$26
My dad came to this country with something like $26 in his pocket; $26 and a scholarship to UMASS. I didn't know about that until I was around 14, our family went to another family's house for dinner and it came up in after dinner conversation. I was honestly floored - all of the sudden everything in life made sense to me, I was given the drive that I needed to go anywhere and do anything in life. My dad took essentially nothing and raised a family out of it; we all helped, but one man's ability to do that is what I truly define as successful. We weren't rich, but he (along with the help of my mom) made sure that we could live in comfort as a family. My dad is what sparked my drive; he's the reason that if I get a product to review on Friday, and the review has to go up on Monday, I bust my ass all weekend to make sure it gets done. He instilled in me a true understanding of what hard work is really about, and that's a major cornerstone of who I am today.
My mom gave me an understanding of how to do something with myself and an understanding of ethics. She showed me what truly caring about something really meant, about what being selfless meant and gave me the foundation that allowed me to develop my own perspectives on the world. She didn't teach me right from wrong, she taught me how to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And I'll never forget that which she's taught me to this day. It wasn't until college that I really understood what she had done for me; she dropped out of college to take care of me, to raise me. She gave up her dreams of being a doctor, to live her new dream of having a son. She cared for me more than anyone ever could, and seeing and understanding that also helped shaped who I am today.
I started AnandTech almost exactly 8 years ago: April 26, 1997. I was a freshman in high school, 14 at the time, and completely into this stuff. I started AnandTech not as a business, but as something that I thought would be cool to do. I started it humble, and to this day I will never forget my beginnings. There's no room for big egos in writing, I hate reading it and I'm sure you all do too.
I started the website with nothing, it was a free site on Geocities and I had no hardware other than the scraps of my system. But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. I've had one basic principle when it comes to how to deal with those readers, and it goes something like this:
Regardless of how many people come to the site, I look at it as each person coming to me with their money in hand, wanting to know what to purchase. Let's say the average hardware upgrade costs $150, that's 6 million people x $150. I don't have to let you know that that's an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. To trade the trust that you all are placing in me and my staff for any amount of anything, is just unfathomable. While I'm sure there are folks that do it, I am not one of them.
At the same time, if we didn't value your trust so highly, we'd be gone in an instant. AnandTech readers make their buying decisions based, in part, on our articles. If we gave some bad advice that resulted in a poor purchase, do you think we're going to keep those readers for long? Nope, common sense right?
Next let's talk about this myth of articles and exclusivity. To a journalist, an exclusive on an article is a huge deal, because it means that you'll get all the attention about this one topic. Yet another reason why I hate journalists, they are far too short sighted. One thing I learned very early on (and you'll notice this in the work I do) is that being first to break a story gives you a large influx of short term traffic, but does nothing for you long term. You can have all the exclusives in the world, but if your content is crap then they mean nothing. At the same time, you can be 3 weeks late to review something, but if it's the most thorough review out there, that review's overall impact on reader perception of you and your site is much greater than having an exclusive. Now if you can get a review out first and make it as thorough as possible, then you're sitting pretty.
The next part of the myth of an exclusive is this idea that manufacturers have any desire to give one site an exclusive over another - that simply doesn't happen. Any of the "exclusive" articles we've done over the past 8 years have been made possible through going through third parties. I reviewed the K6-III about 3 months before AMD even shipped the review samples, did AMD work out a sweetheart deal with me? Of course not, I went around the manufacturer. It's what I did for the SLI preview from last year, it's what we do to get company roadmaps. We avoid dealing with the manufacturer at all costs, unless we need to talk to their engineers.
It's true that manufacturers try to bully a lot of sites out there, generally speaking the smaller you are, the more the manufacturer tries to influence you. I fought very hard to build AnandTech to where it is today, and it is at the point where manufacturers do not even *dare* try to even hint at trying to influence anything. All of the major manufacturers have done their own independent audits of AnandTech, they know how large we are and the type of influence we have - do you think they'd risk a story about how they are trying to strong arm the media into reviewing products a certain way?
"But what about the advertisers?" you say, well, I took care of that problem long ago. AnandTech as a company doesn't have a single sales person on staff, years ago I set things up so that we wouldn't have to deal with advertisers and to truly build a separation between editorial and advertising. The results of this are numerous, but the two major ones are:
1) I like my editors to be autonomous, they receive a little direction from me and help if they need it, otherwise they are on their own to do and review anything you ask for and they see as important to the areas of coverage. They are never told what to review or how to review it; honestly, if this weren't the case, you all would see right through it.
