Eric Garay

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!

E3 is over and I’m finally home. Usually, I like going to tech events of these sorts. But, this time, I was a fish out of water since it’s mostly about games as opposed to the hardware that makes the games run. This is where E3 slipped up and comes up short. You can’t have games without the hardware. And, the opposite is true. Games drive hardware vendors to give us better and better graphics.

That said, the games that should push our current PC and console graphics a bit more are Battlefield 1943, Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

Of the three, OF:DR looks to be about as realistic as it can get. It’ll be an interesting match up comparing MW2 and DR. The detail seen in DR is pretty impressive and could mean your graphics is going to have to do some work!