- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
The irresistible power of marchitecture - The Good Spinola
Nvidia rebrands once more
THE GREEN GOBLIN continues its infamously successful “hey presto!” rebranding campaign detailing the oddly familiar Geforce 310 graphics card directly on its site.
Note to our readers: We are struggling not to make this an outright rant about naming schemes. Let’s play along with the story and see how this turns out.
The Geforce 310 is a plain vanilla OEM graphics card for system builders who think their customers don’t know any better, and let’s face it, more often than not, that’s true. The card is a carbon copy of its predecessor, the Geforce 210, a 589MHz core clock, 1402MHz shader clock and 500MHz memory clock graphics card with 512MB of DDR2 memory on a 64-bit wide bus. Same specs, same feature set, same everything.
These cards are one and the same. Period.
We dug deep to try and understand this, but otherwise came up with nothing. One could think it was spurred by the launch of Windows 7 and some sort of certification programme, but no. Geforce 210 was already Windows 7 certified, even though the spec sheet still reads "Vista-certified". You could say it was a matter of redesigning the card to bring down the bill of materials and improve margins, but heck no. No, wait, making it an OEM card saves Nvidia money on creating a new retail box for the card. Yes, that must be it.
We're beyond understanding the reasons, but consumers might be tricked into thinking that a Geforce G310 graphics card is the hottest thing in town, when what they actually get is Thanksgiving leftovers.
To wrap this up, here's a fun exercise, open two tabs on your browser and go to the G210 and G310 pages. Now flip tabs back and forward. It's like you haven't changed the page, except for a slightly blown-up picture of the otherwise identical card.
One thing can be said for the house of Nvidia, though - tradition is still what it used to be. You can now reliably cross out the first digit on the model number of every low-end through mainstream Nvidia graphics card when making your informed purchase decision.
We would, honestly, love to see something new coming out of Nvidia's shop. We really would, because the last thing the market needs is a lack of competition. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
It almost makes sense...
dont wanna end up the outcast like a certain Charlie .. hehe
Not that it makes a blind bit of difference that he was right of course.
Fraud that is what it is plain and simple.
If by outcast you mean "being on the money", then by all means.
I was really stumped at such a launch. No kidding. I thought they would've stopped these renaming antics.
wow. I didi thet whole two page comparison. It's almost like it's a typo and the '3' slipped in.
By naming it a GT 3xx it makes out like it is Fermi related. This was defensible when the 8800GT became the 9800GT (and then GT250?) but renaming such a low power model as a new series '3xx' is very poor and manipulative marketing indeed.
When ATI named the series 3xxx, 4xxx, 5xxx, at least it was for a newer design/technology. And the 8xxx to 9xxx for NV did have some rationale.
But this is plain straw clutching. I stanbd by previous posts where i state that Fermi, when it arrives will be a frightening beast. But by that time, I'll have had 3, 4, 5 or more months of 5850 crossfire bliss.
Nvidia screwed up this time. Maybe next generation jump they'll release in sync with ATI.
(I WAS waiting for Fermi but the 5800 series was a rather nice dangly carrot).
Duh! Those pictures are relative to each other.
Slightly bigger is better!
Go 310!
This is what happens when inexperienced journalists get confused.
Although the cards look similar, I can guarantee you that with a simple driver update, the 310 will be able to support a full set of Fermi instructions
There is no 'cheating' in naming it the 310 - because it IS a next generation card
nVidia engineers would never lie about such a thing, we are and always have been 'an honest sort'
You are SOOOO right, its scaaary!
I mean... gee... DirectX 11, on a wimpy, lousy, slow card like that? You got me there pal.
</sarcasm
Seriously? I mean... what? DX11 on that? What were they thinking: "yeah, uh... uhm... ATI has only middle and high-end solutions on this. We should move quickly and offer a paper-enables GF cheap card that does DX11! That should hurt them!"
They get payed for this? Gee.
...it doesnt have any woodscrews sticking out of it...
I like what Chris did there, subtly exchanging the global standard of DX11 for "Fermi"...
You know, I was going to write about the factual errors in Chris's comment (par for the course there buddy, amirite?) but someone else beat me to it. Instead I'll just laugh about his "were an honest sort" protestations. Why don't you tell everyone that at the next shareholder's meeting guy? I'm sure they will be really impressed.
After Nvidia's CEO pooped on PC's last month, now they continue their videocard shell game... ATI is starting to look good again.
Pull up Google's first hit of Chris and NVIDIA and what do you get? An interview with the WSJ that has all the gall of JHH. I guess you gotta be good if you learn from the master... So Nvidia invented the GPU in 2000 eh? So what, Voodoo didn't exist? Or let me guess; they stole your designs and then time warped back a few years to get the jump on you?
Seems a bit strange that someone purporting to be Chris Evenden of nVidia doesn't sign himself off as so?
i.e. Chris E. Venden
Would the real Chris Evenden please stand up?