2) I rarely know about what ads are going live on the site unless I either see them while browsing the site, or in my CEO role someone from the sales side brings one up to discuss. Honestly I'm far too busy to even bother with that sort of stuff; you guys follow the blog, there's no time for me to be running around working on ad stuff. I've got people to handle that, they do their job and we do ours.
Advertisers will sometimes ask for preferential treatment, if they ask our sales folks directly - they are turned down on the spot. Sometimes they will go around them and talk directly to an editor, if they do, the editor makes it *very* clear that we don't work this way - case closed. I've got tons of emails of this kind of stuff, and as I mentioned before, by now about 99% of the manufacturers don't even try this sort of crap. They know where it's going to get them and that I take it very personally. The remaining 1% are folks that haven't dealt with us before, they'll learn soon enough. Do others have this separation? Most don't. Does that mean anything? I can't speak for them, but I can speak for us and this policy works for us. Do you have to be an advertiser to get a review? Of course not, anyone who reads this blog should know that if you all want to see us review something, we'll do it - all you have to do is ask :)
"But what about the free hardware?"
Manufacturers also know that we have no problems buying hardware, if they refuse to send us something, we'll just go out and buy it. I've had manufacturers refuse to send us products for a full year, but did you all notice? Nope...we just went out and bought everything. That's another philosophy of mine: you come here to read about technology, not about some soap opera and crap that goes on behind the scenes - so I keep things like that off the site. When there are problems with manufacturer relations, I don't post about them here, I deal with them maturely and in a way that doesn't affect the outcome of reviews. Manufacturers also know this, they can say whatever they want to me, about me, etc... but it still has no impact on our reviews. If company X calls me stupid, does it make sense for me to hurt *all of you* by giving an unfair/incorrect review of their product? A lot of these issues are just plain common sense :)
AnandTech is a business - we do make money, but regardless of how large we get and what our revenues are, it's still run like a family. And this family has morals, I can't speak for how other people were raised but this is how I was raised and it's how I run my family.
My dad came to this country with something like $26 in his pocket; $26 and a scholarship to UMASS. I didn't know about that until I was around 14, our family went to another family's house for dinner and it came up in after dinner conversation. I was honestly floored - all of the sudden everything in life made sense to me, I was given the drive that I needed to go anywhere and do anything in life. My dad took essentially nothing and raised a family out of it; we all helped, but one man's ability to do that is what I truly define as successful. We weren't rich, but he (along with the help of my mom) made sure that we could live in comfort as a family. My dad is what sparked my drive; he's the reason that if I get a product to review on Friday, and the review has to go up on Monday, I bust my ass all weekend to make sure it gets done. He instilled in me a true understanding of what hard work is really about, and that's a major cornerstone of who I am today.
My mom gave me an understanding of how to do something with myself and an understanding of ethics. She showed me what truly caring about something really meant, about what being selfless meant and gave me the foundation that allowed me to develop my own perspectives on the world. She didn't teach me right from wrong, she taught me how to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And I'll never forget that which she's taught me to this day. It wasn't until college that I really understood what she had done for me; she dropped out of college to take care of me, to raise me. She gave up her dreams of being a doctor, to live her new dream of having a son. She cared for me more than anyone ever could, and seeing and understanding that also helped shaped who I am today.
I started AnandTech almost exactly 8 years ago: April 26, 1997. I was a freshman in high school, 14 at the time, and completely into this stuff. I started AnandTech not as a business, but as something that I thought would be cool to do. I started it humble, and to this day I will never forget my beginnings. There's no room for big egos in writing, I hate reading it and I'm sure you all do too.
I started the website with nothing, it was a free site on Geocities and I had no hardware other than the scraps of my system. But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. I've had one basic principle when it comes to how to deal with those readers, and it goes something like this:
Regardless of how many people come to the site, I look at it as each person coming to me with their money in hand, wanting to know what to purchase. Let's say the average hardware upgrade costs $150, that's 6 million people x $150. I don't have to let you know that that's an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. To trade the trust that you all are placing in me and my staff for any amount of anything, is just unfathomable. While I'm sure there are folks that do it, I am not one of them.
