Mobile GeForce GTX Graphics: Model Inflation Gone Awry

[Guest]

I think you should have under clocked the desktop 4850 to mobility 4850 speeds to add another perspective

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]dude09[/nom]I think you should have under clocked the desktop 4850 to mobility 4850 speeds to add another perspective[/citation]

We know the underclocked destkop card at notebook speeds would win because MSI was thermal throttling.

 

[da bahstid]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Bottom line: both companies are in the wrong, and ATI calling it's Mobility Radeon HD 4850 by that name is all the impetus Nvidia needs to call it's FASTER mobile solution a GeForce GTX 260M or 280M, regardless of what architecture is under the hood.[/citation]

While I understand you were responding to someone being overzealous, on thinking about this more I actually think ATI is being fairly honest. Because the architecture is the same as the desktop 4850, and they preface it as the "mobility" model...I'm not sure what else they should do.

Think in the reverse scenario: Several vendors offer overclocked versions of the 4850, GTX-260, et al...but they keep the same number. The number only changes with architecture no matter the overclocking, it's something else in the name that changes, such as adding "TOP" or "OC" or...whatever. We aren't going to see Sapphire's 1000MHz 4890 rebadged as a 4970 or something like that purely on the basis of an overclock, why should it be any different in the reverse scenario? Call it a 4730 even though it has more shaders than a 4830? How much sense does that make?

But, it is good to scrutinize everyone. AMD, Intel, NVidia, ATI...they've all done their little bits to market in ways that can be downright deceptive to consumers. NVidia just happens to be quite a bit more wrong in this circumstance.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I know you may not want to take a stand, it is YOUR job on the line. But isnt that what editors do?
Im thankful youve pointed it out, but you should have presented precedence better, that in itself would have seperated what ATI and nVidia is doing, and what nVidia is doing HERE, in your article, but I guess if you dont think this is appropo, maybe youre working for somebody that prevents you from doing so?

 

[Aerobernardo]

[citation][nom]cking[/nom]The problem here is that it reall isn't about the speed of the part compared to it's desktop counter part. Anyone that expects it to be close is rather foolish. The real issue here is the that the name of the mobile part has nothing to do with the archeticture the chip is designed. That is were ATI is successful and NVidia fails completely. Yes the ATI part is slower then it's desktop counterpart but atleast it contains the same basic chip design and features. The nvidia part doesn't it isn't even based on the GTX 2x0 archeticture.We should remember that there are allot scarafices made to get either card into a laptop and in many cases the card will vary from laptop to laptop.[/citation]

Indeed its foolish to induce people to think they have almost the same performance on a mobile part.

But hey, guess what's Nvidia doing with this branding!? Fooling costumers!!!

 

[scryer_360]

So wait, the 9800GTM graphics I bought last year are the same as the GTX 260M graphics this year? So then the only reason to upgrade my laptop (which has DDR3 and a powerful dual core) would be to... get a different name?

First time in a long time where the old hardware is as good as the new, even if its because nVidia and ATI are trying to pull a fast one on people

 

[yang]

i didn't evne know about this, thanks for the informative article. Sadly to say my respect of Nvidia has gone down even more now adays

 

[psmr]

"We also take ATI to task for inflated naming."
This was on the link for the article from the front page.

However, I didn't see any mention of ATI's inflated naming. Is a reviewer getting slipped some compensation under the table?

 

[Guest]

Naming an underclocked 8800/9800/250 the GTS 250M as opposed to GTX 280M would still allow that part to compare to the Mobile Radeon 4850 at a level roughly equivalent to their respective desktop parts.

I'm not a fan of either brand, I buy what gives me the best bang for the buck at the given time of purchase - given my budget and game preferences. However, it's painfully obvious that nVidia is a far worse culprit with the renaming scheme than AMD is.

We can only hope AMD produces a very high-quality and affordable DX11-series of cards, as that seems to be the only way to get nVidia to bother with innovation and reasonable pricing.

 

[e6800xe]

wow what took so long?
we knew 280M GTX was similar to 9800GTX/8800GTS desktop performance since the inception of the 280M GTX, which was many months ago...

