What You've Just Bought!

[PP Mguire]

But bribery accusation is not something to just tell. Were there any court statements? It's possible, or course, and I believe your personal experience. It's just who it was. Any corrupt individual can give a bad name to any firm one way or another. And those individuals are in every single firm somewhere. But in the end they are all business. I only care about specific services that I want, not their name. 10 years ago is far away, anyway. I also had a good Asrock 8 years ago contrary to the questionable Z490 Asrock now. All my builds have mixed brands.

No court statements, and AFIAK MSI has made no comment because their CEO died around the same time this happened. 10 years ago for me may be a decade ago, but this literally happened recently. This month. MSI was caught trying to get a smaller channel to redo their titles and skew their results for a better image of their board. The channel refused and went public. Bigger channels like Jay, Linus, and GN reported on it, TPU, Hot Hardware, Anandtech all reported on it. Was and is still a big deal. I got slammed by fellow reviewers of my own site for not complying because the site itself was going downhill, and it eventually lead to me not reviewing hardware anymore on a professional basis. I quit because I'm not going to purge my integrity and dignity to say something is good when it's not. I joined to make unbiased professional reviews and it was the 3rd time I got pressured to write more positivity for a product. I met that exact PR person at Quakecon of 2010 and the dude was an absolute ass to me simply because I would not inflate their brand. Sure it's one individual conducting PR fraud to spruce a brand name, but their PR department as a whole has been doing this for a long time now. As you mentioned, that was 10 years ago, so it means each new individual dealing with press is being coerced to do this. I cannot stand by that.

Specs on paper do not matter "as much" as actual performance/results, not that they just don't matter. They do matter. I meant there could be some hidden details like something internal. Cool car, BTW. I own an old car myself (W124 1992 300E) and I prefer natural aspirated engines. Ecoboost (for a moment I thought there was something else called evoboost) is an additional tech over the main part. I presume your 90s V8 was naturally aspirated. Ecoboost is meant to increase performance. Other forced induction methods are used to decrease gas consumption. These two points make exceptions.
Don't worry too much about this reply, tho. It's more of trying to clarify what I meant, nothing important related to the discussion. And I wanted to talk about cars.

From cars to computers this isn't a good comparison in this regard. When you're dealing with engines vs electronic components there are many many different factors at play vs a set of electronic components designed to a strict guideline and meant to deliver exactly what the paper says. VRMs in this instance have to be precise and in this case it's really clear cut. A 9 phase with a much better cooling solution can deliver more sustained power for a longer period of time without fluctuating than a 10 phase that has little to no cooling. When VRMs and chokes went digital this tolerance became even tighter.

Anywho, I love talking about cars too. Ecoboost is a fancy Ford name for it's got a tiny turbo lol. I used to have a 2015 Focus that was also an Ecoboost. It was a little 3cyl with a tiny turbo and had like no power. My 90s V8 even if I put a turbo on it still wouldn't make as much as the newer 4cyl. Power levels were severely limited due to smog regulation and Ford 90s engines were just built really poorly for performance. If I spent 6 grand on a Kenne Bell supercharger kit for a direct fit I'd be lucky to make in the ballpark of 300HP. It's why I haven't done jack with it because there's no point dumping money into the turd. I can spend 4 grand on a set of higher flowing heads or 6 grand on some 4v heads. Another 3 grand in pistons, rods, and camshaft, then dump about 500 into fuel delivery and I'm sitting at 350 best case scenario. Right there I'm already spending 5.0 money that puts 400+ to the crank

Yooo I like your old benz. Looks like an old mafia car or Russian politician car.

Just to be safe, I didn't mean to be rude when I said your assessment sounded subjective to me.
It's true that Steve is knowledgeable, but he's being too technical. To me as a consumer, I want someone practical to show me results-numbers. But this is just a neutral comment. GNex does give numbers, and I basically trust them, but it just happened that I didn't cross ways with them.

I didn't take it as rude, I just wanted to make it clear. Your assessment of Steve is exactly what I was talking about. Graphs don't tell the full picture and it's usually all people look at. Is he over technical? Sure, but that's never a bad thing to have all the details and facts at hand. Then again I'm the same way.

 

[PP Mguire]

Interesting view. Have you even watched any of jay's or linus's stuff? I know a good chunk of LTT videos are for entertainment purposes, might check out that gamer's nexus later though...

Yes I've watched all 3 basically since they started. I used to watch LTT religiously right until they went LMG and their content turned more into an entertainment value rather than factual information. You can tell how their testing is basically very quick and not thorough with how many mistakes and retakes they need to do later to fix the info they missed. I still watch all of them especially to pass the time, as entertainment value I love to watch Jay and I can always expect a LTT video to watch during lunch. In terms of waiting for product reviews though, I get that info from TPU and GN.

