Proof engineers are not involved in marketing products.

[Golgatha]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ol...oduct&id=1203815034113

Is there any possible use for that much memory on such a slow GPU?

 

[LordGestle]

What is sad is the people that buy that card probably have <= physical memory.

 

[Jax Omen]

XFD @ that card

 

[Gillbot]

Marketing Gimmick

 

[Schadenfroh]

Someone needs to take an S3 Virge, slap a PCI to PCI-E 2.0 bridge on it, place 2gb of ram on it (cheapest ram one can buy), place it in BestBuy for $50 with cool box art and proclaiming (PCI-Express 2.0, more bandwidth! 2GB of RAM!)

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Someone needs to take an S3 Virge, slap a PCI to PCI-E 2.0 bridge on it, place 2gb of ram on it (cheapest ram one can buy), place it in BestBuy for $50 with cool box art and proclaiming (PCI-Express 2.0, more bandwidth! 2GB of RAM!)


Then see how many are bought.

With enough marking and spif handouts for the employees of BB, I am certain a company could make a killing. Extremely dishonest, but put some synthetic 2D Benchmark (be sure NOT to start the graph at 0) that uses some ugodly emount of ram, then put it in a pretty box, make it look like a scream and sell it for $200. Offer a 25 dollar spif for each one sold to each employee and watch them fly off the shelves. It is a sick idea, but from working retail many years ago, it works just like that. Of course, I would never do that, but if I lacked any ethics at all, it would be a way to make a quick buck, both for the company, and for the employee.

 

[sutahz]

DDR2, nice!
"This graphics card delivers blazing fast graphics and lush colors thanks to its 1GB of memory "
And that's a fact!

 

[Schadenfroh]

Of course, I would never do that, but if I lacked any ethics at all, it would be a way to make a quick buck, both for the company, and for the employee.

Maybe make a video game console as well, cheaper than "gamer" consoles like the xbox or playstation, then charge $40 per game for games that are simply glorified Flash and Java games that are available on the PC for free (or like the minigames that are within some Playstation or Xbox games), spin as for a "casual" audience and see how many are bought.

Also, maybe take a very repetitive and simple classic game (say like Simon Says) and put a modern spin to it (like with graphics and music) and provide a unique interface device (controller) for it. Then charge more money for it by using the controller to justify it (say ~$90?).

Finally, how about we make some game based on something in real life. The thing in real life would need statistics that change each year or so. Then, when the stats get updated, release a new game and charge the same amount (adjusted for inflation) despite only changing the stats and breaking multiplayer for the previous year's version.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Of course, I would never do that, but if I lacked any ethics at all, it would be a way to make a quick buck, both for the company, and for the employee.

Maybe make a video game console as well, cheaper than "gamer" consoles like the xbox or playstation, then charge $40 per game for games that are simply glorified Flash and Java games that are available on the PC for free (or like the minigames that are within some Playstation or Xbox games), spin as for a "casual" audience and see how many are bought.

Also, maybe take a very repetitive and simple classic game (say like Simon Says) and put a modern spin to it (like with graphics and music) and provide a unique interface device (controller) for it. Then charge more money for it by using the controller to justify it (say ~$90?).

Finally, how about we find some game based on something in real life. The thing in real life would need statistics that change each year or so. Then, when the stats get updated, release a new game and charge the same amount (adjusted for inflation) despite only changing the stats and breaking multiplayer for the previous year's version.

LOL... Hilarious, because it's true :-(

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: sutahz
DDR2, nice!
"This graphics card delivers blazing fast graphics and lush colors thanks to its 1GB of memory "
And that's a fact!

Well... Everyone knows that a 512MB card can only display half the colors of a card with 1GB so they won't appear as lush. duh.

 

[jaqie]

Although it is a niche market, there ARE a few people that could take full advantage of that card.

There are some people who run old MMORPGs and multi-log on them. I for instance run two simultaneous Asheron's Call clients and it takes up all of my 256MB vid memory on my 7900GS, however the gpu isn't even breaking a sweat. I have a friend who has twelve accounts and a method to control all of the accounts randomly via bots (no, bots are not against the rules of AC as long as someone is there to respond to an envoy test to "see if you are there"). She has to run it on multiple PCs and recently bought an 8800 because it was all she could find with a large memory at the time, which was way more then the card you just linked to.

 

[Lithan]

OMG... I could run like 5000 pindlebots at once on that card... Everyone, send me your D2 cd keys quick!

 

[Modelworks]

Its not the engineers that are the problem.
Its the damn marketing department.

They can take what the engineers design and turn it into utter crap.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Its not the engineers that are the problem.
Its the damn marketing department.

They can take what the engineers design and turn it into utter crap.

That's his point. Marketing people came up with that card, not engies

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Its not the engineers that are the problem.
Its the damn marketing department.

They can take what the engineers design and turn it into utter crap.

That's his point. Marketing people came up with that card, not engies

yeah, I misread it.
I get irritable whenever someone mentions engineers and marketing.

I worked as an EE in consumer electronics division for Ge.
I saw so much quality work reduced to crap because of marketing.

