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PC Hardware Reviewers in 2024 (Die Shrink Telegrams) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-25 22:33:36
Edited:
2024-01-25 23:12:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Behind the scenes - one subject that's emerged repeatedly amongst Tom, Dan, and the sources we speak with over the past week has been that there seems to be a disconnect between how many large Hardware Reviewers portray products, and the reality of what PC Gamers actually want lately.  Some examples are as follows:

The RTX 4070 SUPER gets positive reviews...and nobody buys it...

Some reviewers claimed the "7900 XTX kinda made the 4080 look good", and yet the 7900 XTX is selling as well as midrange cards while the 4080 languishes.

Alder / Raptor Lake i5s were labeled as "good value" by many reviewers due to having extra E-Cores, and yet recent i5s seem to be selling worse than the more expensive 5800X3D!

Most reviewers continually brought up the last-gen RX 6700 XT in RX 7600 XT reviews...yet ignored the last-gen RTX 3060 12GB...which is currently the Low End sales champion...

So...what's going on here?  How come so many reviews seem to avoid making a ballsy conclusion?  How come they are often entirely ignorant of what people are looking for? ...and is there a new crop of commentators popping up lately to fill the void?  What do YOU look for in a PC Hardware Review?

Write in below with your questions, comments, and thoughts on these subjects!  Unfortunately, you only have ~4 hours from now to submit, so do NOT hesitate.  Just make sure your submission is respectful, uses good grammar, and is as concise as possible!

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computer-CPU-Processors/zgbs/pc/229189

https://twitter.com/Some1sm/status/1749917204479418854

https://twitter.com/Some1sm/status/1749917204479418854

https://youtu.be/Oz7G2RjIjj4

https://www.techspot.com/review/1198-amd-radeon-rx-480/page3.html

https://www.techspot.com/review/2794-amd-radeon-7600-xt/

Comments

Manuel Nascimento

Hello all. In the past like 4y+ I’ve found many high quality YouTubers like MLID, GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed (to name a few), that have constantly been rewarding in helping me analyse critically all the hardware releases and the market aspects of them too. What’s been most saddening to me is that despite there being so much good information and discussion out there, multiple forms of fanboyism from every side seem to keep creeping up again and again. Feels like as hardware keeps getting more discussed from more people, we’re losing objectivity and going more into the “sports team fan” mentality. As a person who strives to be objective and fair myself, I wonder how you see this “fanboyism/shilling” aspect over the years. What does it say about people engaging in this gaming hardware and otherwise market? I for one fully encourage you to keep striving for good and imparcial analytical capability and capacity to withstand and ignore constant accusations from side to side of being a shill. I cannot begin to imagine how frustrating it can get with repeated exposure… Cheers and keep fresh!

Eric Bagely

While I haven't seen too much over-evaluation on Intel products by reviewers, it certainly seems to exist where Nvidia is concerned. Many reviewers seem to think that features such as DLSS and ray-tracing are much more valuable than consumers believe. Do you think there is a cultural/geographical divide between reviewers on this issue? For example, Australian reviewers seem to heavily favor Nvidia, while European reviewers favor Amd.

CompressedAIBlocks

Mot & Nad. What are your thoughts on the RX 7600 XT? I feel like the performance will be lackluster before the VRAM is an issue. I see a lot of sentiment around this being the "new RX 580", do you think this is valid? It seems to struggle with 1440p60 with *some* titles already. Was the RX 580 only such a great card because PC hardware was leaps and bounds beyond 8th console and now PC has to use CPU and/or GPU resources to make up for decompressing assets?

CompressedAIBlocks

The Super cards are quite frankly a let down. Who would honestly wait this long for this level of performance? It doesn't make sense...they needed to be more aggressive with pricing IMO. Would you guys agree or disagree?