At the same time, if we didn't value your trust so highly, we'd be gone in an instant. AnandTech readers make their buying decisions based, in part, on our articles. If we gave some bad advice that resulted in a poor purchase, do you think we're going to keep those readers for long? Nope, common sense right?
Next let's talk about this myth of articles and exclusivity. To a journalist, an exclusive on an article is a huge deal, because it means that you'll get all the attention about this one topic. Yet another reason why I hate journalists, they are far too short sighted. One thing I learned very early on (and you'll notice this in the work I do) is that being first to break a story gives you a large influx of short term traffic, but does nothing for you long term. You can have all the exclusives in the world, but if your content is crap then they mean nothing. At the same time, you can be 3 weeks late to review something, but if it's the most thorough review out there, that review's overall impact on reader perception of you and your site is much greater than having an exclusive. Now if you can get a review out first and make it as thorough as possible, then you're sitting pretty.
The next part of the myth of an exclusive is this idea that manufacturers have any desire to give one site an exclusive over another - that simply doesn't happen. Any of the "exclusive" articles we've done over the past 8 years have been made possible through going through third parties. I reviewed the K6-III about 3 months before AMD even shipped the review samples, did AMD work out a sweetheart deal with me? Of course not, I went around the manufacturer. It's what I did for the SLI preview from last year, it's what we do to get company roadmaps. We avoid dealing with the manufacturer at all costs, unless we need to talk to their engineers.
It's true that manufacturers try to bully a lot of sites out there, generally speaking the smaller you are, the more the manufacturer tries to influence you. I fought very hard to build AnandTech to where it is today, and it is at the point where manufacturers do not even *dare* try to even hint at trying to influence anything. All of the major manufacturers have done their own independent audits of AnandTech, they know how large we are and the type of influence we have - do you think they'd risk a story about how they are trying to strong arm the media into reviewing products a certain way?
"But what about the advertisers?" you say, well, I took care of that problem long ago. AnandTech as a company doesn't have a single sales person on staff, years ago I set things up so that we wouldn't have to deal with advertisers and to truly build a separation between editorial and advertising. The results of this are numerous, but the two major ones are:
1) I like my editors to be autonomous, they receive a little direction from me and help if they need it, otherwise they are on their own to do and review anything you ask for and they see as important to the areas of coverage. They are never told what to review or how to review it; honestly, if this weren't the case, you all would see right through it.
2) I rarely know about what ads are going live on the site unless I either see them while browsing the site, or in my CEO role someone from the sales side brings one up to discuss. Honestly I'm far too busy to even bother with that sort of stuff; you guys follow the blog, there's no time for me to be running around working on ad stuff. I've got people to handle that, they do their job and we do ours.
Advertisers will sometimes ask for preferential treatment, if they ask our sales folks directly - they are turned down on the spot. Sometimes they will go around them and talk directly to an editor, if they do, the editor makes it *very* clear that we don't work this way - case closed. I've got tons of emails of this kind of stuff, and as I mentioned before, by now about 99% of the manufacturers don't even try this sort of crap. They know where it's going to get them and that I take it very personally. The remaining 1% are folks that haven't dealt with us before, they'll learn soon enough. Do others have this separation? Most don't. Does that mean anything? I can't speak for them, but I can speak for us and this policy works for us. Do you have to be an advertiser to get a review? Of course not, anyone who reads this blog should know that if you all want to see us review something, we'll do it - all you have to do is ask :)
"But what about the free hardware?"
Manufacturers also know that we have no problems buying hardware, if they refuse to send us something, we'll just go out and buy it. I've had manufacturers refuse to send us products for a full year, but did you all notice? Nope...we just went out and bought everything. That's another philosophy of mine: you come here to read about technology, not about some soap opera and crap that goes on behind the scenes - so I keep things like that off the site. When there are problems with manufacturer relations, I don't post about them here, I deal with them maturely and in a way that doesn't affect the outcome of reviews. Manufacturers also know this, they can say whatever they want to me, about me, etc... but it still has no impact on our reviews. If company X calls me stupid, does it make sense for me to hurt *all of you* by giving an unfair/incorrect review of their product? A lot of these issues are just plain common sense :)
AnandTech is a business - we do make money, but regardless of how large we get and what our revenues are, it's still run like a family. And this family has morals, I can't speak for how other people were raised but this is how I was raised and it's how I run my family.