Nvidia - A company bankrupt on so many fronts - just not financially ...yet.
Jen-Hsun Huang, Our Fuhrer will gives us the best performer GPUs. Although, Captain Dirk still loving him.
@Louis
3Dfx (who nVidia acquired, so maybe that's the basis of their crap claim?) and PowerVR were on the scene well before nVidia..
nVidia didn't have a decent GPU until the TnT. The good thing about nVidia's offerings was that they were always single card solutions with no 2D solution required.
3Dfx was the true inventor.. the Voodoo was the single biggest revolution in gaming hardware in the history of recent gaming. I still remember playing GLQuake and Tomb Raider on my Voodoo and realizing the whole game had been changed.. I don't think there was much else available at that time to showcase it.
Somebody has got Voodoo II in SLI working on win 7 ;)
Check youtube
back when 3dfx sued NVidia successfully for stealing their Glide technology. Rather than making a huge payoff to 3dfx, who was much smaller and had depleted their funds in the lawsuit, NVidia turned around and bought them out. Within 12 hours they had taken down the 3dfx website and taken away all support for any 3dfx products, really underhanded tactics. Same exact tactics used, btw, by Creative Labs when Aureal sued them for stealing their A3D technology, which Creative was calling EAX. I never buy products from either company.
The Dear Leader has hired David Copperfied. So it's next driver will do magically turn G310 from a flawed DX10 part into a super dupper DX11 part. Not It'll perform better than a HD5970 and not only that! During gameplay it will start to pop magic stuff right from the monitor(rabbits, tall hats, cards, hankerchiefs and etc). Santa told me...
Wow, Charlie Might as well be back. Look at you guys copying his article posted on the 25th... SHAME, SHAME.. SHAME. Man speaks the truth and gets slammed. Lil Paul copies the truth and gets what???
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/11/25/nvidia-g310-spotted-just-renamed-g210/
SHAME ON YOU PAUL!
When ATI didn't have the feature set for DX9.0c they still managed to run the full functionality of the latest games by introducing a drive mod that could fool games into thinking that all of the necessary hardward was there
I believe this is what Chris Eveneden was alluding to in his reply
Even if the 'actual feature set' is not present, that DOESN'T mean that the G310 will not be able to play DX11 games
Once you establish that DX11 games WILL run on G310 (in one way or another), then it is only fair to let customers know this by giving it a Fermi-family name
Rather than shy away from this kind of naming update, we feel that it is intelligent and shows the organic nature of graphics in the 21st century
What a crock if it aint dx11 it aint dx11. Nv have screwed the pooch, they are a dirty cheating company who need a good kick in the nads, and from the looks of it they are going to get it and much much more. Dirty tactics imo and as a consumer i dont want to be told aload of bs.
glad i have an ati card tbh.
I rather buy ATI and suffer amateur POS software support & false marketing (like GPU Havok or built-in tessellation)
over nVidia brilliant dev support & market penetrating features,
because nVidia fools clueless customer with naming schemes...
/sarcasm
you guys are just pathetic... LOL
Has The Inquirer even contacted Nvidia to check that it is in fact identical to the 210 or to ask them to justify the move?
The whole thing is beyond absurd.
Oh come on, it's an obvious rebranding. I'm not a fanboy of ATI/AMD or Nvidia. In fact, I sometimes lightly troll a post on a forum if it's an obvious fanboy post, regardless of whom or what they support. But just look at each webpage. No mention of DX11 support. Identical webpages, other then the image of the *cough* 310 is slightly larger, and has no large green "COMPARE AND BUY" button near the image of the card. And to "Chris E. Venden", if this card only needs a driver update to handle DX11, why not mention it as a feature now?
If the webpage for the 310 wasn't on Nvidia's site I'd assume it was an attempt by an ATI fanboy to make it LOOK like they are rebranding.
Now will Fermi be a good card? I'm assuming so. I'm hoping the card will be priced to be competitive with the 58xx and 57xx series, depending on what they release first. But one can't ignore they path they are taking to get Fermi out also. And yes, if this was reversed, I'd make the same exact comments.
Honestly who would buy nv at the moment they are taking the pee for real. As far as i am concerned the proof is in the false advertising on their site. Doesnt take a dipshi£ to work that out does it?
Its just an insult to nvidia fanboys if anything! me personally i buy what i think is best at the time and for me nvidia has not been there for a while. ATI on the other hand i cannot remember when they renamed a card and then sold it as something it wasnt. Surely people can see what nv are doing and that is covering up and reselling the same product to the public. I believe that the general public are too stupid to notice but not the gamers out there or the hardware enthusiasts. Come on people lets see nvidia for the company they are at the moment one that is struggling to keep up and cba to tell the truth.
Beyond the technical evolution and performances of launching new hardware, stands marketing and sales decisions. NV's (as much as ATI's) goalls are to sell as many cards as possible whatever the means, would they be brand new cards architectures or old renamed, or slightly updated(DX11) ones.
