Originally posted by: apoppin
Originally posted by: Nelsieus
Derek reported on ATI changing the specs of a GPU. I'm not sure why you wouldn't expect him to do so?
And no matter how small that change in spec was, it's the principle, imo, that counts. I have no problem with either ATI or nVidia changing the specs of any of their cards as long as it's reported upon (as Derek did). But if I can't find out because some of you seem to be against poiting such occurences out (as you are with Derek in this case), then how would the consumer know? Those are the kinds of things I expect Anandtech and other hardware sites to mention.
When it's done secretly, I don't like it, and respect Derek for beinging it up.
it wasn't done secretly. Derek Wilson conveniently hid the truth from you for his article's little tirade.
he may have reported negatively on the change in spec but he NEGLECTED to inform us that ATi already informed everyone else.
:thumbsdown:
and the products specs are on the box and also on the site when you buy the product.... there also are some reasons to choose the 'slower' card that he failed to report on.
he seems to be rather biased and incredibly inconsistent in saying what they should do for the SAME situation. i.e [earlier] he critized ATi for
changing the product's designation for a +10 mhz core adjustment and berated them, saying changing such a small spec didn't justify a 'name change'.
well, make up your mind. what is it?
:Q
DW was just sloppy in that review.
First, sorry for the really late reply to all this. Things have been busy around here.
I didn't hide the truth any more than ATI did ... seriously though, like I said before, it doesn't matter that they acknowledged the change. The change itself is the problem.
A bunch of people brought up what I said about the diff btwn the X1600 XT and X1650 Pro ... This is entirly different for two reasons: the 10MHz core and mem oc is much small than the diff between the 2 versions of the 1900 GT in both magnitude and percentage, and the clock speeds were *increased* to create a new part.
That second point is very key (and something people haven't really addressed). I'll bring it all together in a second.
I have not changed my position on IHVs creating too many different parts for the same market segment. NVIDIA does it right: set a relatively modest clock speed for parts and allow OEMs to adjust clock speed and price of a part as they can/desire. The effect is that NVIDIA sets a minimum clock speed for a product. This minimum clock speed should not *decrease* during the products life cycle.
I wouldn't care if ATI or NV *raised* the specs of something by a small ammount that didn't change performance without changing the name. But when they lower specs, they are taking something away from the customer that can't actually be determined: performance of games released in the future.
As I said before, we can't test future games -- all we know is that the way game developers do things now is not highly affected by the clock speed changes of the X1900 GT. With the trade off being a drop in core clock and increase in memeory clock, we loose compute performance and gain memory performance. For quite a long time games have been shifting their burden toward compute power and if the trend continues the new X1900 GT ver. 2 will get progressively worse than the original over time -- with a potential performance loss of over 10%.
To be very clear, here's would be ideal:
1) no more dropping clock speeds of parts that are already shipping without a name change
2) no more changing the name of parts for an increase in clock speed that has a maximum theoretical performance increase of less than 3% (like the X1600 XT -> X1650 Pro -- there is no way the performance difference could possibly reach over 3%).
3) allow upward flexibility in a parts clock speed both to give OEMs some ability to differentiate themselves and to help avoid yeild issues created by setting too high a target when a product is launched.
If you take all of these points into account, you'll note that nothing I have ever said about the subject of clock speed adjustment and product naming has ever contradicted the position I take on the subject.
Also, I'm not biased agains ATI -- I just don't like stupid behavior. There is no reason I can't dislike something that ATI did and still love their X1950 XTX CrossFire (because I do).
Sorry if I'm too late for anyone to see this reply (and care), but here it is anyway