A Gripe with Anandtech

[Octoberblue]

I'm posting this thread several places to see what reaction I get.

Man, there are so many interesting things they should be investigating. What's the deal? For example, and this is HUGE: How well does Virtual Channel RAM perform in these KT-133A boards?

I mean, VC RAM almost made a big splash in the market, but no one supported it at first and then there was absolutely NONE of it available for a long time. But now that it's available everyone has forgotten about it or just "assumed" it's not worth a look. Hey, this stuff is cheaper now than 133 cas2 was just 3Months ago! Yes, it's pricy by comparison (around 115 for a 128MB stick) but it's not outrageous by any means.

So how would these 133 boards, outfitted with VC RAM, which they support, stack up against the DDR 760 chipset? The DDR chipsets are great but they are not exactly blowing the doors off of performance. Has anyone done any comparison testing of VC in 133 vs. 760 DDR? Please give me the link if they have!!!!

Also, why no RAID comparisons? Aaaaargh!! How many people on here would LOVE to see some RAID performance comparisons by someone other than another member of the forums?

Hello? Anandtech? We've been really wanting to see stuff like this for a long time. Just because you have a week when there's no new mobo or video card releases doesn't mean there's nothing you could report! Sound systems? C'mon! Price guides? Aaaaaaargh!!!

(BTW:If you guys start comparing PDA's I'm outta here!)

It's great that some new boards are out right now and everything, but during the "down" times there are TONS of interesting things you could be looking into for us!

Thoughts anyone?

 

[Soccerman]

for storage reviews, the best place still is Storage Review. my only gripe with them is that they don't post about all drives out there, only some of them.. otherwise thats the place to go for anything storage related.

the VC-SDRAM idea though, is sortof discounted, becuase AT did reviews on it with the KT133 (I think) and it provided sometimes a slowdown in performance, and at other times an increase in speed. an update would be nice, though.

 

[SiliconVandal]

Hey man, more power too ya! I definatly agree! I like to see people speak their mind....

SV

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Sometimes BMW/Porsche-driving-millionaire-college-students get busy, ya know?

 

[Octoberblue]

Soccerman:

You're partly right. But actually the test was on VIA's Intel solution, which is of course very similar to the AMD solution. However, you're incorrect about the benchmarks. Actually, the VC-SDRAM outperforms everything but the Rambus. More importantly, it would be great to know how this works out with the Athlon, whether the performance gains would be greater or less.

Here's a quote from Anand:
The next question is: does Virtual Channel SDRAM 'buy back' some of the performance deficit the Apollo Pro 133A holds in comparison to the i820? In some cases it does, such as the 3D Studio MAX test where memory bandwidth and the efficient use of it is critical to a high performing system. But in other cases, like in our gaming and AGP performance tests it doesn't make up for the slower AGP implementation of the Apollo Pro 133A

See, he's comparing it to the 820 and RDRAM. If you skim over the benchmarks in this article you can easily make the mistake of thinking the VC-RAM slowed it down on some tests, but if you look more carefully you'll see that all of those tests are time-benchmarks where the lower scores are the best. Here's thelink.

So the VC-RAM gave a performance increase, albeit a slight one, in every test. Now we all know the DDR performance gains are currently marginal. If the Athlon gets a slightly better bump than the PIII with VC-RAM (I have no idea if it would or not, that's why I want the tests!) then it could very easily end up neck in neck with DDR or even surpass it!

Wouldn't that be VERY interesting to know?

 

[DaddyG]

October, just give Anand your credit card # and he will review what ever you want. If you want it for free, you take what he offers. Course, if you ask nicely and don't gripe, he might listen.

 

[erub]

This is after all a discussion board. He definitely does have the right to gripe, unless the mods tell him that he can't. And I think his complaints are valid. Just a few days ago I was complaining that we haven't had any system guides lately. I always found those among the most useful part of Anandtech, comparing what the editors had to say vs. what the users on the forums had to say about a particular part.

 

[Modus]

We all know how hard Anand and his team work. I think he just needs a bigger team. There are dozens of extremely knowledgable hardware enthusiasts in this forum who would jump at the chance to review hardware for AnandTech, probably for a very low fee. For example, I'm sure Russ would be first in line to do some work for AnandTech at the right price.

Anand needs to be more of an editor as opposed to a guru. He's too busy with college to tackle the whole CPU/motherboard/video industry. He should delegate all but the very juciest reviews to personally chosen correspondents whom he implicitly trusts, and just review the findings in each article.

