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Good marketing work from nVidia

Man of Honour
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5 Apr 2009
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I was just having a general nose about earlier and noticed the GT330 is rumoured to be using the G92 core.

If true, I find that quite impressive. Wikipedia shows the shader config and clock speeds to place the GT330 around the 8800GS in terms of spec.
96:48:12, 550MHz, 1375MHz, 1600MHz for the 8800GS versus 96:48:12/112:56:16, 500-550MHz, 1250-1340MHz, 1600MHz for the GT330.

I find it genuinely impressive they've now managed to sell the same GPU for over 2 years as 5 different 'generations' of product.

Being lazy and using wiki again, the G92 has been the basis of:

8800GS
8800GT
8800GTS (512)

9600GSO
9800GT
9800GTX
9800GTX+
9800GX2

GTS150

GTS240
GTS250

GT330

I think that's pretty good work from their marketing department to manage to sell what is largely the same GPU core for so long under so many different guises in such a fast moving and competitive market. I suppose it also testament to how good the G92 was when it was realised.

I'm not really sure what sort of discussion i'm expecting beyond TFTI but I thought it was interesting.
 
I have another 2 gaming machines that my mates use with 8800GT in them and they are still performing well most recently on MW2 and even the BC2 beta :p
 
^^^
+1 If good marketing = Deceit

"Wow, Nvidia really fooled and mis-lead so many people, that's really impressive."

The people who make comments similar to the above are short-sighted idiots.
 
Well ultimately good marketing is getting people to buy your products, so from a purely marketing point of view they've done a good job at managing to shift the same bit of tech as so many different things. Whether it is morally right is a somewhat different issue IMO.

When the boss guys come over to your department and say 'Hey guys, you know that 8800GT that was really popular? Well basically we're gonna sell it again but call it a 9800GT', you have to be doing fairly well to try and pull the marketing for that sort of thing of.
 
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^^^
Are you confirming 'good marketing = Deceit' are your celebrating this immoral behaviour?

Guess this makes you similar to the type of person I previously described.
 
If the price matches the performance and the features/standards are upto date, what difference does it make?
 
^^^
Are you confirming 'good marketing = Deceit' are your celebrating this immoral behaviour?

Guess this makes you similar to the type of person I previously described.

I'm saying good marketing is selling the product you are being given to sell. The morality of using the same GPU over and over would, I imagine, be down to guys higher up the chain than marketing.

The issues can be seperated, it is possible to find one aspect of something impressive on an individual level even if the overall idea is negative.
 
^^^
Are you confirming 'good marketing = Deceit' are your celebrating this immoral behaviour?

Guess this makes you similar to the type of person I previously described.

Effective business practices are rarely concordant with the "most moral" practice.

If Nvidia have managed to rebrand the same product in five different generations, and sell each well, then that is clearly good business practice. Whether or not it is moral behaviour depends entirely on the point of view of the individual.

You need to separate the two aspects.
 
THe original 8800gtx/gts were all but identical cores aswell, I can't even remember the difference its been so long, was the 8800gtx a 90 or 80nm core and the newer ones 65nm. The core really hasn't changed from the original 8800gtx, through to this, and its also being used in the mobile GTS360/350 parts IIRC. In the mobile space they removed dx10.1 from the actual new 40nm parts, because they couldn't make them low enough power and faster than the previous old cores, so the old ones sit at the top of the mobile range, and having them "lower specced" didn't work for Nvidia.

I guess they've kept dx10.1 on the gt340/320/310 because power and clocking down isn't an issue in the desktop segment so they can make the gt340 faster than the older 330.

I'll be honest again, I can't remember if the new DX10.1 parts are the GTX280 type cores, shrunk with added dx functionality, just very small version, of if they are shrunk G92 cores, with extra dx functionality, but only small cores.

Whichever way around it is, they tried to move the whole line down and failed to do anything above what, 96-128shaders, the cores were too big and couldn't get anything close to working yields on them. Which is funny as the "gt212" I believe it was, which would have been the fastest part, was only half the size of a Fermi and they couldn't make it, in over a year of trying.
 
Effective business practices are rarely concordant with the "most moral" practice.

If Nvidia have managed to rebrand the same product in five different generations, and sell each well, then that is clearly good business practice. Whether or not it is moral behaviour depends entirely on the point of view of the individual.

You need to separate the two aspects.

Deceit is deceit, all your doing is saying good business practice is to lie your @ss off instead, of producing better products.
Not all business's do it, and saying that there are other business's that LIE through their teeth so Nvidia get a free pass is no excuse.

I'v got a feeling this philosophy is about to bite Nvidia on it's LYING @ss!
 
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I love how people get their knickers in a twist over this, nvidia evil yada yada..

G92 is a great chip and for the majority of casual gamers, is all the power they need. It is both hilarious and impressive how many times its been rebranded though. :D
 
Definitely good business from Nvidia, people like my bros mate always sticks with Nvidia and I think he has had most cards on that list.
 
Deceit is deceit, all your doing is saying good business practice is to lie your @ss off instead, of producing better products.
Not all business's do it, and saying that there are other business's that LIE through their teeth so Nvidia get a free pass is no excuse.

I'v got a feeling this philosophy is about to bite Nvidia on it's LYING @ss!

Good business practice simply involves selling as much of your product (or service) as possible, and building profit margins. If this coincides with morally questionable practices then so be it.

You may see the rebranding and/or tweaking of existing technology as immoral, but that's an individual consideration.

Morally questionable practices occur EVERYWHERE in business. It's a fact of life. Clothing companies exploit cheap labour in 3rd world countries to reduce manufacturing costs, while selling for extortionate prices. Telecommunications companies outsource call centres to India. Companies everywhere make good workers redundant because they believe they can make efficiency savings. Intel give discounts worth hundreds of millions to system builders so long as they don't use AMD processors... I could go on all day...

The very simple point is that good business practice is quantifiable (look at the bottom line), whereas "morality" is a product of individual perception. The market is what the market is, and if something offends your sense of morality - then don't support that company! It's simple.
 
I don't have a problem with this at all, the GPU clearly still has a place in the market so it makes perfect sence to rebrand them and sell as a new product.

Not so much great marketing, but a great product.
 
LOL Nvidia must have a very good Con-merchent Department, just rebranding a product again and again.

But thats business for you.
 
You forgot all the laptop versions too :P

my GTX 260m is based on the G92 112:56:16 config and does very well at 1680x even in the latest titles with maxed settings - mostly holding 90fps (85) in MW2 MP, 50-60fps in ME2 and around 170fps average in eve with the latest visual update.
 
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