Today we have seen several AMD Crossfire Preview articles published and after reading these today they raise several key points.
Firstly we have *Pcperspective (
http://www.pcper.com/index.php)* a very highly regarded Tech site who have been testing Quad Crossfire in their labs. What concerned me about this preview was *this (
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...xpert&pid=2)*:
"I should start out my testing notes by being very up front: AMD had some requests for us when sending out the components for the CrossFireX testing system. First, they wanted the system to be showcased on an AMD platform: AMD Phenom processor and 790FX motherboard. Second, they had a handful of games that they wanted to show the performance and scaling of and asked that we show those titles for this particular article. Lucky for me, all of the games that AMD asked us to test (Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Crysis and UT3) were already in my standard GPU testing suite, so that was a given. After that though, I was told we could do all the testing we wanted on any platforms, games, etc that we wanted.
The system that AMD provided is about what you would expect: AMD Phenom 9700 @ 2.6 GHz, MSI 790 FX motherboard with 2GB of Corsair DDR2-800 memory and a single Raptor 150GB hard drive with Windows Vista x64 installed. We used a beta driver revision that AMD provided and were off to the races."
Basically it looks like AMD have not only enforced several of the games to review, but have indeed supplied a full system for benchmarking their graphics cards. In the past we have been offered these systems ourselves but have always declined, stating that any components we test will be slotted into our own systems with our own installations. I am not saying that Pcperspective are commiting any foul play here, however did they install a fresh OS themselves negating any possible third party "tweaks" already installed on the system?
Sure this might sound like im being controversial, however I feel there are points to be made here, websites are really here to serve their public and results should really only be shown from comparible hardware and system installations that you, the public would have on your own systems. After all how many of you use a Phenom processor? Im guessing less than 5%.
Also today we have a "preview" from *Hexus (
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.ph...11874&page=4)*, they were invited to AMD's HQ in Toronto. They have had no control over the system build, the installation and state "To demonstrate just where ATI is in terms of CrossFireX four-GPU performance and how well it scales, HEXUS was invited to a pre-release showing under AMD-controlled conditions at its base in Toronto, Canada."
_AMD controlled conditions_? Is this how a reputable review site should be showing benchmark figures, again to potential customers, you guys?
"HEXUS can confirm that the numbers on the *spreadsheet* below, provided by ATI, do represent actual frame rates during testing, as we picked various benchmarks at random and they returned results within a minor standard deviation of what's shown below."
In fact the only performance figures again are from a spreadsheet (similar to the kind mailed to the press in PR emails), apparently gained from a Phenom powered system on a premade, preinstalled AMD system which resides in their HQ.
The article then ends with a picture of Greg Ellis, AMDs performance and benchmarking employee.
Driver Heaven will only publish a preview of AMD's Quad Crossfire (or in fact any other product) from our own system build in our own environment, because only by doing this can we be sure that we are presenting our readers with accurate and thorough analysis of a product.
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