Eric Garay

True to the never ending game, NVidia recently released their newest GTX470 and 480 graphics processors. It’s been about a year since ATI released their ever popular 40nm GPU found in the HD 5870 and HD 5970 that has been setting record after record. In the absence of a formidable challenger, ATI has been doing extremely well market wise.

Strangely, reviews and commentary have been sheepishly going back and forth trying to explain NVidia’s performance numbers. Some have said the GTX480 is the fastest GPU on the market, while others as well as regular users from the game front have shown it to come up short. In fact, save for a couple aging game titles and DX11 testing on this test bench, ATI’s two stallions have out paced or kept up on my own test bench.

What the reference GTX cards (key word here is reference) do excel at is heat and noise. This GPU is extremely hot in the literal sense. The GTX470 easily tops 80C with fan noise just short of 60 dBA. The GTX480 tops 90C and grinds out 60+ dBA. That heat is a by product of the GPU and the required power to operate. And, it’s the poor reference GPU coolers that don’t do the cards any favors.

Because of the current GPU’s issues, video card manufacturers are left to pick up the pieces in order for them to make a living. Except for the die hard fan boys, unbetrothed enthusiasts won’t be attracted to any video cards sold with the stock heat sinks. So, vendors are going to have to get creative by adding after market cooling solutions.

Take MSI’s NVidia Geforce GTX260, 275, and 285 video cards for example. They were all given the Twin Frozr-Dual-Fan heat sink which looks looks very cool and works great. It would not surprise anyone to see something similar carried over to the GTX470 and 480 to make it a more acceptable solution. Of course, based on what manufacturers are paying for the GPUs, they can’t add much without increasing the price to us all.

Consumers don’t want a video card with a red hot GPU coupled with a loud GPU cooler. But, we really don’t want to pay the extra money for better cooling solutions if the cards are slower than ATI’s current offerings. And, given this economy, manufacturers don’t need the extra burden of trying to push the GTX470 and 480 video cards while eating the cost of improving the cards just to sell them.

Even ATI has been smart enough to lower the prices enough to back their card’s performance, that an aftermarket cooler is feasible and worth the cost even though it doesn’t need it. Yours truly has seen the above video card produce 3D performance reaching temps of 60C and lower. Puts a little more perspective on  the game as it’s being played.

Ultimately, it looks like NVidia didn’t accurately estimate the market’s impressions or expectations whether it be the consumer or their partners. Perhaps, NVidia should seriously consider knocking off another $50 or more per GPU just to help maintain some, if not all, of their market share.

Don’t fret, if you’re a die hard NVidia fan. You can at least count on the their partners to do a better job and figure out ways to bring you something worth the price. NVidia just might not be happy with the terms.

I was online looking through three different retailers trying to help a couple friends locate the right video card for one and a laptop for the other. They aren’t particularly tech savvy people, if you get my meaning. One keeps calling it a “video accelerator” and the other guy kept saying “netbook” when he’s actually looking for a “notebook”. (There’s about a 4 pound difference between the two, so it matters.) At any rate, you can see what I was working with.

First, the video card wanted needed to have a GTX285 GPU (graphics processing unit) made by nVidia. Seems like a simple enough name, right? Wrong! It took another 20 minutes to going through the history of the many different companies that make “video accelerators” (:P). After finally picking just two vendors from the list, the next 15 minutes were used up explaining what video card options to look for when he makes a choice.

He returned again 15 minutes later completely confused by the naming and labeling of the video cards. He had 12 different browser windows open trying to figure the differences because the majority of them all shared similar model numbers and looked the same save for a different graphic or sticker. Some of them were marked as GTX285, GTX285 OC, GTX285 SC, GTX285 FTW, GTX285 Backplate, GTX285OC (no space in there), and I swear even a GTX285-OC-FTW-OMFG-NOS! (@%$%@) That’s when we got to thinking…

Do marketers have some efficient process to come up with the names and model numbers of products? Or, do they just pick and choose numbers and letters out of thin air? It’s confusing enough that each vendor chooses their own labeling, but the actual model numbers are equally important. Even retailers frequently pair up the wrong model name with the wrong model number.

Here’s the question for tech manufacturers throughout the industry. Can we go back to using names to differentiate between products? For example, instead of using GTX285-OC-GTX-VR4-HEMI-RT10-FTW-OMFG-NOS, why not just call it a GTX285-NOS? Or, maybe even GTX285-Nitros. We kind of miss the old school days when we could find a Voodoo 3 no problem. The point here is that if it confuses potential customers, you’re most likely losing business. And if that isn’t enough to get some consideration, perhaps you could do it for our sanity? We spent so much time looking for just one video card and I still have to help the laptop guy!