Nvidia spins on the GTS250
HOT ON THE heels of the silly G92 to GT200M renaming comes the slide-show of the GT 250 series. We told you about the flat-out underhand behaviour that Nvidia is doing with the launch, now prepare yourself for the agonizingly dull slides (which we have seen but cannot publish for legal reasons).
This set is only 18 slides long – not quite into bite-your-tongue-off-to-ease-the-pain territory – but close.
The card is a case of YARGP (Yet Another Renamed G92 Product), and it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Nvidia has a warehouse full of these, as do their partners, and they need to move them. People aren't buying, so it is time to rename and spin.
Spin they do, quite creatively, but not necessarily persuasively or convincingly as you will see. It is almost like they are embarrassed by their own actions. That said, here are the notes we took on the slides, one by one. Be still my beating heart.
First we have a splash screen called "Introducing the GeForce GTS 250". We won't quibble that they are introducing the card name, but the card itself has been with us since mid-2007. Nothing new here, really, and certainly nothing that warrants a new name.
Slide two is titled "What is the GeForce GTS 250?". There are two bullet points here, "New 1GB board positioned at $149", and "New name to align with with the new nomenclature". Yup, that's it. They just admitted there is nothing at all new, it is just a price drop and a sticker. The next 16 slides are worthless, but that won't stop Nvidia.
Slide 3 makes my head hurt. It is a large marketing chart that shows one data point, the 9800GTX+/512M goes from $149 to become the GTS 250/512 and the GTS 250/1G is now $149. You can tell "the awsumness" by a yellow 'new' symbol on the description. I am somewhat shocked that they didn't go a bit farther to point this out. It is, after all, new. Or is that 'new'. 'New!' perhaps? In either case, you could have bought the same exact thing with an 8800GT badge before Christmas 2007, so 'new' hardly seems realistic, and 'New!' is right out.
The next one shows that the clocks are 738MHz graphics, 1836MHz processor, and 1100MHz for memory with 1G of DDR3 and a power draw of 150W. Dual-slot cooling is standard, but luckily there have been no problems with cooling the older ones.
Slide 5 is really desperate. It lists 'best in class performance' without listing what they mean by class, or the fact that ATI eats them alive in this 'class'. Then they tout the rather limp Cuda, Physx and SLI, along with the 3D glasses as card features. Yup, those 3D glasses sure sparkle with that name change; new stickers sure do make a worthless toy pop to life. They then point out that the G92 is somehow future-proof with Windows 7, even though it won't do DX11. I would love to see the tortuous logic path that lead to that point, something about underpants gnomes and profit perhaps?
From there, it is on to graphs, four games comparing the GTS 250 to the Radeon 4850. Ironically, they chose games that Nvidia heavily invested in, Fear 2, Dawn of War 2, Mirror's Edge and Hawx, all released in 2009. I wonder why they didn't include the usual list of games, and some that they didn't sink six or seven figures of loyalty money into? Could it be that they lose badly? Nah, that wouldn't be it.
They have somewhere between no advantage on Fear and a large one on Mirror's Edge. From the disparity, they look to have turned on Physx for Mirror's Edge, giving them the advantage. The fine print says to see the appendix for the test configuration, but the press slide deck conveniently omits it. Curious that. In any case, none of these games runs at the requisite 120Hz needed for the 3D glasses they were touting in the last slide, but that is picking nits, isn't it?
Slide 8 goes back to hitting below the belt. It compares SLI vs Crossfire scaling on game release day. They show that Far Cry 2, Mirror's Edge, and Fear 2 all gained from SLI and lost frames with Crossfire. This is likely true, and the missing appendix noted on the bottom of the slide might shed some light. But, as I said, it is missing.
Why it is below the belt takes us on to a little bit about the gaming industry that Nvidia doesn't want you to know. You may know the Nvidia ads that are so annoying at the beginning of many games. They are there because Nvidia paid the devs a lot of money to put them in. This money – we hear more than a $1 million for AAA titles, especially if they are commonly benchmarked – isn't exactly given without strings.
If any company wants to display a game at a trade show, or publish numbers and benchmarks based on it, they need permission to do so. If Nvidia gave a company $1 million, and ATI calls up and says, "Can we use your game at E3 to show off in our booth?" guess what the answer will be?
