treated as being one entity)

 

i think this is kitguru not looking at what is actually being put out there under their name and then having a hissy fit when it fucks them in the ass

[samcool55]

The fact KG is butthurt because if this is just confirming that AMD was right, they aren't all that positive about AMD stuff.

And if they only want to ship 10 cards, well i don't see the issue with it, as long as the reviews are good and representative, we will know how they really perform.

[MEC-777]

Here's the way I see it; If the Fury X is a good card and a performer, then that will speak for itself. 

 

It doesn't matter if AMD decided to pull samples from certain reviewers. They had their reasons, what ever that may be. What matters in the end is how it performs. 

[alamox]

the kitguru guy went on bashing AMD last week for no reason, he thought that AMD was releasing the card on the 16th during E3, so he made 15min video undermining AMD for no reason, saying that they didnt send samples before the release ( which was only a reveal ), i think with the shortage of stock, AMD gotta pick some and reject some, since kitguru already made a video bashing AMD not giving press samples, the least they can do is make his video accurate at least for kitguru .

gotta gve to AMD it's ironic and funny

[Nav1tech]

Could care less about Kitguru. Why do they feel entitled to having early access to a card? 

 

There is a very limited amounts of cards available, Im sure the demand is crazy since its a highly anticipated new card.  Saying AMD is running a con with the 300series didnt help their chances but i would of done the same.

[Techhog]

His comments about the current gen consoles (linked below) not being an advancement over the 360 and ps3 are absolutely rubbish and it makes him look really, really bad and ignorant. Like some Internet troll.

https://youtu.be/QFWgc8qjQwk?t=11m6s

 

-Does he not understand that the new consoles are rendering far more complex scenes with way more detail than last gen games? You can't just look at resolution and framerate.

-Does he not understand that the resolution and framerate in console games are choices made by the game developer. They can choose to run at 1080p 60 fps or they can choose to add more detail into the game world and settle for a lower resolution. It's a trade-off obviously and developers make a choice. I could sit here and say that the GTX 970 sucks because it cannot run witcher 3 maxed out at 1080p 60fps. But that would be an ignorant comment because 'maxed out' is a trade-off in itself. I can choose to lower a couple of settings and achieve that 60fps if I want to. The difference is in a console game the dev hardcodes those choices and they tend to choose more eye-candy. None of this 'limited to 720p' nonsense which he said. Besides there are barely any 720p games.

-he's talking about 4K in budget oriented consoles despite the fact that most PC gamers still avoid it due to lack of horsepower

 

Yes yes I know a decent gaming PC is more powerful than the new consoles.  But that wasn't my point at all.

To put this into perspective, what is said is the same as saying that if you have a GTX 480 and a Q6600, and you upgrade to a 980 and 5770C but keep your 1080p monitor, you've barely upgraded your system.