Anti-benchmark is somewhat necessary because the benchmarks aren't reflecting real world performance or because companies are cheating them.
If you only benchmark for 30 seconds of game play the results may not capture problems that only appear after a few minutes when VRAM becomes completely full and the game spills textures into main memory and needs to load over the PCIe bus.
There have also been numerous examples where games were downgrading texture quality to keep frame rates high. The data is worthless in those cases because it's no longer the same Ultra quality.
Benchmarking is still a useful tool and should be included in most reviews, but it's more important than ever to ensure that it's properly done and that the results are useful and accurate for consumers.
Damn straight.
DF is one of the outlets that is automating the bench suite. 25-30 second passes, often in early undemanding sections, with no one doing IQ evaluations is barely a starting point anymore. Great for forum dwellers to cling to and spam the bigger bar better charts around to support whatever the contention or talking points du jour is. Tom's and TPU both failing to test Space Marine 2 in a demanding area is the latest example of how bad these reviews can be. Who cares if the methodology is good, if the results are crap? That it made Blackwell look MUCH better than it is in that game, is really sus. Shilling is way too prevalent.
Content like RT analysis is cool, but I don't like the guise under which DF and Tim from HUB do it. They make it seem like they are doing completely independent testing with no agenda. But it's really more of an infomercial. Hey Folks! Billy here! Nvidia is the best in this game they are heavily involved with and that is heavily optimized for their hardware! But wait! There's more! They are also best in this other game that is heavily optimized for them!
HardOCP was doing something important. How many shovelware and shilling for dollars reviews do you need? I'd rather there were more reviewers looking at the gameplay experiences with the hardware. Daniel-San and Pedro aka zWORMz do a good job of it. I expect terra ware to grow fast as a channel too. He does detailed testing and you can see for yourself what's what. He does not waffle nearly as much as Daniel either.
Aussie Steve at least comes back to things if his patreons give him grief, or tip him off about shenanigans. Most move on and don't rock the boat, because of which side their bread is buttered.
BTW, I knew the 50 series was doomed to be mid when I saw they were sampling channels with less than 100k subs.
Using DLSS for the first time in a couple of years I can say it is overall better in the games where I have tried it than IGTI, XeSS, or FSR versions below 4. I keep being told by reviewers I can't or should not use RT on a card as slow as this slot powered 3050 6GB; Nonsense!