More Mercury Research e-mails. I replied to them:
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Mike,
Thanks for the response!
I just have concerns when NVIDIA issues a press release stating that Mercury
Research declares them to have the fastest 3D video when, in fact, the board
that was tested was overclocked and is not being sold at that speed. I
would think that you would have a position on that type of manipulation:
what's to stop S3 or ATI or Matrox or 3dfx from now on just sending you
overclocked boards from now on? Nothing, as there's no consequence to the
deception. True, your OEM market knows the difference, but that doesn't
stop NVIDIA from leveraging the PR to the public, who probably doesn't.
I look forward to seeing your more consumer focused reports. I hope they
include rules such that only actual shipping products will be evaluated.
Thanks again,
...
And they responded:
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There is nothing we can do to stop it, really. ATI pulled it last quarter,
3Dfx did it the quarter before.
That's why we make an effort to put a scope to the boards so we can
report the actual clock speeds (you don't think Nvidia or Diamond told
us what speed TNT2 was running at, do you? :-)).
We're in an uncomfortable position with evaluation hardware. It's the
most interesting stuff to test, as I'm sure you'll agree, because it's
the latest. The chip and board vendors want to look good early. If
they can't, they frequently opt not to send us the hardware at all --
which is what happened last quarter with both TNT2 and Voodoo 3,
and (I think), this quarter with the G400.
Once the hardware is available in retail, they lose control over our
testing because we just go out and buy the hardware off the shelf.
For our consumer-oriented site, we're planning to separate eval from
production hardware, retest with off-the-shelf boards as soon as they
are available and skewer the guys who obviously were cheating.
Anyway, thanks again for your interest.
Mike |