There are so many good questions to be asked by a site like AnandTech, and I don't think their current team is large enough to tackle them.

Modus

 

[Rand]

Anandtech has never been the best for Storage Reviews, if that's what your looking for I think you'll find that Storage Review is a better place to go than Anandtech.
As for Virtual Channel RAM, they did look into it's performance once a long time a go on the Via133A. Might want to look into that article.

And BTW, I wouldnt be at all surprised if Anandtech started doing reviews of PDA's. They have been expanding and I have a feeling PDA's might be the next item to be added to the list of things to review.

 

[Adul]

I have wanted to see the performance of VC SDRAM on athlons platforms has well. I am tempted to do this myself and see what the difference is.

 

[Octoberblue]

Heh heh. I love Anandtech. I had to post this thread a bunch of places to finally get something going. I'm not as angry as I may have apeared.

DaddyG:
My credit card number wouldn't cover Anand's drycleaning bill. But let's not forget that this is a competitive media business. A magazine or television station that just shows or prints whatever they want without regard to what the people want will eventually have serious problems.

Rand:
I hope your wrong about the PDA's. I mean, I own a PDA, I think they are very useful. But I can't imagine anything more boring than a PDA review, of which I have seen several. I was exaggerating about being "outta here" though. It would just be another thing to ignore.

Anyway to reiterate: I do think these are legitimate issues. For example, (again) the VC-RAM issue really does seem like a fascinating question. I mean, just take a look at the review of it's use in the VIA Intel chipset, which is very similar to their KT-133 Athlon solution.

Don't skim. Those benchies are NOT showing the VC-RAM as "slower" in any tests. The ones with the shorter bar graphs are timed benchmarks showing the VC-RAM getting things done faster than everything but RAMBUS!

So again I have to say, wouldn't it be extremely interesting to know if the KT-133 + VCRAM is close to or equal to the 760DDR boards? What if it's even faster in some instances? Granted, DDR has more room to grow, but this would be BIG news for KT-133 owners. A side-by-side performance comparison could potentially be the biggest hardware story we've seen in a while.

(Or maybe not, but it would be really cool to find out!)

 

[DDad]

Red:
Actually, Modus would be better suited to be the modem reviewer.....

 

[Hekana]

<< Anandtech has never been the best for Storage Reviews >>



Anandtech has never been the best for anything. Review quality went down the toilet a long time ago. And after that Rambus PR stunt done here a while ago, I started seeking reviews elsewhere.

 

[Adul]

Now that i think about it. I do not think they used memory interleaving for that VC SDRAM review either. Since it was not even an option in the bios then. We all know how much that increased performance for us.

 

[Octoberblue]

Well, hey, I didn't mean to start an Anandtech bashing thread here. I like this sight. I do think they could improve it dramatically with a few things, but I still like it.

Anyway, check out my post above on the vcram issue and give me some feedback.

 

[Mike Andrawes]

The wheels are already turning on some of these reviews, but it takes quite a bit of time to do all the benchmarks and that is what often holds us up on the cool investigative type articles.

I will say, however, that VC-SDRAM really does not provide much of a performance boost in our experience. In fact, support for it is slowing and I'll tell ya a secret - VIA may be dropping support for it in future chipsets, so IMHO, it's not a wise investment for the future. If you guys really want to see it, we'll consider taking a look.

 

[office boy]

You know there hasn't been much in the way of any kind of memory review in a long while.

 

[ArkAoss]

hmm i think mr october, is just trying to stir up trouble, come on over to OT.

 

[Octoberblue]

ArkAoss: Nah, not stir up trouble. Just trying to get a response.
What's OT?

There was a 1.6% performance boost in Sysmark98 with the Apollo Pro chipset and vc-ram, compared to a 2.5% boost in sysmark2000 for the fic ddr platform compared to the a7v133. Apples &amp; oranges maybe w/the diff. benches, but still seems interesting.

Just thought if the performance boosts for ddr are going to be so marginal maybe there's a tweak or two of the vcram that could push it up a little too, perhaps close to the ddr. It would be interesting to note what kind of apps. vc-ram helps out the most in, compared to ddr.

If support goes out the window I guess it won't be worth it. I like the idea of vc in general b/c it's innovative, like ati's hyper-z.

 

[Castellan]

Off topic. I would like to see more reviews, but I'll take what I get. I would like to see some more stuff along the lines of comparisons of different chipsets. Most of them are things that are published as a review of a new chipset, which usualy isnt a good indication of performance in the long haul.