CompressedAIBlocks

I think a lot of channels like Daniel Owen or Ancient Gameplays are filling the void that the big reviewers like GN or HUB currently leave empty. While I find value in HUB reviews still I think that Daniel Owen is offering content that HUB and GN don't really deep dive into. It's very refreshing to see this.

shea

i just wait for your review round ups and dont bother with others

coltmarshmallow

I actually find the reviews less useful these days as the market for current and last gen evolves. I don't need the performance but recommendations what's good on the market at said period of time. I think it's reviewers actively avoid this

Soulphie

Hey Tom and Dan, Quick thing I've been mulling over: I believe there is a bias towards nvidia gpus from reviews because almost all of them only ever use nvida products, and almost all of them use the flagship of whatever gen is the most recent. Telling a person like that that they could be buying a product like the 7700xt at about 430€ instead of a 4070 super at 660€ seems to always trigger a "buy the 7800xt instead" but a lot of people are budget bound and cant just pay 200€ more. I love the tests from Hardware unboxed amd many other channles but i always skip the conclusion parts of videos because i find them to be out of touch at times, not always. What about the Lowend gems, how would you two think we could get reviewers to focus mostly on value not raw performance. How can people say the 7700xt is a bad card (even though i admit the price difference to the 7800xt should be a big bigger) when its the second best card when you meassure frame per euro/dollar. Do you think the dominance of top of stack Nvidia might be overshadowing some awesome value and performance elsewhere or am i just wrong? Great thumbnail on dye shrink 114# btw

Cleansweep

A few years ago, I saw a really informative GDC talk where the speaker pointed out that people don't know what they want, but they do know what they like/don't like. Big review channels have the big hurdle of knowing what their audience likes/don't like, but also being references/consumer guides that get widely passed around. That probably skews a lot of coverage towards more statistical based recommendations, because even a best case scenario of polling the total audience for their videos is probably going to give them multiple contradictory results and they can't guess a specific person's desired use case. That said, I think HUB and GN's revisit content, where they go back to a part after a price change or big driver update and reassess it vs the competition, does help. But I don't think there's any way to close the gap between reviewers and retail outside of having 10 million tech tubers and hoping that the aggregate results of their recommendations skew closer to retail.

Gob

I think the disconnect lies in the fact that the console transition hasn’t been kind to lower VRAM GPUs that people paid a lot of money for during the chip shortage. The value proposition, right or wrong, that I think a lot of people are making buying decisions on is VRAM capacity per dollar. Hence why the 7900XTX is selling so well, most VRAM for dollar. People don’t want to spend $600 for 12GB when they can spend $500 for 16GB. I’m going to be interested in seeing how the 7600XT sells. I suspect the 3060 is selling well due to 12GB for $300. What do you and Dan think?

TechnoLadz

What I will say - and the general consensus between PC builders my age is that we roughly want the following things. A minimum of a 60% performance increase over what we're upgrading from. The price we pay varies person to person; based on household income - however most of us want to only pay about 25% extra at most. VRAM is a worry for some of us - others it's regular RAM. I heard off of one of my friends he was being Bottlenecked by 32GB of ram - and was often on the edge of it. However I get the feeling this is because he uses a 3060 Ti; and that for every GB of VRAM you're missing, you have to make up for it with 2GB of regular RAM. More same upgrade options and motherboard longevity. If AMD had made a DDR4 Zen 4 for AM4, I know a lot of us would've upgraded - since the majority of us are currently on Zen 2 and Zen 3 - and we do want the extra performance bump - but when we consider the overall upgrade cost - it's very expensive. We could afford the, for example, Ryzen 9 7900 if it was a drop in upgrade, however - because of the cost of DDR5 and Motherboards, what was a $300-ish upgrade suddenly becomes a $600+ one. Easier to build systems - it sounds a bit niche - but that GPU where it has basically the twice as long PCIe Slot to have the 600W of power over would be a really good standard. For someone like me - I have a severe physical disability - it takes me 8-10 hours to build a PC. And most of that was just faffing about with cables - if the cables were just one giant one from the PSU handling all power; and then just one for all the case and fans stuff that would be good. Proper GPU upgrades for a good price - like what we had for Kepler to Maxwell - or Maxwell to Pascal. We got at least a 40% uplift from both of those generations and only minor adjustments to pricing. No more nearly doubling of price 3 years later (looking at you 4080 - compared to the 2080S). At most - keep it below a 30% increase. We don't want more Cores really - just more powerful cores, or more efficient cores. For desktop, I would rather have a core be 20mm^2 that is triple the performance of Zen 4 and only have 8 of them instead of 16. We don't really require 16 Cores for gaming for the inevitable future. And for laptop - the C Cores are perfect. Most of us do agree that products do need more VRAM for cheaper tho. Additionally - for launches - a minimum of 40% of the stock should be at MSRP. And each model should have a Founders version. A 4070 TiS FE with a 4070S FE like cooler would've helped. Also; Nvidia really shouldn't of called it the 4070 Ti Super. Should've been the 4070 Super 16GB for 15% more than they're selling the 4070 Super for. Pretty much identical performance gap to that of GTX 1060 3GB and GTX 1060 6GB anyways - so would've made a lot of sense.

