HiTechLegion

sophy hundreds of other review sites follow. It’s usually a plethora of benchmarks and comparisons and, no matter what the product, usually these products are tested on one system so the reviewers can pull other benchmarks from a database to use for comparison. In fact, the systems used to test these products are usually high end and out of the price range of the average consumer. Not every consumer is aware of price and performance points of all hardware and if the consumer lacks this knowledge, purchases the product based on the review and does not have comparable hardware, dissatisfaction of the performance due to the extreme differences in system setup will result. This can lead to the distrust of the consumer, not just towards that specific review site but all review sites. Most manufacturers who send out product for review expect a rapid turnaround on their merchandise. An industry standard is approximately two weeks. (Products that are not under embargo and have a specific launch date) Products that do have an embargo and need to be launched by a certain date may come as early as six weeks and as late as one day prior to launch. We can believe that most other review sites have these same deadlines. So how is it that they are able to benchmark a total of 10 other, like or similar products and write a 20 page review with such a short amount of time? 15 years of experience concludes that it is impossible, unless you are pulling from a database of past tested products. The problem is the BIOS, drivers and firmware may have changed since those products in that database were tested. Our question is -are you getting a true comparison? So don’t believe the hype when you are told the reason why a low end video card was tested on a high end CPU was to take the CPU bottleneck out of the picture. The reason for this method is to utilize a database to show comparisons. Every component in a total build affects the entire system and the performance of a single component, CPU, Video Card, Memory, Motherboard, and Hard Drive, etc. Since these practices have been taking place for years, the consumer has been trained to believe this is the proper way to review a product and those who do not follow that credo must not be reviewing the products correctly. Funny thing is a very popular review site recently claimed they have seen the error of their ways and will be now reviewing products based on price point and similar price point systems. Those of you who believe that these sites are bringing forth the change are wrong; Hi Tech Legion has been doing this since its launch and leads us to believe we have been on the cutting edge way before them. Hi Tech Legion was founded to break the mold of the common hardware review site. Hi Tech Legion believes that all products should be tested on a system that is within the range of its price point. So you will never see a $100.00 video card tested on a $ 3,000.00 system and vice versa. The same is true for all other major components. So what we are saying is that when we test a mainstream component it will be tested on a mainstream system, enthusiast component an enthusiast system and so on. How does this help the consumer? It allows the consumer to see how a product will perform based on their budget and, most of all, give a more relative look at what they can expect. We do understand that the specific system we choose may not be identical to what you may own but it will consist of the most recent hardware, drivers and BIOS available at its price point to show what can be expected if you chose to upgrade to something similar. Since we try to give our readers a look at different system setups, at times, a database is useless. Hardware changes on a daily basis and what is good today may be old news tomorrow. There are times that we may not use comparisons with other like products; (other than being a video card, can you compare a DirectX 9 to a DirectX 11?) what we will do is formulate a philosophy for the review, then test and comment based on the review's philosophy. It may also be due to the amount of time given to test the product and write the review. Many of our reviews, with and without comparisons, have both a review philosophy and a putting it all together section, where we formulate and explain an opinion, based on that philosophy. Hi Tech Legion also believes that the computing experience will sometimes outweigh the performance, based on that product's price point. Based on this philosophy, sometimes a more subjective review will be written and the statistical and objective parts will be used to enhance the experience. Hi Tech Legion is a business and its business is to provide up to date product reviews using the most appropriate components in that product's price point. Hi Tech Legion is also what some may call a labor of love and that love is that of the computing experience and the hardware that goes with it. The Hi Tech Legion staff consists of regular everyday people who have other professions but, due to their love of computing, choose to use their knowledge of hardware to test that hardware and relay their findings directly to you. This means that Hi Tech Legion does not have to rely on the revenue generated via advertising or sales of review products to keep on providing the consumer with our philosophy of product review. The Hi Tech Legion Motto- “A comfortable atmosphere in which to learn, teach, explore, and enjoy. Be one with the many who are always seeking to learn a little more and give back the knowledge that they have acquired. Be a part of the legion where everyone can be enthusiastic about computer technology.”

If you do not believe in our philosophy, or you choose not to accept change, then please choose not to complain. We appreciate your time and thank you for visiting Hi Tech Legion.