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Anonymous - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
I commented earlier as #4I too, like many others, used to refer to Toms as my #1 source (roughly 8 years ago, from what I recall it was actually much less unbiased and straight forward then) Now I start my day like this: The Inq, lots of rumors, funny, entertaining but cant take too seriously. Hardocp, a pretty straightforward review site, generally reviews are unbiased though with some exceptions, entertaining news, entertaining proprietors. Anandtech, generally the most unbiased (trusted) reviews, more news for the day. Xtremetech, compare the whole community's results (If Anand lied youd see it here :P). If you are not doing something like this regarding the reviews that you read, then from my own experience, Anandtech gives the most well rounded reviews. While I develop an opinion based upon the reviews of many within the community, I would say that Anandtech's reviews can be trusted. Furthermore, I feel that situations such as the Inqs accusations are good for the community as a whole as it leads to discussions such as this. For example, if Anandtech was even considering taking a bribe, as the inq suggested, a discussion such as the one currently taking place would surely jolt Anand into reverting back to an unbiased view (at least if the editors had any sense). Something which I believe has been maintained regardless. Finally, if you are a true enthusiast, which most who read sites such as Anandtech are, you would already know that dual core would not benefit things such as gaming and that the real benefits would be for a multitasking situation. So if you were really considering upgrading to dual core you would want to see multitasking results, which Anandtech has supplied. Double finally, if any of this doesnt make sense, then sorry, I hit up the bars tonight :)
Phlargo - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
I have to say, today something happened that made me feel not only like a reader here, but part of a community.I've been going to this site for at least 7 years now (I actually have an old email in my archive to Anand when it was called "Anand's Tech Page" I believe).
When I was reading Part 2 of the multitasking article, I saw that one of my specific requests for benchmarking had been integrated. I was so proud and tickled, I poked my neighbor during a law school class tonight to show him how Anand had integrated my request for multitasking games with other programs in the background. Not surprisingly, he didn't care.
I've gone being a frequent reader who always respects the content of this site to feeling like I belong here: I try to post in the forums as often as I can, I'm building my new computer based almost solely on information and links from this site and its forums, I am familiar with the different styles of the authors and I love reading their different perspectives.
I know this just sounds like a lame fan-boy post, but I'm someone who really has benefited from being a part of this site and community and appreciates it.
Just wanted to say Thank you. I respect your articles and your methodology and I want to see this site last as long as I do.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
CreathirThe new news section is very far along, with all of my traveling and recent NDAs I haven't been able to test the beta yet but hopefully I'll be able to spend some time on it later this month.
As far as the advertising idea, yeah I've been thinking about something similar for a while now. We'll see what I can come up with :)
Scott Smith
It's kind of like this: when we reviewed NVIDIA's SLI, we tested it at high resolutions with AA and AF enabled at maximum detail settings. It was assumed that everyone knew that SLI would offer no benefit at lower resolutions. The same type of assumptions were made with the dual core review, which for the most part turned out to be true based on reader feedback.
As far as not knowing what apps are multithreaded, I tried to provide some guidance in the preview with this statement:
Generally speaking, the following types of applications are multi-threaded:
Video Encoding
3D Rendering
Photo/Video Editing
most types of "professional" workstation applications
However, the vast majority of other applications are single threaded (or offer no performance gain from dual core processors):
office suites
web browsers
email clients
media players
games, etc.
That was from Page 4 of the first review. I will try to make a table of all of our benchmarks and whether or not they are single/multi-threaded, most likely for the next dual core review I attempt.
gnumantsc
There are sites that do things for the free hardware (not as many anymore, that used to be very popular a few years back) but most bigger companies are more strict about samples now, so you have to be a certain size (whether real or perceived) before they'll work with you.
Scott Brodeur
Thanks, that's something I'm glad is actually conveyed through my articles, I am extremely passionate about this stuff. That's usually my number one requirement for a member of AT staff - that they'd be doing this kind of stuff if they weren't being paid to do so.
With regards to ATI, yes they have definitely burned a lot of bridges with their customers as well as the media with their misinformation. We can't just stop reviewing their hardware, but we can definitely change how we deal with products we get from them. It's going to take a lot of work before ATI regains my trust when it comes to believing their release dates for products.
CDK
The biggest reasons for not being able to reproduce benchmark results are as follows:
1) We often test without sound, so gaming tests (except Doom 3, which disables sound by default for timedemos) will usually be lower on your actual machine. We test without sound to limit the number of performance variables in our testbeds, we try to be as scientific as possible. But in our multitasking tests, sound is enabled as MP3 playback is a part of the test suite.