More to the point, guess which company will have engineers embedded with the devs to make sure that their flavour of scaling will work really well? Guess which side will not be extended this privilege, or at least get a lot less love and support?
Basically, what Nvidia did is to spend money to keep ATI out of several games, and then used them as examples of how good SLI is. It isn't hard to win a race when someone breaks your opponent's knees, but is is sleazy to tout this as an athletic achievement on your part. Then again, Nvidia is like that.
Slide 8 is a bunch of throwaway lines by representatives of companies that received the aforementioned payouts. Given their profit margins, a $1 million cheque sure would make a new technology exciting, especially if layoffs were looming. Strangely, that is just what these people said and did.
The next one again shows off Mirror's Edge, and how a GTS 250 blows a 4850 and 4870 out of the water. Again the claimed appendix is missing, and the huge disparity suggests that reason for this is Physx. I am getting sick of using the words sleazy and unethical, but they do fit.
Getting into the double digit slides, we move firmly into the surreal with one entitled 'Gamer's Reaction to PhysX'. I must admit, I have never seen a PR department desperate enough to stoop this low before, but I have never seen a company need to rename a tired product four times before either.
This slide has three quotes from random people on three forums, Videogamer, Anandtech, and Gamepro. If three random people picked from message boards don't convince you that physx rox0rz, what will? What more do you need if that doesn't do it for you, bare minimum eye candy that whacks your frame rates in half on a much faster card? You do get that, honest. Real advances are 'coming soon', and by soon we mean when Intel and Havok release their next version.
Slide 11 shows TMPGenc going faster on a GTS 250 than an Intel E8200 CPU. The impressive numbers are not backed up by independent testing though. Nvidia doesn't mention this point for some reason.
12 is all about the 3D glasses that no one is buying, but that doesn't stop Nvidia from making slides about it. That said, I can't figure out what this has to do with renaming the G92, but they put it in anyway. Slide 13 is an analogue of slide 8, but replace physx with 3D glasses, and you get the idea. You get what you pay for.
That brings us to slide 14 which is all about Windows 7 and how it will use the GPU and CPU to accelerate things. The term for this is DX11, but Nvidia doesn't seem to mention that because the G92 can't do DX11. Ironically, this does tie in to card renaming, Win 7 is Vista SP1a, a renamed OS just like the cards. Sneaky one Nvidia, but it does hit the nail on the head.
Slide 15 goes more into this, but never mentions the G92, or the fact that it won't do the neato things that Win 7 supposedly brings. The G92 is fully DRM compliant, but that is not a point PR usually likes to make. On the next slide, Mike Nash of MS is quoted talking about NV and Win 7. Yay!
Slide 17 shows 7 benchmarks on Windows 7, all of which Nvidia leads. Two, Fallout 3 and Quake Wars, are listed as not running. Again, they refer to the appendix for details, and it is still missing. By now, I really do wonder how much they bent the rules if they are hiding it this much.
The last one is, ironically, the same slide as the last on on the GT200M deck, mostly because it is the same exact chip. Nvidia again claims leadership of the free world, that the G92 will make desserts taste better, and the fact that they own several trademarks that no one else uses.
So in closing, the GTS 250 is a new sticker on a G92 that is coupled with a $20 price drop. Big whoopty ding-dong... but they did take 18 slides to say it. µ
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I knew this was going to be another boring Charlie article.
Can you please choose some more interesting topics to go over than nitpick every bit of marketing junk that nVidia throws around? This is like analyzing an infomercial.
I must by one now
Great going charlie, thank you for informing the stupid ignorant masses about the piece of crap nvidia is nowadays.
They shouldn´t be let do this, but hey we live in a shitty world don´t we ?
All i wish is that all of this comes out and is known by everybody and no1 buys this crappo company´s products.
Keep up with the good work charlie, don´t let the stupid fanbois distort the truth about "the way its meant to be renamed" company
When will the nvidia fanboys shut up and finally post about how nVidia killed PhysX? yeah, I mean the add-in cards that they "fully support" but which seem to be mysteriously not working anymore. Is there honestly one person still out there what wants to pay a premium just to run with a geforce only to find out it lacks features along the way? oh God, buy a GTS250 now and find out how it won't be compatible with CUDA once someone actually writes something worthwile along the way.
