MaximumPC 2008 09

102 | MAXIMUMPC | SEP 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

No, We Aren’t On

the Take

I just read your article on

the Nvidia GTX 280 (August

2008). What a joke! Don’t

get me wrong, I usually use

Nvidia cards for gaming PCs.

But you should be fair and

run your benchmarks for

both cards on the same exact

rig! You ran the ATI card on

an outdated Intel chipset and

the Nvidia card on an Nvidia

chipset, although it was

almost as outdated. The least

you could have done was use

an AMD chipset for the ATI

card. If you had, you would

have noticed a considerable

difference. I think it was more

of an advertisement than

an honest test. Or is money

so tight you can’t afford to

run honest tests? If so, let

me know and I will let your

people use my test systems.

—David Hiss

Editor in Chief Will Smith

Responds: Thanks for your

letter, David. As always, we wel-

come constructive feedback.

As for your concerns about our

testing procedures, we test on

two systems that are identical

aside from the motherboards.

Given the policies of Nvidia

and ATI, we’re forced to run

different motherboards when

we test Nvidia cards running

in SLI and ATI cards running in

CrossFire, as the general public

doesn’t have access to mother-

boards that run both multicard

solutions. Unfortunately, this

adds an additional variable to

our tests, which we’re certainly

not happy about.

We chose the two chip-

sets used in our videocard

tests based on their relative

performance. At the time

we built those systems, both

chipsets fared about the same

in our tests, minimizing the

inequality between the two.

That said, both chipsets are

getting a bit long in the tooth,

so we’re going to revamp our

videocard test beds in time for

the next issue.

Less Money, Less

Laptop

I’m writing to comment on

your review of the Asus

F8Sn (August 2008). I don’t

doubt the verdict you gave

this configuration, but why

did Maximum PC review the

computer with the minimum

specs? I’ve been running the

same computer in a different

configuration for about two

months now.

I don’t disagree with your

results, but did you actually

load and play some games?

Synthetic scores and real-

world usage don’t always

jibe. I typically get around 2.5

hours of battery life out of

this thing under heavy web

browsing using wireless, so

I’m not sure how you got such

poor results for battery life,

either—especially with a low-

er-power processor. Battery

life is even better when I’m

more miserly with the power.

—Chad Greiner

Associate Editor David

Murphy Responds: We chose

the Asus F8Sn because it fit the

price point for our mainstream

laptop category (approxi-

mately $1,100). While we

certainly could have picked a

stronger Asus laptop to review,

that would have bumped the

device into the professional

category, which is where one

would typically find a laptop

with specs as beefy as those in

your machine.

For battery tests, we set a

laptop’s screen brightness to

medium and then fire up a

full-screen DVD movie. In this

test, the Asus F8Sn severely

underperformed compared to

the other mainstream laptops

we tested. Battery life varies

depending on how you use your

laptop, but our benchmark is a

replicable, and real-world esti-

mate of laptop battery prowess.

The Truth about Tablets

I love the magazine.

However, one thing I’ve

Last month, Caleb Hodgson’s photo of two cats

snuggling under a printer didn’t quite make

the cut. This month he upped the ante with the

same printer but a more exotic species.

PHOTO OF THE MONTH

It was Either This or a

Woman in Her Gaming

Basement

To enter, send your tech-related high-res digital photo to

[email protected].

We tackle tough reader questions on...

Videocard Testing

Dell’s Bloated Laptops

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YOU WRITE, WE RESPOND

Tablet PCs

Videocard Testing

Tablet PCs

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