1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,120 Two years ago, Graphics Giant NVIDIA caused a wave of outrage when they announced two 2 00:00:05,120 --> 00:00:10,440 gaming GPUs that had the same name, but seriously different performance. 3 00:00:10,440 --> 00:00:15,040 Thankfully, though, they learned their lesson from that response, and they never did it 4 00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:19,600 again. Sorry. They did do it again. 5 00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,640 They did it again less than a month later, and they're still doing it today. 6 00:00:23,640 --> 00:00:27,640 The only difference, the only difference, is that they're keeping this behavior out 7 00:00:27,640 --> 00:00:33,120 of the headlines by doing it on the budget GPUs that the media usually ignores. 8 00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:39,200 For example, the RTX 3050 6Gig, did you even notice when this thing was released? 9 00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:45,760 I don't blame you. Rather than creating a product guide and sending samples to reviewers for testing, NVIDIA announced 10 00:00:45,760 --> 00:00:50,160 this thing by writing a short blog post about it like it was 2009. 11 00:00:50,160 --> 00:00:54,600 As a result, very few reviews were made, and even fewer people watched them. 12 00:00:54,920 --> 00:01:00,320 You could say NVIDIA probably did that because they knew that no one was going to be excited 13 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:06,080 about a relaunch of the same GPU from two years ago anyway, but I think they did it 14 00:01:06,080 --> 00:01:10,880 that way because they didn't want anyone to notice that it is not the same GPU from 15 00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:14,400 two years ago. How do they think that this is okay? 16 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:20,520 It isn't okay. And to show you just how not okay it is, we are finally going to be looking, not just 17 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:26,440 at the 3050 6Gig, but we're also going to be putting a spotlight on the many times in 18 00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:31,640 the past that NVIDIA has pulled this dirty move, stretching all the way back to the 19 00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:34,760 beginning. And we're also going to put a spotlight on our sponsor. 20 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:39,120 If CUDA cores and memory buses don't mean much to you, don't worry, because all you 21 00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:45,760 really need to know is that when we compared the new 3050 6G to the original 8G model, 22 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:51,200 we found that in both real games and in benchmark apps, there was a big enough difference that 23 00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:57,560 a more appropriate name for this new car would have been RTX 3040 or even 3030. 24 00:01:57,560 --> 00:02:03,160 This calls into question, what even makes a 3050 a 3050 in the first place? 25 00:02:03,160 --> 00:02:08,320 It clearly doesn't mean the specifications and it doesn't even mean the performance. 26 00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:13,880 And what's really frustrating for me is that by drawing this comparison to the original 27 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:19,160 3050, it makes us think, oh, this is a really bad card, but it's not. 28 00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:23,800 It's actually the best GPU on the market that doesn't need extra power cables. 29 00:02:23,800 --> 00:02:29,240 So if I were, say, upgrading a Dell OptiPlex for some serious gaming business, it could 30 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:38,800 actually be a really great option. It just isn't an RTX 3050 option, and calling it that is misleading. 31 00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:44,400 All NVIDIA had to do to avoid this video ever being made is give it an appropriate name. 32 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:48,960 Let's talk about why they didn't, and fair warning, you might not like what you hear. 33 00:02:48,960 --> 00:02:54,160 The thing is, budget GPU shoppers are much less likely to read or watch a review before 34 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:59,440 they click checkout. I know this from my experience working retail, but even if you don't believe me, look at 35 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:06,600 the numbers. The original RTX 3050 got the full launch treatment from NVIDIA, and if we look at the Steam hardware 36 00:03:06,640 --> 00:03:12,680 survey, we can see that that card sold extremely well, more than the high-end RTX 3080. 37 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:18,880 And yet, the 3050 got fewer views across the board for the media that covered both cards. 