MadMan007 said:
[q]What will they call the 230/230 4ns OEM version?[/q]
As for paying a higher price from, say, newegg, you are probably paying the equivalent to what any other reputable vendor would charge for the same item. It's not like newegg has the habit of ripping people off.
This is the problem: now that ATI chips are being put on cards by so many other manufacturers and not limited in scale like the old Radeon LE, there needs to be a true standard.
The solution has already been proposed here: ATI just needs to insist on a naming convention for the companies they sell the chips to, like the nVidia GF3 series. For now, call the vendors, and get them to email you the same information as well so you have 'proof.' If they are rude or refuse to give you the info, they don't deserve your business.
Don't worry, ATI is new at this. They will surely solve this problem the next go around with the R250. Then ti will be: buy an ATI brand card and it will be made by ATI in Canada, etc. Buy a Hercules, MSI, ASUS, etc brand Radeon and you know what you'll be getting too.
I hope they (ATI) do. Do you think they know / understand the frustration we feel with this issue? I would think it would be kind of important to them. Of course Venders wont want this because it would make it easier for us to comparson shop apples to apples, which I believe would help drive down prices of retail cards.
Right now no one knows what each company is selling ATI's card or the other Manufacture's so its hard to judge who has the best price for which card. This takes pressure off the venders to try to "out do" the others because no one knows (with out extensive research and calling venders, very time consuming).
Hmmm, after that thought, maybe ATI dosent want to clear this up.
Also I didn't mean to say Newegg is ripping people off. In fact they are my favorite online reseller right now. I just ment when your trying to make decisions based of preliminary information (pricewatch, cnet, etc. says I can get a retail card for $75.00 so that would leave me with x amount of money for some more RAM, HDD or what ever) and you finally come up with a scenario to best spend your money. When it comes time to purchase, low and behold that card you thought you could get or was told could be gotten for about $75.00 is actually not the card you thought and in order to get the actuall one you want will cost you more like $120.00 from any halfway decent vender.
Then that takes $45.00 away from the rest of the machine, and who knows. Now that the card is more like 120.00 maybe you need to rethink the situation.
All in all just a large waste of time and energy because marketing is trying to dupe people who may not have as much knowledge as us.
I obviously will call to verify "Built by" or RAM Core speed, but I really don't feel like we should have to do this. We have all come to a conclusion that there is a better way (like AKDUDE said, Nvidia is doing it now). I wonder if there is a way for us to put some pressure or sway ATI to do it?
They seem to be (finally) listening to us scream about driver updates and have made great strides here. I just hope they can do the same in the mystery marketing that surrounds their products.
One think I can say, at least ATI caused this by (what I hope) accident. Where as Nvidia with the whole Gforce 4 MX issue did that themselves. Still, for us who know, it is easy enough to tell if something is an MX or a real GF4. Nameing convention still works correctly even when it's ment to misslead.