Thank you Charlie for showing us what Nvidia is up to… and to the first poster, what are you an Nvidia representative/fanboy/Lemming?
The article is a little harsh maybe, but justified. I would be nice if NV would get their (management) head out of their ass eventually, it ain't rose'y like they think.
NV has stunk like stink has never stuck ever since the criminal take over/destruction of 3DFX.
Since when has the great Charlie Demerjian been afraid of NDAs and legal teams when it comes to ripping on NVidia? You go out of your way to post your rants and every misstep of NVidia and yet suddenly become afraid to post your sources of information. I for one would like to look at the slides and make up my own mind instead of being led through Charlie skewed perspectives and blind hatred that he called journalism.
The embargo is lifted tomorrow (tuesday 3rd)
Where is Nvidia's NEW products? WTF is with this regurgitation of the same product over and over again?...And then covering it up with Marketing?
Doing it once is forgivable...Doing it 3 times? That's just desperate.
Seriously, where is the new architecture, Nvidia?
Long been a Nvidia product purchaser (from the TNT days)...But now I'm jumping ship.
All he does is post viral articles about Nvidia and its getting sicking. Charlie has an issue with Nvidia and should not be allowed to post anything concerning them as everything he writes is poison. The man couldn't post anything nice if he wanted to. ATI has and still has some issues and yet he doesn't write poisonous articles for them. Makes me wonder if ATI is the one paying him and not TheInq. To the guy who says CUDA wont work with these rebadged cards, your a dope. Cuda works with all DX10 cards from Nvidia which is why you can use any for PhysX.
I've started to ignore the articles ( i go to techpowerUp for that) and just read the comments. I watch NV chaps attack Charlie (rightly as this isn't journalism, it's personal) and i watch ATI chaps attack the NV chaps. It's all very childish. There are more chips on shoulders from both sides than there are chips in a Harry Ramsdens restaurant. It's freaking obvious Charlie has a seething hatred for NV which means he therefore cannot write a balanced article. And, it is obvious, NV are reselling the same products under a different name. Now, i ask you, if the products work (bump materials aside :p) if Joe Public buys a 8800GT/9800GT/G250/green banana - who gives a rats ass what its called? Personally, given the pricing, I'd buy ATI. But at the high end, I'll stick with NV. It's called corporate capitalism and marketing you numpties. Just deal with it and go buy whatever card you so desire.
The G92 was a fantastic chip in its day (substrate issues aside), but rename after rename after rename is getting sad.
However, as to the presentation itself, these are PR people and PR people from most any company are like this (massive 'C'-Suckers).
I'm not reading this rubbish but think everyone should remember that Charlie's articles offer nothing but bullshit, lies, half-truths and whatever other crap his biased mind leads him to write.
Apart from that, enjoy it.
Go ahead nvidiots and go blind to the things nvidia is doing, cause you just love being milked by nvidia with thier fancy sweet talks. Btw i haven't used an ati card so i ain't siding here.. surely my next card would be though. I don't hate nvidia(before) i just hate what they are doing right now.
You make my day. And you know, I don't even care much about either nvidia or ati. But watching you rip apart bullshit is like, *way* entertaining. The fanbois are kind of entertaining too.
I just bought 1,000 shares of nvidia (NVDA) for $7.62 a share today.
Could. Not. Be. Happier. :)
And, no, I'm not some inside shill. I've made money each time I've traded this stock and hope to again this time around. And my dual 260s still stomp!
Sounds like they stopped serving pizza at these press conferences. :(
I agree that there's been a huge lack of foresight in the industry, and beyond for that matter. I think Nvidia is just trying to figure out where to go from here. Pack your pipes and follow me.
What if display resolutions had maxed out at 640x480, would anyone be buying quad core CPU's? No need. The hardware today has exceeded what the display technology can handle. No more pixels left to push, and that means you have less people in the market for high end hardware. Less means less.
