What the fuck is wrong with videocard names?

[Ypoknons]

Dual core recieved very little marketing, when in fact, it's really a breakthrough for the consumer. Very bad, Intel.

[Uraniun235]

Why do you need to know the clockspeed? I'm pretty sure the AMD system is actually one of the sanest; a 3200+ is pretty well definitely going to be superior to a 3000+.

That reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy at my work. He was looking to buy a new computer, and his choices were between a single-core P4 at 3.6GHz and a dual-core at 3.2Ghz. I told him to go for dual-core, and he said, "but it's 400MHz slower". It's fun explaining to a not-so-computer-savvy fellow that the clockspeed wars are over. I've often privately wondered if in the past if system builders were touting clockspeed over actual performance to take buyers for a ride. I remember a couple of years ago when the gulf between Intel and AMD clockspeeds was nearly 1 GHz and Intel said that AMD couldn't "keep up", and a guy from AMD said "I'm not interested in clockspeeds, I'm interested in performance".

How did we ever make decisions on what hardware to buy before all of these benchmarking sites appeared?

Back then, clockspeed was still a decent comparison between Intel and AMD chips - the biggest denouncers of the "megahertz myth" were those loony Apple guys with their kooky PowerPC chips. Besides, even afterwards, as a venduh it's nice to have BIG ROUND NUMBERS to throw at people who otherwise don't have a clue about what makes Chip A faster than Chip B.

To be fair, if I remember right, Intel had originally planned on the original P4 architecture scaling to much higher clockspeeds than they ended up with - if that had panned out, the emphasis on higher clockspeeds would have paid off.

Also to be fair to your friend, if I'm interested in gaming performance and I'm looking at a choice between a 2.0GHz dual-core chip and a 2.6GHz single-core chip, the 2.6GHz chip is very likely going to see better returns on gaming perfomance until games actually really start taking advantage of multi-processor systems.

[Davis 51]

They fucking had it with Geforce 4 and pissed it away.

It was fucking perfect. Want the expensive Preformance Beast? Fine it's a Gerforce X-GTX, want the durable preformer? Get the Geforce X GT, and want the poor man's card? Get that $99.99 Geforce MX card. And of course the rich man's card which cost twice as much as the GTX for 6% more preformance? Why get the Geforce X-GTX ULTRA, it's even got ULTRA in it's name!

It was @#$@ perfect! And then two generations later we had GL's, GFTX's, Super duper fucking MX2's and all sorts of other shit.

Oh, fsm, you are so fucking right! The GeForce 5 series was a complete fuckup on nVidia's part. You think you are upgrading, and you end up with cards running crappier than your old one!

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I do think Intel really stumbled with the whole Core Duo -> Core 2 Duo thing. That's just crazy.

What's wrong with that? Core, Core 2, Core 3, are just like Pentium, Pentium 2, Pentium 3. Solo, Duo, Quad denotes the number of cores.

[Darth Quorthon]

Back then, clockspeed was still a decent comparison between Intel and AMD chips - the biggest denouncers of the "megahertz myth" were those loony Apple guys with their kooky PowerPC chips. Besides, even afterwards, as a venduh it's nice to have BIG ROUND NUMBERS to throw at people who otherwise don't have a clue about what makes Chip A faster than Chip B.

Ahhh, the good 'ol days. I remember having to decide between an Athlon T-bird 1.4 GHz and a P4 1.7GHz. I chose the Athlon because I wasn't willing to spring the extra $ for the P4.

Honestly, though, picking a videocard has had its difficulties in the past. Remeber the early days when companies like 3Dfx, Rendition, and Matrox were still in the game, in addition to ATI and nVIDIA? (Actually, Matrox is still around, but I don't think they're competetive with ATI and nVIDIA).

[Uraniun235]

I'm pretty sure Matrox focuses more on the professional/design market these days.