2) Our test beds are 100% fresh installs with nothing above and beyond drivers and benchmarks, that usually impacts performance a bit as well.
We try to do our best to test with retail BIOSes and at retail clocks; generally speaking, manufacturers know not to hand pick the samples they send us - because if we find out about it, it won't be pretty.
brownba
While I can't comment on the infinium labs lawsuit, I can say that Kyle Bennett has always been a straight shooter with me. Both him and Scott Wasson (Tech Report) I have no problems sitting down with and just chatting about the industry. They are about the only folks from the sites out there that I don't feel uncomfortable talking with.
Take care,
Anand
brownba - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
"you come here to read about technology, not about some soap opera and crap that goes on behind the scenes"immediately when i read that line i thought about hardocp and their never-ending battle with infinium labs (the phantom).... i quit reading hardocp after that.
kinda sucks... don't read hardocp or toms anymore, aceshardware used to be awesome, but their lead man, johan, is now here with anand....
so for me all that's left is anand, which is not a bad thing, but we need diversity.
(oh yeah, i do read the inqwell for the humor - love the 'everywhere girl')
CDK - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Hi Anand,I don't think you need to go on debunking every rant on the web. Your work and the trust of so many millions should give you enough confidence to ignore these.
However, I want to mention that across many hardware forums I have come across people who cannot replicate the success of hardware reviewers in acheiving certain performance results with identical hardware setup used by reviewers. This has somewhat dented the credibility of many hardware review sites. I guess there is a case for these sites to use retail products alongside the custom products to inform the people about the real 'real world performance'. I understand that it is difficult/impossible to get new/yet to be launched hardware off the shelf, but you can always update your articles at a later date using retail stuff.
And keep up the good work. AT is the no 1 site I trust for making HW purchase decisions.
gbc02 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
YOu should do a spin off site called Anandtech:Behind the scenes soap opera.Eric - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Your reviews are by far the most comprehensive, informative, complete, etc. There's probably not enough superlatives to describe them, but it's even better that you're comitted to maintaining/improving their quality.Bottom line: very well done.
Eric
gaidin123 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Obviously the guy from the Inq was ranting and he obviously ignored parts of part 1 and published before part 2 came up. He got a lot of publicity but that's it.Your site always has had easy to read yet still technical articles and you and the other editors all personally have a passion for what you do which comes through in the articles. That does not make you unfairly biased. And you almost always do everything that's public on this site without any form of complaint or accusations and I appreciate that greatly.
AT's reviews are far and away the most interesting for me unless I'm looking for something very specific or obscure. With the 6, maybe 7 years I've been reading your site, and buying/recommending a lot of hardware based in part on what is published here, I like to think that I would have noticed if you guys weren't thorough enough or were biased without coming to those conclusions through rigorous testing.
Thank you again,
Gaidin
Scott Brodeur - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Thanks for the last 6 years I have been reading your site... it has been a pleasure watching your site (and you) grow up! I have always supported your site and defended it for the quality of the approach reviews.
There are many that have shown bias in reviews over the last few years to manufacturers and have given site a bad rap.
I can't stand those that accuse your site of being "Pro-nVidia" or the such as it is clearly untrue! Can I see biases in your reporting... sure but I can not see any reason one can not give a fair and balanced (not like Fox News BS) views while maintaining a personal touch to reviews. The are few sites that approach reviews with the same obvious passion as you do. You and Scott (Bjorn3D) are clearly excited about the technology you handle... which admitedly can lead to personal biases about a product... but it is always clear that bias comes from the excitement and passion you carry into your work. It is the same mentality I take on when I buy the products you review... clearly always from my own bias.
Please keep up the hard work... I look forward to the years reviews!
PS I wish you and others would take a stand and not review any more Production samples of ATI and nVidia cards. ATI's product record was abysmal last year and you and many other were fooled into reviewing many products that clearly NEVER saw the light of day (6800Ultra EE, X700 XT, Mobility X800, X800 AIW... etc!).
xtknight - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Anand,It used to be the only site I trusted was Tom's Hardware Guide, and that quickly changed when I saw Anandtech. To this day, this is the only place I go to get quality and unbiased (p)reviews of hardware. Not to mention detailed explanations of hardware which teach me something new everyday. Keep up the good work for decades to come...we all appreciate it.