Grades
A grade comes from a written rule for the job, applied to the product’s own facts. It is not graded on a curve against the rest of the market. If every product got faster, grades would not slide down. If the best product left the market, nobody would move up.
Because grades never see price, they survive a price drop, a sale and a stock-out.
Estimated grades
If a grade rests on a figure we estimated instead of measured, such as a benchmark carried over from a close sibling model, it is marked est. It is still the best answer we have. The marker lets you weigh it.
Ranks
A rank is a product’s place among the others for one job, by capability alone. You see it in the tier matrix: the overall rank among every graded product, and the place inside the group you filtered to, such as one chip maker or one socket.
What drives each grade
See the category guides: graphics cards, processors, SSDs, memory and motherboards. The methodology page lists the sources.