Xavbeat03

Hey y'all, When it comes to the Intel parts I think some reviewers overemphasize the multi-threading performance that doesn't seem to help games(besides APO). I also think that the power usage between amd cpus and Intel cpus is a pretty big deal due to the required cooler. AMD also has a software system which can be used to toggle Eco mode, and I don't know if Intel has that. To me at least, Intel seems to be using at least 2x the power amd is in consumer diy chips.

Ronigan

Maybe the established reviewers have some disconnect due to how long they've been examining the numbers. At a certain point, maybe it's all just numbers to them. More so the longer they've been doing it. More generally, we are all human and never have the full picture. Cue the "3 blind men and an elephant" parable.

AdanFS

I think VRAM is still a hard thing to review a card with. Either you have enough, or you hit a cliff and its a disaster. I think a lot of reviewers attempt to be objective, and with the 4070 super you really have to work to find an example where 12GB is a problem in 1440p. So then you have to go to predictive mode, and have to guess how long it will be before 12GB hits the "disaster point". VRAM will probably forever be a chicken/egg problem I suppose. It is good to see that AMD is moving the needle, but there are a large percentage of Nvidia cards that devs still need to worry about.

PostRetroism

The Supers are probably the best release concept we'll get from Nvidia in these trying times: same price, a bit more performance, nothing crazy. At least it wasn't more expensive for a bit more performance.

Prior is the theme 999

The new launches were underwhelming to me on both sides. Was really hoping that the 7600xt would perform better as something carrying the xt moniker I did just end up buying a 4060 for $300 for my brother’s build. I understand that the argument is in the future the vram will pay off but DLSS and all of that pays of now in my case, considering all he will be playing is at 1080p and it’s just mainly roblox.

Prior is the theme 999

In my opinion the 4080 makes the 7900xtx look good instead. A $200 price drop doesn’t even change a thing in my opinion. If I cared about rt then yea, but at 1440p I’m getting very good frames with rt enabled with my xtx anyways, and the adrenaline software makes it very easy for me to not even think twice, that’s how good it is to me.

Gilaspit

Some reviewers like Hardware Unboxed and GamersNexus I believe try to be as unbiased as possible and let the cards speak for themselves. However, given the current offerings and price points from Nvidia there seems to be a feeling of hubris that is unmatched. The lack of VRam really bothers me but it does point to a feeling of forced early upgrades. Do you think that this could be one of the reasons for the lack of VRam? Initially the cost from a few years ago could be pointed at but it has defiantly come down and now it’s about better margins and less longevity.

PCDog

Tom and Dan, I was one of those crazy people that bought a 7900 XTX this generation. So, what was I looking for? Rasterization at 4k and price. Even though I bought 3 newly released games in 2023 I still have 0 games that use ray tracing. Zip. As far as DLSS vs FSR 2? Not that important to me because, honestly, I see DLSS and FSR as a nice to have and not a must have. The 7900 XTX gives me enough FPS at native 4k that I get nice and smooth gameplay. This is what reviewers are missing. Native resolution players like me who see DLSS and ray tracing as being overhyped. Why pay more for something that I don’t absolutely need?

Trevor Renfro

I definitely have no clue the general consensus, but personally, I don't like the channels that give information that is tailored to favor certain things (such as Nvidia GPUs) when looking for comparisons. In the past year or so, most of the news I've been looking forward to hearing has actually been about software features (AMD vs Nvidia software suite additions and improvements mainly) or other similar areas of product launches (such as game consoles, streaming devices like the Nvidia Shield TV Pro if they ever release another, televisions, and monitors). One thing that might need to be remembered about CPUs and GPUs, however, is how a lot of people don't upgrade every generation (or even every couple generations), hence it's not going to be the same crowd buying the stuff every time. For example, I'm on more of a 5-6 years upgrade pattern. I know of people that are closer to every decade or so, and I know of people that do every few years.

