Maybe because nvidia do exactly the same thing with their drivers. About a year ago nvidia released drivers that had no level of detail bias slider. In the driver code it was discovered it was set to low to help boost quake 3 benchmarks. Of course a lot of sites overlooked this but as soon as a competitor does it, its front page news.
Most sites are probably getting backhanders from nvidia for good reviews.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Manny:
Well, overclocking a Geforce 3 Ti 200 is
1) safe
2) stable
3) easy
while giving you about 15-20% increased performance.
Sadly, none of these 3 things is true for overclocking a Radeon 8500.
Maybe you are able to overclock your Radeon 8500 similiar without any problems. Then you're great. But some people prefer not living on the edge 
btw, I don't know why you're such a fan of ATI. They make great cards, but for a bunch of "nice canadians" they sure tried a lot bad stuff. I remeber how they cheated on most Quake III benchmarks by giving drivers to all reviewers that drastically decreased the image quality in order to make the card look better on paper. At the same time, I don't understand why you hate nvidia. Sure, they release new cards every 6 months, but that doesn't mean you have to buy them. Not to mention that driver support for new and old cards has always been great.
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