The Radeon HD 6900M series currently features "Barts" chips that have 960 shaders which - for those keeping score - is shy of the 1120 that are present in the Radeon HD 6870 and even slower clocks. Obviously, performance of a 6970M is nowhere near the performance of the HD 6970.
The desktop Radeon HD 6990, on the other hand, is a dual GPU card, so you would expect some kind of "Cayman" chip enough of a performance bump to justify sticking it a HD 6900M model number to boot. So, no, what you get is paltry fully enabled "Barts" chip that is present in the Radeon HD 6870 but which is clocked 20% lower. That's right, for the geniuses working at AMD marketing, it is correct to market a graphics device with 1/3 of the performance as if it was the real thing. Perhaps this was the motive behind ditching the "X2" suffix on dual GPU cards earlier.
Intel has been doing this, Nvidia has been doing this, AMD has been doing this for some time now and yet it doesn't get any more excusable for each passing day. It is absolutely disgusting that no consumer advocate association steps up and take them to court on accounts of consumer fraud, or misleading marketing or whatever you call it. Slapping an "M" to a card that has nothing to do with another very similar part is purportedly misleading and someone should be held accountable for this. Nvidia has been doing this for a long time but I think AMD is actually the first to blatantly sell a product that has a dual GPU equivalent on the desktop as a single GPU in the mobile space.
Now, don't interpret me wrong on this, I know it is impossible, or practically impossible, to fit the same parts on something that can still be called a laptop or that has still some mobility of a kind. That is mostly impossible but if shader counts, memory and core clocks are being cut at will to fit TDPs, model numbers must reflect that. It obviously gives the consumer the information beforehand that the laptop is and always will be inferior to a desktop, instead of a "hey, we have a laptop here with the same GPU!".
To make matters worse, big publications that only some god knows how they get the traffic they do, completely miss such blatant facts about new product launches, instead focusing on the ongoing war between the two companies.
If you know someone who may help put end to this, do leave me a comment below. This situation has existed for too long of a period. It makes a lot of people waste their time with this bullshit for no good reason. It is not easy to counsel someone a new piece of hardware with this kind of marketing. I can just imagine what people that want to do a decent job at a hardware store must go through.
We all need to buy computers from time to time, do make us a favor and make our life easier so one can actually look forward to the next upgrade.
I leave the best for last, a must read from the press release:
There’s always been a belief that when it comes to mobile computing you need to make performance compromises. Today AMD demolishes that myth. The AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPU, which not only packs AMD Eyefinity technology with unprecedented specs, also provides full Microsoft DirectX 11 and Stereo 3D support. Bottom line, this processor is epic and it’s here - now.It is not a myth, it is a fact. This guy is either lying through its teeth or doesn't know one thing of what he's talking about. Either way, this is unacceptable.
2 comments:
Keep in mind that when ordering even a high end gaming laptop, you don't really get a wide range of choices when it comes to the video card. (For a Sager 8170, you get 4, which is the most I've seen)
If someone is buying a gaming laptop and they want a certain video card, they have to look for available laptops that have 'their' card, not the other way around. The market is very different from desktop cards, where you have total freedom to choose any card you want. Name would be much more important while trying to figure out what to buy.
But a consumer looking at a Sager 8170 who wants an ATI card, the single choice is a Mobility HD6990. At that point they could call it the HDX Super 5000 GTXT, and would it really matter?
As someone who was recommending laptop hardware for some heavy lefting, I have to say that model numbers matter because it's about managing expectations. It is ridiculous that a laptop Core i7 has quad and dual core variants and that the quad isn't even faster on most stuff, let alone desktops - same thing for graphics.
If it was called HDX Super 5000 GTXT, at least it would not have any indications of performance but you would know that it's the best you can get; whereas currently the name implies you can get the same performance as desktop parts - which will never be possible unless some revolution happens in the mean time.
If you want to know the performance of said HDX Super 5000, you would have to look for it specifically. I haven't even seen a review from this card and can only infer it's performance from specs and existing lower end desktop cards, though the model number tries to deceive you into thinking performance of a very high end, dual GPU card.
Best regards
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