Just plain market realities. Business wise, NV's decision has probably been "projected" as best considered the fact that 80% (no reference on the %, just personal appreciation) of buyers aren't experts on the subject and the Xmas period needs to transform in sales. Better renaming a slightly updated card right before Xmas than leaving the market to ATI no ?
Wouldn't you have done the same ?
Just think before complaining
(I should have thought before writting ;))
lol, it's like a punchline. It's like the Far Side cartoon where there's this huge eyeball in the rearview mirror, and the mirror reads,"Objects may be closer than they appear."
To this dumb ass statement...
"Once you establish that DX11 games WILL run on G310 (in one way or another), then it is only fair to let customers know this by giving it a Fermi-family name"
It's not based on the Fermi architecture is it? It's an old generation card that might in some of these suppositions be able to run DX11 with and updated set of driver instructions.
The point here is, updating drivers doesn't make an older card new tech. Fermi is a very advanced graphics architecture with specific design direction for HPC systems.
This piece of shit is an old design updated (well, it's not really, read both sets of specs, kinda the same).
And stop confusing DX11 with Fermi. DX11 is an environment as such that other manufacturers can program into, it's not the sole proprietory device of any GPU manufacturer.
Why cant people just accept that this miserable little card is a misleading sales gimmick with no new tech.
And others should accept that Fermi, when she comes along will be a bit scary.
Flo@CDieM2 posted this in part:
"Just plain market realities. Business wise, NV's decision has probably been "projected" as best considered the fact that 80% (no reference on the %, just personal appreciation) of buyers aren't experts on the subject and the Xmas period needs to transform in sales. Better renaming a slightly updated card right before Xmas than leaving the market to ATI no ?"
No. The problem with your comment is that this isn't a card for the general product, at least for the most part. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but it is a card for OEM's wanting a budget card to drop into a system. Allright, they can slap "Nvidia 310" on the side of a retail box for the PC I suppose, but without trying to belittle the intelligence of anyone not "computersavy", do you think the average Joe going down to a Wal-Mart or whatever store selling budget pre-built PC's will know or care if it's a Nvidia 210, 310 or whatever in the machine?
So, it's an odd choice indeed to rebrand this one specific card I feel. It accomplishes very nothing, since the people this card is marketed to probably could care less that "Fermi" won't be out until 2010 (well most likely) and have no idea why that may or may not be signifigant.
So no, I do have to disagree. This seems to accomplish nothing other then to give a few Nvidia fanboys a way of saying "Hey see, no it's not a high end card, it's the very bottom of the barrel but a 3xx generation card IS out before 2010!". I could be wrong, but I don't exactly see any site, this one or others saying much more other then "We think it's a rebranding" or "We're sure it's a rebranding". That is lousy PR I think.
As an aside, I didn't quote this but you claim this is a slightly upgraded card. Really? I didn't click on the links today, but as of a day or two ago when I did click on them, the stats for each card are EXACTLY the same. The 310 listing as of at least a day or two ago doesn't even show DX11 support. This doesn't even seem to be slightly upgraded. Show me how it is such?
Uh-huh. Gee Puppy, shall we call you a NVidia fanboy, or just a message board troll? Again I'm not a fanboy. But if any company does anything inane or silly, I often will comment on it.
Again, if ATI had pulled something just as stupid, I'd have no problem mentioning it.
But then again Puppy, I know that a video card is just a piece of electronics. Nothing more. It's not my wife, it's not my sister, it's not my favorite pet. Why do fanboys like YOU Puppy act like a piece of electronics is a loved one? Why do you draw self worth from such?
Sorry to do a couple comments in a row, I'll let others post now for a bit. :)
Yes, you are correct. My bad I read too quickly the article and thought they were rebranding a packaged end-user product (not OEM).
Yes you indeed are correct concerning the "upgraded" word-use.
I was talking about "more global" scenarios, loosing track of the specific situation described in the article where the 2 products are the exact same, keeping up with my initial understanding that they had rebranded a "stand alone" packaged card they would throw right before Xmas.
Thanks for pointing this out, I should have taken more time before commenting :)
Makes the 310 "dx11 Capable" then the 210 will be as well.
Since they are identical cards in every way save the naming scheme.
Modded drivers should unveil dx11 on 210 as well in this case.
An when one upgrade bios than one should got 310
210 = dx11 capable but we are calm about it
310 = dx11 capable but we make a hell lot of buzz to sell non moving chips stock
ATI was often guilty in the past of renaming cards that were identical hardware wise to other cards in their stable. They would often sell cheaper cards that could easily be unlocked with driver hacks to perform just like their more expensive siblings... oh wait... that was a good thing. :)
(Media used lightly, anyone can create a webpage made up of TI/SA things)
ATI HD5145/65 Dx10.1
- Not 1 bad report about it.
(no reason their should be as 10.1 is a decent api still, but there's your playing field)