Overclocking

Overclocking was another big issue in the early days of Tom's Hardware Guide. Many people saw me as the proprietor of overclocking, but it's a matter of fact that there were several earlier websites dedicated to this topic. Those sites catered more to the very technically experienced people though, and it may be that THG was the first site to make this topic a little bit easier to understand. Whatever it was, overclocking was becoming a more and more common thing, so that by mid 1997 every person interested in system tweaking was aware of it.

The Beginning Of 3D Gaming

It was the end of 1996 when 3D-accelerators started to become interesting, although nobody could see how important they would become in later years. At this time I didn't know too much about 3D-stuff, but I tried very hard to find some realistic benchmark for this kind of hardware. What Fredi Gross , a friend that used to help out with the website who later on became the continuously hard working webmaster of THG, and I came up with at this time was the 'Monster Truck Madness Benchmark ', which can be considered as the first real-world 3D-benchmark, although it was not particularly professional. Later on it was made obsolete by the Quake timerefresh and then timedemo-benchmark, which was also covered by us. The one and only hardware that scored good results in any of the two were cards with the Voodoo Graphics chip from 3Dfx. Today 3Dfx is a name that everybody knows, but back then many people didn't give Voodoo the credit it deserved. I particularly remember a 3D-card review from PC Magazine from that time. A card with the Rendition Verite chip won the review while the Diamond Monster with Voodoo reached a pathetic 5th place. Voodoo was 10000x better than any other chip, but the good old reviewers from that time didn't have the slightest idea about 3D gaming.

The 'Intel Incident' And CeBIT 1997

The biggest bang for Tom's Hardware Guide happened in March 1997. It's now long enough ago that I can talk about the whole issue without stepping too hard on anybodies toes. In December 1996 the hardware editor of the German PC Professionell magazine, the German version of Ziff-Davis' PC Magazine, had contacted me. This editor was very interested into my 75/83MHz Bus Speed Project and the Monster Truck Madness benchmark. In the next issue this magazine covered both topics as if they had found out about them by themselves and they never gave Tom's Hardware Guide any credits. I was so upset that I contacted the Editor in Chief of PC Professionell and complained to him bitterly about bad and highly unprofessional editorial conduct. He was very apologetic and promised me to make up for it. In February 1997 the editor mentioned above came over to me and brought me Intel's highly secret 'Klamath'-processor for testing. 'Klamath' may not ring the bell for many of you, but you certainly know it as the first core of Intel's later released Pentium II processor. The performance of 'Klamath' was far from impressive, so that I wrote a rather nasty review about this upcoming Intel processor. At this time Intel was a lot different to what it is like today. An article about their pre-release processors was something they would not possibly accept. So Intel shouted 'Murder!' and first raided against c't-Magazine and PC Professionell for the release of their Klamath-articles. c't wasn't particularly impressed, but dedicated a very sarcastic editorial to Intel's ridiculous behavior. PC Professionell was told that Intel would withdraw their own ads as well as their 'Intel Inside'-campaign from the magazine. For my part it worked even more peculiar. A few days after I had published my Klamath-article I was rang by the editor who had given me the Klamath-CPU. He asked me to take down any references to PC Professionell, because Ziff-Davis USA would otherwise make sure that he as well as his editor in chief would instantly lose their job. He assured me that I was next on Intel's list and that Ziff-Davis headquarter didn't appreciate the trouble with Intel because of his and my article at all. Altogether he recommended taking down my article if I wasn't into losing my head. I was starting to feel seriously threatened, which was worsened by continuous calls of this editor, who was really afraid that Ziff-Davis US would sack him due to Intel's pressure. However, I knew that I would not possibly take down a perfectly good article. Instead of this I informed my readers about Intel's strong-arming tactics , which led to a breath-taking response of the American public. Intel got under so much public pressure that it felt forced to officially announce that they would not strong-arm me. This issue was published in the New York Times on March 12, 1997, in the German evening before CeBIT 1997 and a day later also covered in the San Jose Mercury News. You can imagine that this 'David against Goliath'-incident made Tom's Hardware Guide very famous and thus I had become the secret star of CeBIT 1997.