I'd like to see quad LCD support with graphics cards, where you could wire 4 displays as one display. With a base resolution of 1024x768, you could do 4096x3072. For under a grand, I could dream about new hardware for the next ten years or longer. But spending that kind of money on a display that's basically already obsolete?
Be real, be sober.
I wanted to throw my 2 cents down the well of public opinion...
1. I can understand renaming cards. "New" cards sell better than "old" ones and as long as the specs are made clear I do not care if Nvidia or ATI rename their cards to fit their latest line-ups, everyone needs to make money.
2. On the other hand, if a company renames a card but tries to fool the consumer about just what that card is, well I think that is a dishonest business practice and shameful. The 9600GSO w/48 SP and 256bit mem bus is an example of a practice I find despicable.
Basically, they released one card, the 8800 GS, then the 9600GSO, then the OTHER 9600GSO. I ended up buying one of the crappy 9600GSO's for a customer not realizing it was the G94b variant. I even knew that there were two versions, but my wholesaler didn't have the specs listed.
3.Finally, to all you people who come in here shouting "Charlie's mum was raped by Nvidia, thats why he hates them!": Get a life. If you really disagree with him for legitimate reasons, then fine, but if your ownership of an Nvidia card is part of how you define yourself, well you need to turn off your computer and go for a walk.
Post Script: The author of this comment is not now, nor has he ever been, a fanboi. He has owned and gamed on Nvidia gpu's, ATI gpu's, and even ran DOOM on his family's first computer, a 486. If it is tech, and it is cool, I'm a fan.
Sold the 1,000 shares today at $8.10 for a tidy little profit of $480.00 less $14 in commissions. Chump change for the really rich, but not at all bad for less than 24 hours in the market. Thank you Nvidia for the cards and the cash...back to Fallout 3.
I don't want to get too involved in this insanity, but I think there's a technical error in this article. I don't think a game needs to run at 120Hz in order to use nVidia's stereoscopic glasses with it. I think that figure is the refresh rate required if you want to use an LCD with the glasses.
Charlie, my dear Armenian...
You should seriously consider working for ATI's PR department man! Serioysly!
Your manipulation obviously works, especially when brainless ati fanboys are reading your articles agreeing with your every utter word.
But the problem is that you are even more unethical than nvidia.
You are too rush to condemned SLI, PhysX and CUDA. You dont even realise that CUDA helped Folding@home to process data many times faster.. but NOOOOoooo, Mr. Charlie doesnt care about that, because his ATI card is 5 frames faster than Nvidia and after all... THIS IS ALL THAT MATTERS, yes?
Not the features, not the stability and the drivers.. NOTHING.
You don't realise that it is not good thing to spit in the same place where you use to eat.
In the meantime, how can you complain about G92? Why you dont bust our balls with Ati's blank and non existent innovations on GPU's?
Hey man, get a life.. or find a girl. You need it obviously.
P.S. @ TheInquirer: Hey guys fire him. Because he gets attention doesn't mean that necessary he writes important thing. It could have been just the fact the he is a clown.
Whats more sad?
nvdia renaming a 2 year old product 4 times.
Or the fact that nvidia's 2 year old product can still compete with ATI's brand new one?
Common, give Nvidia some credit. They know what they are doing. Remember all the fuss when ATI released the 4800 series, about how going to smaller GPUs was the wrong approach, and that ATI could only win if they cheated and put 2 processors together? Guess what? Die shrinks don't cut it any more. Intel discovered that little fact long ago (2 cores-- 3 cores-- 4 cores ... see a pattern yet). ATI caught on quickly, and changed their approach. Nvidia? Well, i bet they are scrambling right now to catch up, because they are so late to the small chip, multi-core game. And when they do produce some, they are going to have to eat their words. But that will be so long after they said them, they hope most people will have forgotten. wanna bet Charlie is there to remind them?
Give Nvidia some credit? Die shrinks have cut it for ages!
Have you looked around recently, Phenom 2 are basically die shrinks of Phenoms, yet they now hold the highest multi core OC in existence.
Even the Radeon 4800 as you pointed out, won on die size. The 4870 terrorized Nvidias flagships and it had a smaller memory bus, and cost less than half the price. how did ATi do it, the used 800 really small simple chips to beat NVidias 192 troll like monsters.