Florian Charpentier wrote :
Please quote entirely. We said "Contrary to what their name may imply, let's right away cut through the marketing smoke screen, which AMD couldn't resist to pull once more; no, the Radeon HD 3000 does not introduce a new architecture at all, neither is it an important evolution compared to the Radeon HD 2900." We believe it is our role to determine what's marketing and what's not. Are we wrong?
I have to agree with hergieburbur on this one, despite disagreeing with some of the rest of his statements.
The thing is this is nothing new. So why focus on what has truly just become a fanboi point of contention?
IMO there is alot of that in history, with the GF6800->GF7900 being an evolutionary not revolutionary change, but it got a new name despite just being the NV47/48 (guess changing it to a G70 helped), the X800 was also evolutionary not revolutionary compared to the R9700/9800 yet it got a new name with little grief except for the fanbois, and the GF3->GF4 was equally just an evolutionary blip.
It's undeniable that this is a boost, but whether or not they want to call it an HD3800XL or HD2950XL or HD3870 doesn't really matter much to those of us truely 'au courant' as we all know it as the RV670, and while the G92 name implies a major redesign in the GF8800 series it doesn't get a new name, so if there is thefocus on one why not the other, or better yet why the focus on either?
This has been discussed before, the reality is that they could call it the nVidia Camaro and the ATi Charger, and it really wouldn't matter to anyone except those who couldn't tell the difference between a Corvette and a Chevette in the first place or have a Calvin wizzing on a Chevy symbol sticker ontheir back window and only pretend to care to make mountains out of PR mole hills.
I don't think marketing should ever enter the equation, because when people go out of their way to comment on it they look just as bad as if they go out of their way to feed it to people.
BTW, if AMD were to bring out an actual chip that was an R680 and had 50% more performance than a GF8800Ultra, and they were going to launch it shortly after the RV670 in the same way they launched the X1800XL followed by the X1800XT, would there be any of this whinning about numbering schemes?
I hate the new numbering scheme, but more because it plays down to the idiots in the crowd, and really they aren't any less confused by an HD3870 vs HD3850 compared to HD3800XL vs HD3800Pro.