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The title? "The best gaming CPU you can buy". Not sure how that indicates "serious" gains, but you keep on telling yourself that Intel influenced them into use
by epmaybe 9y ago
The title? "The best gaming CPU you can buy". Not sure how that indicates "serious" gains, but you keep on telling yourself that Intel influenced them into use that title.
- vogon_laureate 9y agoArsTechnica is hardly 'pop tech'. Their technical analysis is reliably high calibre, they do excellent benchmarking and thorough testing, and they also do some stellar long-form science journalism. I can't really see how you could say that.
- pitaj 9y agoThink you replied to the wrong person.
- dabockster 9y agoSome games have microcode optimizations that specifically target Intel processors. So it makes sense that, as things stand currently, Intel has the advantage. Give it a year or two for AMD to solidify Ryzen in the consumer market, and we should see the real playing field emerge.
- piyh 9y agoMicrocode optimization looks awfully similar to better single threaded performance.
- AriaMinaei 9y agoA sentence can be technically accurate and practically misleading at the same time. I would think twice before defending something on technicality alone.
- epmaybe 9y agoI guess I just don't see how this title can be practically misleading, unless you're intentionally primed to think that "best" means "significant gains". Further, let's look at some of Mark Walton's other processor review titles: 1. Intel Core i9-7960X review: It beats Threadripper, but for a price 2. AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and 1200: True quad-core CPUs for just $130 and $110 3. Ryzen 5 review: AMD muscles in on Intel’s i5 sweet spot 4. AMD Threadripper 1950X review: Better than Intel in almost every way 5. Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti review: The fastest graphics card, again If Mark Walton or the editorial staff are being paid by Intel, they're doing a bad job of drinking the kool-aid. I included a GPU review as well, to demonstrate another title that could be labeled as "technically accurate and practically misleading", but that I think is completely fine. On another related topic, what does the word "best" mean? Some may think that it is the best on price, others may think performance, etc. I do think a more descriptive term could be used in the title, but that doesn't imply that I believe that Ars is a corporate shill working with Intel.
- AriaMinaei 9y agoI appreciate that you took the time to take a deeper look at this. The five titles that you mentioned seem to hint at the nuance necessary for a reader to interpret them. But the title in question though, just doesn't. "The best" is an overwhelmingly positive description for something that is only a marginal improvement. Does that mean the article is influenced by a PR effort on the part of Intel? Not necessarily. (Admittedly I should've clarified that.) But as a journalist, it is your responsibility to put things into perspective for your audience. If a monopolistic market leader is moving at snail speed while holding the market back, it is your job to make that fact clear for your audience. Don't get them excited about a tiny improvement. Get them disappointed by it. Compare these tiny gains with what could've been if such and such experimental technology was industrialised. I suppose the enthusiast segment of the market would be receptive to such information, and they'd be less happy with throwing money every year at incremental products and demand something more.
- marze 9y agoThe title is true even if the part is 1% better than the next fastest part.