HardOCP refuses to review GTS 250
- Thread starter Arty
- Start date
Jawed
Legend
GTS250, according to Tridam, is clocked exactly the same as 9800GTX+
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=571&card2
so there is absolutely no reason to review it as a new product. Well, that's ignoring advertising $. Factor those in and who knows, eh?
Jawed
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So, will the GTX (fast) boards have a different name than the GTX (slow) boards? Or will this be a classic bait and switch?
Review fast boards, sell fast boards for first week in order to maintain illusion that GTX (fast) board is what everyone will be able to buy. After first week, start mixing in GTX (slow) boards in order to maximize profit margins. Review sessions are over and people won't "notice" they now have slower cards than what was reviewed.
That's an even worse situation than just rebranding an existing card to make people believe it's new tech. Hopefully there will be something to let consumers know the difference between GTX (fast) and GTX (slow). In which case ignore all this speculation.
What's even worst your average consumer that doesn't go to enthusiast sites will see GTX 250 and immediately think it's gotta be faster than his 9800 GTX. Replaces said card and notices little to no performance gain. Yeah that's a good situation.
Regards,
SB
Review fast boards, sell fast boards for first week in order to maintain illusion that GTX (fast) board is what everyone will be able to buy. After first week, start mixing in GTX (slow) boards in order to maximize profit margins. Review sessions are over and people won't "notice" they now have slower cards than what was reviewed.
That's an even worse situation than just rebranding an existing card to make people believe it's new tech. Hopefully there will be something to let consumers know the difference between GTX (fast) and GTX (slow). In which case ignore all this speculation.
What's even worst your average consumer that doesn't go to enthusiast sites will see GTX 250 and immediately think it's gotta be faster than his 9800 GTX. Replaces said card and notices little to no performance gain. Yeah that's a good situation.
Regards,
SB
In case you're interested, what kind of difference it'd make, it so happens, that we've reviewed a 1-Gig-9800-GTX+ from Gigabyte last week (soon to be GTS250 <slow>) and also ran the benchmarks with mem oc'ed to 1.1 GHz (soon to be GTS 250 <fast)>:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,676413/Reviews/Geforce-9800-GTX-with-1-GB-video-memory-reviewed/
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,676413/Reviews/Geforce-9800-GTX-with-1-GB-video-memory-reviewed/
Well strictly speaking, it is faster than a 9800GTX. Its a 9800GTX+
More seriously though, why would someone assume that? And if they did I would question their knowledge of PC hardware in general.
Afterall, the 9800GTX was the fastest PC GPU of the previous generation while the GTS 250 is clearly positioned as a mid range card. Its very rare that a mid range card is faster than the fasterst card of the previous generation so if someonw were to assume it will be, I would say the blame lies with them rather than NV.
I remember arguing with an engineer at work back in 2002 that his GF4 MX was not in fact a GF4 but rather a rebranded GF2. He absolutely refused to believe me, because his card was clearly labelled as a GF4. Informed consumers have never been a majority.
What JR said, also, do regular people know that the suffixes actually mean something other trying to sound cool?
Cookie Monster
Newcomer
Hes perfectly right. The Geforce 4 MX was nothing more than a geforce 2 "on steroids" since it didnt have DX8 support like the Geforce 4/3. It did support some newer features compared to the Geforce 2 like MSAA and other architectural tweaks (like the improved memory controller) found on the Geforce4/3 hardware hence why its on steroids.
I'm sure you know this because you've seen the architecture, right? No? Well at least you wrote batteries of directed tests to measure its behavior and compared it to a GF2 and a GF4? No? Hmm, ok, so you basically looked at a single feature in a tiny part of the pipeline, and used that to decide that your point was true?Cookie Monster said:
ChrisRay will show up soon to dispell that rumour
I havent signed up to review anything or signed any specific NDAs right now. Nor have I been briefed. Of course thats always subject to change. ((in the possible near future)) But I don't have an Geforce GTS 250 board. Maybe Nvidia is afraid I'll call it a G92?!
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what of what Cartsen said? Did they increase the mem clock or not?
Yeah but to be analogous to my point he would have also have to have believed that his GF4MX (a budget card) was faster than a GF3 Ti500 (a multi hunded $ top end card of a few months previous).
Not believing its a rebranded GF2 and that are two pretty different things IMO.
I don't expect consumers to understand the architecture in any level of detail. But I would expect them to understand that a mid range card of todays generation is not necessarily going to be faster than the top end card of the previous generation. Thats more common sense that specifc knowledge IMO.
Doesn't matter what they call it, RV740 is gonna eat its lunch.
Sounds like its actually going to be slower than the GTS 250 to me. Might be a bit faster than the GTS 240 though.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
The thing that sticks out though is that this is a classic bait and switch for a new product.
Reviews of only the Fast version. Only the Fast version to be sold during the first week to maintain the illusion that this is the product everyone will get. Switch to Slow version after review fever has died down to make more money.
The performance difference may be negligible, but the fact remains that Nvidia is marketing the Fast version to the public but has full intentions of selling the Slow version under the same name and price. And, of course, they can get away with it since they aren't personally making any claims about what you'll get to avoid liability. But they are doing it in all but name by only allowing the Fast version to be reviewed and sold at first.
At least in the past, slower but same named products were at least confined to the OEM space due to OEM requests for cheaper parts. (at least in the US I know Asia has different standards in some of the countries)
Regards,
SB
Just a little slower assuming Guru3D's card was at final clocks, but at <$100 MSRP I'd call that a lunch eating.
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