Anand Lal Shimpi wrote on October 17, 2001
"NVIDIA clearly spoiled the preliminary introduction of the Radeon 8500 back in August with the release of their Detonator 4/XP drivers. We were told by NVIDIA that these new drivers would not only improve performance, but that they would be made publicly available the very same week we tested with them. Obviously, that didn't happen, and it ended up taking another month before the drivers were released. The performance gains were tangible, but the drivers weren't fit for release when NVIDIA provided them to the press and honestly shouldn't have been used. Hindsight being 20/20, we made a promise to ourselves that we would not allow any further performance enhancing drivers to be used in our video card reviews unless we could make the drivers publicly available to our readers immediately." (Emphasis mine)
Evan Lieb wrote on October 2, 2003
Secondly, I don't really see how using beta drivers for a review is somehow wrong because they're not available to the public.
No offense is meant, Evan Lieb. It is just when I read your comment, I knew that Anand had written differently earlier... especially since I own an 8500.
BTW: The search engine for your site is suboptimal (managementspeak word of the day). It took hours to find the right combination of words to locate the article. I almost resorted to reading every video article for the past 2 years. Almost.
"NVIDIA clearly spoiled the preliminary introduction of the Radeon 8500 back in August with the release of their Detonator 4/XP drivers. We were told by NVIDIA that these new drivers would not only improve performance, but that they would be made publicly available the very same week we tested with them. Obviously, that didn't happen, and it ended up taking another month before the drivers were released. The performance gains were tangible, but the drivers weren't fit for release when NVIDIA provided them to the press and honestly shouldn't have been used. Hindsight being 20/20, we made a promise to ourselves that we would not allow any further performance enhancing drivers to be used in our video card reviews unless we could make the drivers publicly available to our readers immediately." (Emphasis mine)
Evan Lieb wrote on October 2, 2003
Secondly, I don't really see how using beta drivers for a review is somehow wrong because they're not available to the public.
No offense is meant, Evan Lieb. It is just when I read your comment, I knew that Anand had written differently earlier... especially since I own an 8500.
BTW: The search engine for your site is suboptimal (managementspeak word of the day). It took hours to find the right combination of words to locate the article. I almost resorted to reading every video article for the past 2 years. Almost.