 

[joey_sfb]

to e6800ex, who is 'we knew'? There are still many uninformed people out there. I only know about it a few weeks ago through the above article. Nvidia is a deceptive bastard!!!

 

[TheZander]

This is beyond ridiculous. Thanks, Tom's for calling their BS out on this one. Now I know what to tell my customers. The GTX 260M in this laptop won't even give you HALF the performance of a GTX 260 for the desktop. It's more like the 8600GTS of TWO YEARS AGO. It will play Crysis at 1280x800 ... BARELY.

We should just cross off all the tags and write what the desktop equivalent would be. I hate naming hype. This is the WORST naming hype I've EVER seen, and I've been in the computer business for 15 years now.

Good article, Tom's. One of the best and most important you've ever done. This is asinine.

 

[cutterjohn]

To be fair the ATI part at least appears to be identical to their desktop part, merely running at somewhat lower clockspeeds. The lower clocks are a MUST considering thermal and power requirements of a VERY compact form factor like a notebook.

OTOH the nVidia "feature" reduced stream processors v. similarly named desktop component.

Bottom line though is that this is some seriously good performance for notebooks, at least compared to what used to be available, low end discrete parts or anemic IGP.

 

[squirtle]

I think the thrust of the article is accurate. In my experience, most customers are baffled by naming conventions, regardless.

But realistically, the GTX260m GTX280m DO let you play game, very playable on the laptop's screen, and even looking good on 20-22" monitors.

Several places the author talks about "falls short of playability," whereas most people would find 40+fps in Far Cry 2 with "very high" settings to be quite playable.

 

[cutterjohn]

Also was it this article that mentioned the 4870x2 were discontinued? I see ASUS W90 entries on newegg now, sporting 4870x2 for c. $2200...

One thing about ATI though, if you are even thinking about running linux(or something) + X.org stay far far far away from ATI GPUs as their non-windows drivers are alpha quality at best. I've been dealing with them under Ubuntu 9.04 x86-64 + X.org since March and they've barely shown ANY improvement in that time, with the biggest "fix" being that opengl windowed apps no longer flicker. Multiple monitor support is iffy, video playback after sleep tends to freeze the system as does having desktop effects(compiz/beryl) enabled then awaking from sleep.

Windows: atikmdag has stopped working has recently appeared while running 3 of my games(one is horrible buggy to begin with Aftershock), but I believe that this is attributable to Vista updates as other games still work fine, as do running stressful GPU benchmarks e.g. furmark, and memory passes multiple memtest+ passes, still it makes me wonder about ATI's drivers under windows as well.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]cutterjohn[/nom]Also was it this article that mentioned the 4870x2 were discontinued? I see ASUS W90 entries on newegg now, sporting 4870x2 for c. $2200...[/citation]

That's what Asus said when a W90 sample was requested, so perhaps Newegg is selling units that were alrady floating in the channel?

 

[nosnos22]

Hi there, im consediring buying the NP9850 which has a 280M GTX SLI. My question is will it run PC games that have high graphics like crysis and the coming soon Crytech engine with at least medium settings, or in other words for at least 3 years from now (till the next Console Gen comes out)
Thx

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]nosnos22[/nom]Hi there, im consediring buying the NP9850 which has a 280M GTX SLI. My question is will it run PC games that have high graphics like crysis and the coming soon Crytech engine with at least medium settings, or in other words for at least 3 years from now (till the next Console Gen comes out)Thx[/citation]

Medium settings shouldn't be a problem at 1920.

 

[Guest]

I think this is false advertising, plain and simple. If NVidia isn't going to at least base the 2x0m series on the 2x0 architecture they shouldn't be allowed to name them that way.

And if ATI couldn't do it either then it would be completely fair.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Aro2220x[/nom]I think this is false advertising, plain and simple. If NVidia isn't going to at least base the 2x0m series on the 2x0 architecture they shouldn't be allowed to name them that way.And if ATI couldn't do it either then it would be completely fair.[/citation]

ATI model inflation for notebook parts has generally been limitted to lesser parts of the same GPU family getting the higher name, though recently it's been "better" in that the notebook parts are simply clocked a little slower than the desktop parts from which these were named.

 

[Guest]

Really great editorial! Real eye-opener!