I actually don't remember the early days of picking vid cards because for a long time the only vid cards I could afford were used parts I managed to wheedle out of one of my friends on the cheap. (ahh, I'll never forget that piece of shit Voodoo Banshee he sold me that loved to spaz out my monitor and hard-lock my computer) By the time I started buying new cards they were already up to the Geforce 4.

I do remember, however, my dad buying parts and me thinking that 200MB was impossibly huge, and marveling at the very concept of a gigabyte.

[Ace Pace]

Oh, fsm, you are so fucking right! The GeForce 5 series was a complete fuckup on nVidia's part. You think you are upgrading, and you end up with cards running crappier than your old one!

The FX series was a fuckup for many reasons. If we get into them, we'll never leave this thread alive.

[White Haven]

Meh. I don't really see what's so complex about it. In every generation, denoted by the prefix, you have a low-end, mid-end, and high-end bracket. Then you have varying models of each bracket, identified by the suffix. ....Noooot really brain surgury. For that matter, if you've got an honest reseller, just use price. If it's 100 bucks? Low-end. If it's three hundred plus? High end. There. Bam. Done.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

That method can lead to catastrophic failure. For instance, the 6800 LE is not faster than the 6600 GT, yet usually costs more. Then there was the craptacular 9800 SE, and the 128-bit version of the 9800 Pro, neither of which were significantly cheaper than the good versions, and had performance on par with the much cheaper 9600 XT.

Also, how will you know whether this generation's midrange is a better buy than last generation's high-end, as they tend to be about the same price? A 7600 GT is faster and cheaper than a 6800 Ultra, but an X1650 Pro is much crappier than an X850 XT PE.

The simple fact is that video card buying is a major mine field, and the only way to avoid making a bad choice is to hang around forums where people talk about GPU's all the time, or ask someone who does. Even then, you have to be able to pick out the smart posters from the morons.

[White Haven]

Oh, you mean like buying a car, and doing research to find what's good and what's not? Or any other computer part? Or checking reviews on a piece of software before throwing down for it? Sorry, but my heart bleeds for people who don't bother to do their own research.

[Ace Pace]

Or just read benchmarks, many of them.

[Darth Wong]

Oh, you mean like buying a car, and doing research to find what's good and what's not? Or any other computer part? Or checking reviews on a piece of software before throwing down for it? Sorry, but my heart bleeds for people who don't bother to do their own research.

How is that an excuse for a fucktard naming system which implies relative performance in a misleading way?

I'm sick of people who think that "caveat emptor" means "the seller has done nothing wrong". It is a warning to the buyer, not an exoneration of the seller.

[General Zod]

Oh, you mean like buying a car, and doing research to find what's good and what's not? Or any other computer part? Or checking reviews on a piece of software before throwing down for it? Sorry, but my heart bleeds for people who don't bother to do their own research.

Not everyone has the time to do all that research to make sure that the machine isn't going to be a complete lemon or have some hidden flaw. If it's not clearly labeled when sorting through machines it makes purchasing very difficult for those of us without that much time to search through the dozens of benchmarks sites out there.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

or, y'know, know what too look for on a card.
most of them have allt he stats you'll need on the box.
I.E.: Pixel Pipes, Shaders, Cache, etc.

[Ace Pace]

or, y'know, know what too look for on a card.
most of them have allt he stats you'll need on the box.
I.E.: Pixel Pipes, Shaders, Cache, etc.

And thats such a good way to compare cards.

Or you'd think the 5800 and the 9700 had some chance of being equal. Despite having similar number of pipelines.

Or the latest ATi cards with 48(IIRC) pipes and nVidia having half that, yet competing nicely.

[Darth Wong]

The reason for the numbering system makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of corporations wanting to push new product. They would rather get you to buy a current-generation card than an older-generation card even if the older generation card is faster. So they name and market them in such a manner that it's quite possible for a newer card to seem like it should be much faster even though it's much slower.

This would be akin to Chevrolet pretending that this year's Cavaliar is faster than last year's Corvette.