Originally posted by: Tanclearas
This Thread
Like Duvie, the majority of people I see in this thread fall into two categories. I definitely do not agree with his assessment that the two categories are ATI fanboys and level-headed people asking others to consider the benches as real. In reality, the two types are those that are asking that people
only consider the benches as real, and those asking people to consider that the benches could be real or fake.
Even Sasser himself, with his follow-up post, has stated this. The only fact is that there is no way to verify the validity of the numbers. At this point, I am leaning towards believing that Sasser believes what he is saying. However, that doesn't make the benches any more valid/invalid than they were when this whole thing started.
I don't think I would go so far as to call someone that simply believes those numbers "stupid". I definitely would think someone was being pretty stupid if they based a buying decision on those numbers, especially considering the value of these cards.
What I do think is irresponsible and borderline stupid is jumping all over ATI's response to the benchmarks, with claims that ATI is deceitful and evil. Honestly, some people in these forums are bound and determined to roast ATI, regardless of what their response had been. I'll talk about that next.
ATI's Response
ATI really didn't have many options as far as responding to the supposed benchmarks.
1) Say nothing, or say, "We can neither confirm nor deny"
To many, this option would have simply been an admission that the numbers are in fact real. At the very least, there would have been an outcry from the community for ATI to respond in some way, so staying silent wasn't a realistic option. ATI
had to say something.
2) Confirm the numbers
This would have definitely put the issue to rest, but this is the only option that ATI would not truly be able to select. Even if the numbers are real, if ATI confirms them, they would be, in essence, violating their own NDA and harming legitimate journalists and review sites.
3) Claim the numbers are fake
This is the option ATI went with. If the numbers are indeed WAY OFF, then this is the option ATI should definitely take. At this point, it simply remains to be seen whether they took the right option or not.
4) State the only known fact
As I have said several times in this thread, the only indisputable fact is that there is no way to know how the benchmarks came to be. From Sasser's post, even he does not know without any doubt how the numbers were created. I think this was probably the best general option for ATI. This would still have resulted in the ridiculous numbers of threads with people speculating about whether the numbers were real or not, but at least people couldn't accuse ATI of lying.
Sasser
The truly sad thing about Sasser is that he believes himself to be a journalist. A professional journalist would not behave as he has. It doesn't surprise me that he "didn't make the cut", as he put it (I'm sure those weren't ATI's words). It seems like he is more of a "shock reporter" than a journalist. In other words, someone that is only interested in publishing material that will get an emotional reaction out of people, rather than someone that finds an issue and thoroughly investigates that issue.
Anandtech has hardly been overly kind to ATI, but they haven't been cruel either. Take the X800XL article where Anand highlights ATI's availability issues, but demonstrates that he does more than just complain about it.
ATI's promise about X850 GPUs being sold a week after they were launched turned out to be empty as we still can't find any X850 based GPUs available for sale. Even after firing off multiple emails to ATI asking for resolution on the availability matter, we were met with nothing but silence. ATI had no problem answering other questions, but all of our queries about X850 availability have been left untouched.
Anand was hardly taking it easy on ATI, but he still contacted them directly to get a response. Knowing that Anandtech has specifically stated they are going under NDA for R520, ATI obviously still respects Anandtech for being honest, objective, and thorough.
I believe this is why Sasser didn't make the cut. He is
not a journalist. He is not looking to get to the truth, but rather he is looking to get an emotional rise. If I was in ATI's position, why would I want to invite someone that runs a second-rate site that is only interested in reporting shock-value news? That's definitely someone that doesn't make the cut for me either.