38 00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:25,800 And that kind of makes sense. I mean, anybody would put the extra research into a $700 purchase, but wouldn't necessarily 39 00:03:25,800 --> 00:03:32,560 on a couple hundred dollar purchase. So mainstream shoppers tend to rely more on salespeople at big box stores for help choosing 40 00:03:32,560 --> 00:03:38,640 the right product. And if you've ever tried to do that, you know that having someone read the label on 41 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:41,640 the shelf to you is often the best you can hope for. 42 00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:48,800 And I don't even blame those sales reps. They're paid to sell things, not to be experts on all of the stuff in their spare time, and 43 00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:57,800 there's a lot of stuff that they're expected to sell. So I think that by reusing the RTX 3050's name on an inferior product, NVIDIA has made 44 00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:06,520 it confusing on purpose. We've created a situation where even a tech-savvy sales rep that is trying could think that, 45 00:04:06,520 --> 00:04:12,040 well, hey, as long as you don't need that extra memory, say to game at a higher resolution, 46 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:16,280 this version with less memory should perform the same and save you a buck. 47 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:24,240 And it gets even worse. Even for the folks who attempt to do their own research, by reusing the same name, NVIDIA 48 00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:28,680 ends up confusing them too. Look at these results on YouTube. 49 00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:31,920 Sponsored Junk. This is fine. This is also the right card. 50 00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:36,520 Sponsored Junk. Wait. That's a video about the original 3050. 51 00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:41,520 So I could search for the exact correct product name, pick the first highly viewed video I 52 00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:46,640 see, and I could think the card I'm buying is, I don't know, basically that, but with 53 00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:53,920 less memory. Now, if this was the first time it happened, I might say, oh, NVIDIA, you made it silly. 54 00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:58,080 But as I've already said, this is part of a pattern of shady behavior. 55 00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:03,560 Let's pivot to the RTX 3060 8 gig, which is another example that happened less than 56 00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:07,000 a month after the 4080 12 gig scandal. 57 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:10,600 On first glance, this one doesn't seem that bad. 58 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:15,720 Then you notice that when they cut off a third of the memory, they also cut off a third of 59 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:19,400 the memory bus, which slows all of it down. 60 00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:25,120 So in both games and benchmark apps, even ones that didn't need the extra video memory, 61 00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:32,320 we measured a big performance difference. Now the saying goes that there's no such thing as a bad product, only a bad price. 62 00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:37,600 So this one would have been more okay if NVIDIA had also provided a discount, except that 63 00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:45,040 they didn't. The cut down RTX 3060 launched at the same MSRP as the full fat card. 64 00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:49,480 Why? Well, because it was during the GPU shortage and NVIDIA thought they could get away with 65 00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:54,040 it. Unfortunately for them and good for everyone else, the shortage was ending around this 66 00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:59,160 time and regular RTX 3060s soon came back down to their normal pricing. 67 00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:03,400 So thankfully there aren't that many of these manufactured e-waste cards out there. 68 00:06:03,400 --> 00:06:07,160 Now to be clear, lots of other companies have misleading names for their products. 69 00:06:07,160 --> 00:06:11,560 We just finished calling out NVIDIA's rival AMD for a similar behavior. 70 00:06:11,560 --> 00:06:16,440 But as the leader in the market, I feel that NVIDIA has a responsibility to set a good 71 00:06:16,440 --> 00:06:21,520 example, to put the bar high and instead they've done the opposite. 72 00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:28,320 NVIDIA at every turn, basically forever. And this is a real problem with real world consequences for the consumer. 73 00:06:28,320 --> 00:06:32,000 I personally have been bamboozled once by NVIDIA. 74 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:37,320 I bought an N-Force motherboard for my AMD CPU, this was back in the early 2000s. 75 00:06:37,320 --> 00:06:41,600 And a big part of the reason was that it had GeForce 4 graphics. 76 00:06:41,600 --> 00:06:48,840 Well, imagine my surprise when I learned that GeForce 4 MX is not in fact GeForce 4. 77 00:06:48,840 --> 00:06:54,440 GeForce 4 MX was more like a GeForce 2 than a GeForce 4. 