Nicholas Buckner

Reviewers missed how many NVidia cards (with their overbuilt coolers) don't fit in many cases.

Chris Rijk

Even full time professionals struggle to predict demand so I don’t necessarily have a problem if a reviewer’s prediction is wrong but I do have a problem if their methods have flaws. I would say that a common problem for both reviewers on YouTube and traditional magazines is giving too much credit to the current market leader in terms of what makes a good product. The underlying assumption here is that the best technology wins which in turn suggests that the winner must have the best technology but this is not always the case. A related issue is that many people are not good at admitting to their biases and so are not reliable in polling.

Chris Rijk

One trap reviewers can fall into is treating benchmarks as the be all and end all. If two cards have the same “cost per frame”, that doesn’t make them equally good value. I think the biggest area that reviewers struggle with is VRAM capacity and many gloss over it too much relative to how much I see it discussed on forums. I don’t expect a reviewer to predict the VRAM usage of future games precisely but extrapolations can be made from historical trends. Most buyers don’t upgrade every generation so longevity matters and I think reviewers should discuss this more based on historical trends in VRAM usage.

Chris Rijk

Based on X3D sales, I think one thing the last year has made clear is that in the DIY CPU market, sales are dominated by what’s good for gaming. So if you want to review a CPU for the DIY market, gaming performance should be given the biggest weighting by far. Of course, some CPUs are targeting a wider range of workloads and perhaps reviewers should specifically use a broader range of benchmarks for such CPUs rather than using the same benchmarks for everything.

MelodicArmor

Hi Tom and Dan. I have a few thoughts but I will try my best to be short. First off the disconnect I have noticed can be boiled down to an issue between experience with the product and a misunderstanding of what a customer is willing to pay for in this day and age. Most people are not only playing games on their hardware anymore. Things like what setup is like, the pro's and con's of the actual every day use of the product is what customers are more interested in. It's the pricing argument that I think gets completely lost on a lot of content creators. The best example of this is the RTX 4070 Super. Most content creators that did day one reviews said that $600 was ok for a card with 12GB of VRAM. if you read the comments or forums, the majority of consumers said no. Most customers just want the right price and a working product. I really do believe that we will need a new generation of reviewers who think more outside the box if the coverage of this space is to improve.

Chris Rijk

I think GPU reviewers should be especially careful about giving too much weight to current driver features or software features in general. After all, precisely because they are software they can change a lot over time.

QuickJumper

Hi Tom and Dan I think that reviewers might be bit disconnected from the overall consumer needs. What AMD, Nvidia and other big companies do is they research the market and try to gauge which features and which price is going to be preferable by customers. So while reviewers might think that in based on the objective data their subjective opinion is well rounded it's actually the other way around - aggregation and analysis of many subjective opinions of real customers might lead to far better estimate of the needs and whishes of people. One thing I also noticed is that the reviewers tend to thing companies are consumer friendly or companies are greedy. This is rarely the case. It might be the perception but it's rarely simple just like that. Companies have more people and are lot of times smarter than reviewers and reviewers tend to forget that.

TheDarkJester

Hi guys! I know I'm late to this one, but I'd like to throw in my two cents here. Personally speaking, I think that most reviewers are too used to the higher-end hardware. They know what THEY want, and the commentators that are in their orbit, but not necessarily what the average Joe wants. As for the second part, I'm asking myself the following for GPUs, "Is this hardware stuff I feel comfortable having for 2-4 years? Will this hardware last that long before it breaks down? What's the cost-performance metrics? How well does it cool? (Don't want to spend an extra $50-$100 to upgrade that, too.) Will I make use of the features that they show? What's the warranty looking like?" for CPUs, "Why do I need this upgrade? What extra stuff will I be doing with this? Power Draw and Cooling? L3 Cache? (I play games that require lots of it to do big projects, like Factorio.) How stable is it?" for Storage, "What's the connection? $/gigabyte?"