A GOOD YEAR
W
elcome to the final issue of 2014. It’s
taken much longer to get to you but
it’s finally here in its full glory. 2014
has been if anything an eventful year and
unlike past editor’s notes I’ve written during
this period. There’s literally a lot to talk
about here. We’ve seen some great changes
in the overclocking landscape and we can
only imagine what 2015 will bring for us. Over
and above that we have seen a healthy uptake
in PC gaming, be it notebooks, small gaming
PCs or whatever else. There’s plenty more to
be excited about this year than in 2013.
I wait patiently for INTEL’s drive in
conjunction with SAMSUNG, for 4K/UHD
monitors to retail for the magical $399
mark as this is truly the evolution we’ve
needed. This is not only in a gaming context
where the benefits of 4K are obvious, but
for overclocking as well. I’m relieved to see
that we now have FireStrike Ultra, which is
inevitably going to be the standard for all
our testing here going forward. If anything
it will allow us to drop another benchmark,
in the form of Catzilla (at least the 720P
test) as it serves little to no purpose at all
in evaluating the performance of anything
remotely resembling a shipping title.
Bluntly put, the cats and all were cute in the
beginning, but they've become bland
in addition to looking decisively dated. This
would obviously be true for the 1440P test
as well, but it does place more strain on the
GPU, so there’s that. However what’s clear
is that the time for new benchmarks that are
still firmly within the confines of competitive
overclocking, but have some real world
relevance has come.
On to other things overclocking, I’ve been
quite vocal about this on our facebook
page and even on our twitter account. I do
believe that the silent and unsaid, status
quo for quality motherboards is something
that needs to be discussed more openly by
those with the capacity to do so. That doesn’t
always fall to media and if anything, that
group is the least reliable when it comes
to tackling such issues. It’s a matter of
transparency and accountability to you the
readers. Be it you read one of the few print
publications that remain, an e-magazine
such as this one or a website. Almost all
publication relies on some kind of funding.
Since funding is provided primarily by
the vendors which provide the very same
products we must judge objectively. Try as
we may as an industry it is inevitably going
to a spiral down into “bought” editorial.
Even if no single entity sets out to do so, it
needs only a single person to engage in the grey areas of
editorial and ad spend and the rest have to follow.
Mind you I’m not saying this is a helpless situation. On
the contrary, it is you the readers which can bring about,
if you so desire, a change for the better as to what level
of honesty is expected in reviews. That simply means,
actually reading the pieces all the way through and not just
engaging the products superficially. Moreover, this will
bring much needed value and meaning back into an award
system which at present unfortunately doesn’t mean much.
We give out ours as fitting, especially since we don’t have
numerical scoring system within the main reviews section,
but that only solves a small part of the problem. In an issue
where we literally have only the best hardware to cover, that
means virtually all products could see an editor’s choice
award. I’m sure you can see the problem here. All it needs is
that you as readers and consumers should question reviews
that slander a product but then end up giving a positive award.
For example if we wrote that a specific keyboard was
nothing but an exercise in sheer frustration. That it had no
redeeming qualities outside of its primary ability of allowing
you some form of basic interaction with your computer.
That is a pretty damning statement and position to take.
It is then inappropriate for us for example to then award
such a product a Value, Hardware, Top pick or whatever
other award. Rewarding what we found to be anything but a
pleasant experience is dishonest above anything else. The
sad part however is that, even this doesn’t happen because
more times than not plenty of publications write glowing
reviews of products that are known to be inferior even by
the very manufacturers. That type of “writing” has eroded
away at what is otherwise a fairly straight forward process
of evaluating products and services as they are likely to be
experienced by the end user, you!
We as a publication have been subject to many of these
pressures, but given that we are bi-monthly and in the
context of others, with an odd 50,000 or so readers. Our
pressures are incomparable to a site that has millions
or hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. Even with that
said, be it a public ][ۈ\