78 00:06:54,440 --> 00:06:58,240 Now we're not going to have Labs actually benchmark a 20 year old motherboard to show 79 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:03,200 you the exact differences, because why would we when we can pick out more recent examples? 80 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:06,720 Let's look at the GTX 660 from 12 years ago. 81 00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:12,000 This one was a mess, or rather these two are messes. 82 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:18,720 Both of those cards are called GTX 660, but under their coolers are completely different 83 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:26,040 chips. Plot twist. Their performance is not nearly as different this time, less than 10% in Tomb Raider 2013, 84 00:07:26,040 --> 00:07:33,560 and we see the same in our benchmark apps. But here's the thing, if I expect 10 donuts and I get 9 donuts and a half eaten donut, 85 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:41,040 I'm still pretty ticked off. And depending on which GTX 660 you get, it could be even further off than that. 86 00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:46,920 On tech power-ups list, we found a whopping four versions of this GPU, but then none 87 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:51,960 of them matched this card, which has more memory than any of them. 88 00:07:51,960 --> 00:08:00,080 And it's hopeless to find a pattern in this. Sometimes NVIDIA seems to make an honest effort to match the performance between their dissimilar, 89 00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:07,240 but same named cards. As we were writing this video, an early sample of an RTX 4070 with just 10 gigs of memory 90 00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:12,400 was found, and in this case NVIDIA boosted other specs in order to make up for the lack 91 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:15,160 of memory, and they've done that sort of thing before. 92 00:08:16,160 --> 00:08:22,240 As we're finishing this video, they did it again, and this time it's both better and 93 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:29,840 worse. A new RTX 4070 just came out with a slightly slower and cheaper GDDR6 memory instead of 94 00:08:29,840 --> 00:08:33,720 the GDDR6X the 4070 is supposed to have. 95 00:08:33,720 --> 00:08:40,600 Now that's about 95% as fast as the original, so to be fair it's not too far off, but what 96 00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:45,800 makes it bad is that the cards aren't going to have a different label to let you know, 97 00:08:45,800 --> 00:08:48,800 hey, you're buying a slower card. 98 00:08:48,800 --> 00:08:51,960 Why do these alternate versions of cards exist? 99 00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:57,120 Now the obvious answer is corporate greed, and sometimes Occam's Razer does hold true 100 00:08:57,120 --> 00:09:02,400 here. But other times their product strategy is actually pretty reasonable, even if I don't 101 00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:10,400 agree with the way they present it. The 660 chip change, for example, was done to salvage higher end dies that didn't make 102 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:15,200 the cut and otherwise would have been wasted, so they were cut down a bit more and turned 103 00:09:15,200 --> 00:09:22,240 into a lower end product. Alright, no problem, but hey, if they were all reasonable and clearly labeled, we wouldn't 104 00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:25,880 have had to make this video, and this is where things get ugly. 105 00:09:25,880 --> 00:09:30,120 We've complained before about the way NVIDIA sells their laptop GPUs. 106 00:09:30,120 --> 00:09:35,240 Not only do they use the same names as their desktop counterparts, even though the mobile 107 00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:42,200 RTX 4090 is more like a 4080, but there's also the problems of them using much slower 108 00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:48,360 memory and a performance limiter based on the cooling and power, a limiter that varies 109 00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:52,520 from one laptop design to the next depending on the manufacturer. 110 00:09:52,520 --> 00:09:57,920 As we've seen, this limiter can drop performance on these chips by an entire product tier, 111 00:09:57,920 --> 00:10:00,960 all of which leaves us with the most important question of all. 112 00:10:00,960 --> 00:10:06,600 If the name of the product doesn't mean anything about the GPU you're buying, including the 113 00:10:06,600 --> 00:10:12,120 performance, then what the ever-loving bum does it mean? 114 00:10:12,120 --> 00:10:18,840 As of 2024, it seems like it just means you pay us this much, and if you're not obsessed 115 00:10:18,840 --> 00:10:23,160 with tech news, you'll get, well, whatever you get. 116 00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:26,400 Oh hey, I got a message from our sponsor. 117 00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:30,400 If you enjoyed this video, go check out the one we did recently about the confusing nature 118 00:10:30,400 --> 00:10:34,880 of these names in the first place, something that the whole industry has been doing a really 119 00:10:34,880 --> 00:10:39,760 bad job of because bigger numbers sell better even if it's not actually better.