The Foundation Of The Relationship To AMD

I will never forget coming to AMD's booth a day later. As the proprietor of the still small and only hardware website with the almost pathetic name 'Tom's Hardware Guide' I didn't expect much when I tried to ask AMD for a pre-release sample of their upcoming K6-processor. It was overwhelming what happened when I entered AMD's booth. Everyone got off his chairs to shake my hand. AMD's senior vice president Steve Zelenzic promised me that AMD's legal department would take care of any future legal issues between Intel and myself and that I would of course get a K6-review system at once. It was this day when I was introduced to Dana Krelle, who later became AMD's Vice President of Marketing.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I met two other people who would become very important in the future of Tom's Hardware Guide, one for the good and one for the bad. The first was Hermann Eiden, a very honest and extremely charismatic personality, back then the Director of Marketing for Diamond Multimedia. He is now running Tom's Hardware Guide with me. The other one was Larry Barber, who was the president (not CEO!) of Tyan Computers. He joined me in October 1997 and was overdue to be replaced by Hermann Eiden in May 1999, after it became too obvious that his objectives (favorite sentence "let's make a million dollars together ") and particularly his ethics were dangerously different to mine.

The next two milestones were certainly the first reviews of AMD's K6-processor and Cyrix/IBM's MII processor , both published on the day of their release.

Computex 1997 - My First Trip To Asia

As already mentioned above, the Taiwanese hardware-makers were amongst the first who saw the marketing potential of hardware websites, which is why I was invited to Computex/Taipei in June 1997 as well. It was my first trip to Asia and I was amazed by the Asian culture and, I confess, by the beauty of Asian women. Of all attendees of Computex 97 I was certainly the only person running a web-publication. Still I was treated with the greatest honors and made boatloads of friends over there.

Tom's First 3D Hardware Reviews

With AGP coming up, I decided to dedicate most of the third and fourth quarter of 1997 to 3D-accelerators, which made some readers complain that Tom's Hardware Guide was turning into 'Tom's 3D Guide'. I was contacted by NVIDIA, who was looking for a technically experienced, honest and fair reviewer of their upcoming RIVA128-chip . Of course I didn't hesitate and took the chance. It took me these two quarters and a lot of work to become the most reputed 3D-hardware reviewer on the Internet. By the beginning of 1997 I hadn't had much of a clue about 3D-stuff, but by the end of this year Tom's Hardware Guide had become the one 'no-bullshit' source for decent and fair 3D-hardware reviews. At this time 3Dfx didn't have the slightest reason for complaints about me. As a matter of fact they really liked me a lot.

Monster Party Paris - The Coolest Party Ever

The next event definitely worth mentioning was the 'Monster Party' in Paris at the end of January 1998. Diamond had invited all of the European Hardware Press to present the Diamond Monster II with the Voodoo2 chip from 3Dfx. The party was inside a rock in the Parisian zoo and unfortunately they were never able to heat this rock to a temperature of more than a few degrees Celsius = around 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. We all froze our butt off, but I was lucky enough to take one of those great cards back into my lab. The following first review of the Voodoo2-chip was probably the most enthusiastic review I ever wrote. There was no competitor that came even close to Voodoo2's performance and 3Dfx got all the well-deserved credit.

Unexpected Interruption

Unfortunately I had to realize that the history of Tom's Hardware Guide as well as the history of PC hardware is way more to write than I expected. Thus I have to complete this part of the article for today. I am currently in Heidelberg, my old university town, only hours away from the turn of the millennium.

I wish all of my faithful readers a healthy, pleasant and successful 2000, particularly the ones that still remember the stories from above. Let me thank all of you for the support in the last 4 years. God bless you all.