The last thing was some of us wanted to make the hdmi cables so that they had an option for a thumbscrew on each side , like video cables. So that the higher quality cables would not pull on the connection interface.

We were overruled. Marketing said it was too complex for consumers and wasn't hot pluggable.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Modelworks


The last thing was some of us wanted to make the hdmi cables so that they had an option for a thumbscrew on each side , like video cables. So that the higher quality cables would not pull on the connection interface.

We were overruled. Marketing said it was too complex for consumers and wasn't hot pluggable.

good lord. i mean i can see sometimes where i bet some engineers do propose overly complicated things and need to be mitigated - but the example you give, wtf.

ugh.

more often than not its probably the marketers screwin shit up. id like to know what engineering team decided that shitty sata flimsy interface, that was ridiculous and a major fuckup on a big scale.

 

[taltamir]

its not hot plugable because there are screws there? oh yea, tell me another one... and thumb screws are too complex for customers? how stupid do they think customers are? ugh.

But yea, that card makes me cry inside. This card is proof engineers are not involved in the CREATION of products either... Its like when netburst came about... a perfect case of marketers telling the engineers how to make the product. (make it have more MHZ not matter the cost, even if it is slower per MHZ). Well, although there was the notion that it will go up to 40ghz and that will make up for the shortcoming, so it might not be entirely marketing's fault.

 

[imported_wired247]

Opening 100's of huge images in photoshop?

does photoshop even use video ram?

 

[OmegaShadow]

whoa!!! 1gb on a low level card? that's crazy.

 

[robertk2012]

IM in for 2

2 GB SLI here I come!

Edit: finally Ill be ablle to play Crisis with max everything.

 

[taltamir]

photoshop uses regular ram last i checked... you want 100s of huge photos? well at 100MB per photo you would need 1GB of ram per 10 photos. So say, 30GB should be enough ...

I think you are confusing your 10MB photos for "huge"

Really that 512MB of extra RAM is nothing.

And rendering movies, lets say you have a 3d alien that takes 30MB of ram... how much ram do you think you need for rendering 10k of them onscreen? how about 20k? I wish I could see the machine they used for the lords of the rings animations...

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: Golgatha


Is there any possible use for that much memory on such a slow GPU?

Playing a game like Oblivion with more detailed texture mods?

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ol...oduct&id=1203815034113

Is there any possible use for that much memory on such a slow GPU?

Of course there isn't, but if they didn't make that product they'd be losing out on the moron demographic. (Really they're just ignorant about video cards...which isn't really an insult when you consider you need a PHD to try and understand the model numbers half the time!)

Don't tell you haven't seen the forum posts or overheard the bragging. "Yeah, I bought pretty sweet card. Its got (insert 2x the amount of ram the top of the line graphics card available uses) megs of ram so its pretty fast. Only cost me $75 at best buy."

Everyone knows these products are crap...but there is and always will be a group of people that look at the video cards on the shelf and, only understanding (vaguely) what one of the numbers on the box means (that being the amount of ram) select the card with the biggest number! Its got more so its better!

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Of course, I would never do that, but if I lacked any ethics at all, it would be a way to make a quick buck, both for the company, and for the employee.

Maybe make a video game console as well, cheaper than "gamer" consoles like the xbox or playstation, then charge $40 per game for games that are simply glorified Flash and Java games that are available on the PC for free (or like the minigames that are within some Playstation or Xbox games), spin as for a "casual" audience and see how many are bought.

Also, maybe take a very repetitive and simple classic game (say like Simon Says) and put a modern spin to it (like with graphics and music) and provide a unique interface device (controller) for it. Then charge more money for it by using the controller to justify it (say ~$90?).

Finally, how about we make some game based on something in real life. The thing in real life would need statistics that change each year or so. Then, when the stats get updated, release a new game and charge the same amount (adjusted for inflation) despite only changing the stats and breaking multiplayer for the previous year's version.

I see what you did there.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: taltamir
its not hot plugable because there are screws there? oh yea, tell me another one... and thumb screws are too complex for customers? how stupid do they think customers are? ugh.

But yea, that card makes me cry inside. This card is proof engineers are not involved in the CREATION of products either... Its like when netburst came about... a perfect case of marketers telling the engineers how to make the product. (make it have more MHZ not matter the cost, even if it is slower per MHZ). Well, although there was the notion that it will go up to 40ghz and that will make up for the shortcoming, so it might not be entirely marketing's fault.

I think you guys are partially missing the point (the hotpluggable thumbscrews thing was dumb of course). Marketing in many cases is just telling to engineering to build what customers are asking for. The customers are stupid, so they ask for the wrong solution to their problem. You can try to inform them that their solution is wrong, but many of them don't want to hear it, think you're lying to them to try and sell them a crappier version, are pig headed and think you're an idiot, etc. You could refuse to make it, but then some one else will just do it and they'll buy that instead. So, if you're nvidia, you can come out with these garbage cards with tons of ram (and they do, every generation!) or you let ATI have those sales.

Its just business. It isn't about elegant engineering all the time, or the best solution. Its about building what the customers want. And if they want a turd sandwich, you gotta make them a turd sandwich.