Edit: I used to watch Tek Syndicate because of Wendal but stopped when their drama started, plus the main guy (forgot his name) really lost sight and started poking a lot of political topics. I was watching that dude way back when he mained the Tiger Direct channel. I didn't follow Wendal though because he's mostly a Linux guy, but I watch his videos when I want to know more on the server side of things.

 

[Nukem]

+1

ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, Biostar, ASUS, evga, Supermicro, etc... Yep, I've burned thru a lot of boards over the years. But I kept going back to ASRock... (And no, I'm not a shill. LOL) If it wasn't for the memory slot and 2 SATA ports going bad, I would still be using the Taichi.

GamersNexus and Actually Hardcore Overclocking work in tandem to put together the mobo reviews, so between them and Hardware Unboxed, they are the ones I'll go to first...

 

[PP Mguire]

+1

ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, Biostar, ASUS, evga, Supermicro, etc... Yep, I've burned thru a lot of boards over the years. But I kept going back to ASRock... (And no, I'm not a shill. LOL) If it wasn't for the memory slot and 2 SATA ports going bad, I would still be using the Taichi.

GamersNexus and Actually Hardcore Overclocking work in tandem to put together the mobo reviews, so between them and Hardware Unboxed, they are the ones I'll go to first...

I was a BIG TIME eVGA fanboy for their boards back in the day. After X58 and that era they went down hill. Also being a huge fan and friend of Vince Lucido (Kingpin) having his name on a couple of their products didn't help but I never buy their Dark boards.

 

[Smart_Guy]

Now I MUST start a car thread!

I stopped watching Linus just because he annoys me and his way of joking is boring and not effective.

I think I should stop here. I (we?) derailed so much already.

Oh yeah (topic related), the 2x2TB Crucial MX500 SSD's and the 4-HDD external enclosure are here. I'll keep what I did with them for another thread to not derail this one further. Not I can game quicker (not faster).

 

[strollin]

After using the Echo Loop for a few days I have decided to return it. Firstly, it's not all that useful to me, especially since most of the time there is an Alexa device in the room with me already. It's ugly and very noticeable while on your finger (doesn't look like a piece of jewelry) and not comfortable to wear. There is no indent or anything on the little button you need to press so you can't find the button by feel. Sometimes I have to press 3-4 or more times to actually press the button. On more than one occasion I needed to actually look to see where the button was in order to press it.

The most annoying thing for me is that when I would finally get the button pressed and ask her something, she would respond with "Unlock your phone and try again." I don't want to have to fiddle with my phone every other time I want to ask her a question. If I have to do that, I could just take my phone out and ask Google or use the Alexa app.

Another drawback to it is the price. The thing costs $130 and that is an introductory price (by invitation only). When it comes on the market it will be priced at $180. Entirely too expensive.

Not my cup of tea.

 

[PP Mguire]

After using the Echo Loop for a few days I have decided to return it. Firstly, it's not all that useful to me, especially since most of the time there is an Alexa device in the room with me already. It's ugly and very noticeable while on your finger (doesn't look like a piece of jewelry) and not comfortable to wear. There is no indent or anything on the little button you need to press so you can't find the button by feel. Sometimes I have to press 3-4 or more times to actually press the button. On more than one occasion I needed to actually look to see where the button was in order to press it.

The most annoying thing for me is that when I would finally get the button pressed and ask her something, she would respond with "Unlock your phone and try again." I don't want to have to fiddle with my phone every other time I want to ask her a question. If I have to do that, I could just take my phone out and ask Google or use the Alexa app.

Not my cup of tea.

That sounds incredibly unintuitive and inconvenient.

 

[Nukem]

Just another thing for Amazon to get money off the diehard fans. They aren't as bad as the Apple fans, but it's getting close.

 

[PP Mguire]

Just another thing for Amazon to get money off the diehard fans. They aren't as bad as the Apple fans, but it's getting close.

I least my Apple junk is functional, quality, and useful lol.

 

[strollin]

I personally have never cared for Apple products, way too high a premium to pay for pretty ordinary stuff.

For instance, years ago I bought a Mac Mini. Cost me about $1K (not including monitor) and it worked every bit as good as a $400 Windows machine. I didn't like it so gave it to one of my daughters. She hated it and wanted a Windows machine. It was about a year old and I tried to sell it but couldn't even get an offer of 50% what I paid for it. Finally ended up trading it for a Windows laptop and felt I got the better end of the deal.

When my 4 kids were growing up they had various mp3 players. The brand that was the least reliable, with shortest lifespan but most expensive was the Apple iPods. The best players we had were the ones from Creative. They were more functional, more reliable, longer lasting and cost less than the Apple equivalent.