Nvidia & their AIBs are deceiving customers yet again with new GT 1030 variant

[AlTech]

Nvidia and their AIBs are deceiving customers yet againw with their new GT 1030 variant.

 

This is the same shady practices Nvidia pulled with the MX 150 earlier this year.

 

Nvidia has created a GT 1030 variant which uses DDR4 2100Mbps instead of GDDR5 6000Mbps.

 

The difference means that ultra budget conscious gamers should stay away as Nvidia's board partners have not done a great job of differentiating between the variants.

 

From what Anandtech has seen, the only differentiator is in the SKU/model number with most OEMs adding a "D4" suffix to their GT 1030 SKUs/model numbers. However, some OEMs don't even do that and don't differentiate between the two at all.

 

And to add insult to injury, the DDR4 variant has lower clockspeeds due to a 50% reduction in Power Consumption. So performance will suffer as a result.

 

Quote

For the lowest-end video cards, a common practice by manufacturers is to substitute in slower VRAM – recently, this meant swapping out GDDR5 for DDR3 – saving costs in a product that typically would not be able to utilize the extra memory bandwidth. For quite some time now, we have been used to seeing DDR3 in those ultra low-end cards – until now. Sometime last month, NVIDIA quietly released the GeForce GT 1030 DDR4, with several models filtering out through add-in board partners.

In addition to slower-clocked DDR4 VRAM, the GT 1030 DDR4’s core clocks have also been reduced, though the exact boost clocks differ between custom boards. The end result of 2100Mbps DDR4 from 6008Mbps GDDR5 does reduce the bandwidth from around 48 GB/s to 16.8 GB/s, though with no change to memory size and bus width. It appears that the DDR4 variants are also lower power, with a 20W TDP as opposed to 30W.

 

Quote

Interestingly, some of the listed documentation shows two different core names: “GP108-300” and “GP108-310.” But while “GP108” is affiliated with the lower-clocked, lower TDP DDR4 variant, certain GDDR5 models (AERO ITX 2G OC, AERO ITX 2G OCV1, 2G LP OC, 2G LP OCV1, 2G LP OCV2) list both core names in their specification sheets but with everything else unchanged, leaving it unclear what the differences are between these two GP108 bins.

 

 

So yeah, dear Nvidia please stop trying to deceive customers. That also goes for AMD.

 

We don't need confusing BS bureaucratic naming schemes. We just need simple sensible names which aren't misleading.

 

Come on Nvidia ... You can do better than this.

 

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12614/nvidia-quietly-rolls-out-slower-lower-tdp-geforce-gt-1030-with-ddr4-vram

[Herman Mcpootis]

GDDR4 Vram? that was still a thing? 

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

GDDR4 Vram? that was still a thing? 

No, not GDDR4.

 

Straight up Desktop DDR4 in GT 1030.

[Arika]

i dont see how GT1030 and GT1030D4 is any different to a 1070 and 1070ti or 1080 and 1080ti

[Morgan MLGman]

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

No, not GDDR4.

 

Straight up Desktop DDR4 in GT 1030.

Yeah, I read about it yesterday. I've seen that for instance Palit doesn't differentiate the two models at all so I wouldn't recommend buying the GT 1030 from them.

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

i dont see how GT1030 and GT1030D4 is any different to a 1070 and 1070ti or 1080 and 1080ti

Uninformed consumers may accidentally purchase the GT 1030 DDR4 variant without realising what they wanted was the GT 1030 Standard version.

 

Also, OEMs are not differentiating between the 2 well enough. It's just the model number which is different.

 

If you picked up 2 boxes of GT 1030s you wouldn't be able to tell if one has DDR4 or if one has GDDR5 by looking at the box unless you looked specifically at the model number if the boxes showed different model numbers.

[samcool55]

6 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

i dont see how GT1030 and GT1030D4 is any different to a 1070 and 1070ti or 1080 and 1080ti

Almost right, they are still called GT1030 but the ram is mentioned differently.

https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GT-1030-2GD4-LP-OC

https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GT-1030-2G-LP-OC

So unless you read the fine print on the box to figure out what VRAM it has, or check the model name, you won't know what kind of VRAM it has.

 

If they would add D4 or something in the name that's in the bottom right corner of the box, it would be indeed the same thing as a 1070 and 1070ti, but that's not the case. They could at least do that like they did with the 9gbps versions of the 1060 but nope...

[Sakkura]

17 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

And to add insult to injury, the DDR4 variant has lower clockspeeds due to a 50% reduction in Power Consumption. So performance will suffer as a result.

The lower core clocks shouldn't matter since the card will be bandwidth-bottlenecked at all times. I mean the memory bandwidth gets cut down to just over a third of the GDDR5 variant.

[porina]

Let's face it, you're not buying a 1030 for performance, more likely power. The further reduction in the power requirements of the DDR4 version may be a positive in that scenario.

[Arika]

14 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Also, OEMs are not differentiating between the 2 well enough. It's just the model number which is different.

 

If you picked up 2 boxes of GT 1030s you wouldn't be able to tell if one has DDR4 or if one has GDDR5 by looking at the box.

 

well this then contradicts your title. It would be the AIBs "Deceiving" consumers since they are not clearly displaying the variant on the box. same would go for the 1060, there's a 3GB and 6GB but they are known as GTX1060. It's then up to the AIB partner to inform customer's what they are buying, not NVidia.

 

EDIT: At time of posting, title was "Nvidia are deceiving customers yet again with new GT 1030 variant" has since been edited

[AlTech]

Just now, porina said:

Let's face it, you're not buying a 1030 for performance, more likely power. The further reduction in the power requirements of the DDR4 version may be a positive in that scenario.

Yes but calling it a GT 1030 if the other GT 1030 exists.

 

GT 1030 LE would have been fine. The problem is Nvidia and their AIBs not properly seperating the cards branding.

[AlTech]

Just now, Sierra Fox said:

 

well this then contradicts your title. It would be the AIBs "Deceiving" consumers since they are not clearly displaying the variant on the box. same would go for the 1060. there's a 3GB and 6GB but they are known as GTX1060. It's then up to the AIB partner to inform customer's what they are buying, not NVidia.

Nvidia could have named this GPU the GT 1030 LE. They and the AIBs are both to blame imho.

[Jurrunio]

As they always did with the low-end cards, nothing special

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, Sierra Fox said:

 

well this then contradicts your title. It would be the AIBs "Deceiving" consumers since they are not clearly displaying the variant on the box. same would go for the 1060. there's a 3GB and 6GB but they are known as GTX1060. It's then up to the AIB partner to inform customer's what they are buying, not NVidia.

But they also got hate for that because the tech community wasn't exactly happy with that either...

[porina]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

Yes but calling it a GT 1030 if the other GT 1030 exists.

 

GT 1030 LE would have been fine. The problem is Nvidia and their AIBs not properly seperating the cards branding.

1030 is the core which is unchanged, however you may re-rant about the 1060 thing here. Ram has never really been labelled well apart from the quantity. Specific cards may use ram from different vendors with different performance characterisitcs e.g. Samsung GDDR5 is generally considered a better clocker.

[samcool55]

Just now, VegetableStu said:

AMD's equally guilty of this for the RX560(? if I remember right)

Yeah, they also did dodgy stuff with different shader units but at least they listened and fixed that (at least that's what they promised, don't know what they ended up doing tho...)

But i don't expect any reaction from Nvidia for this, they probably prefer to be silent so it disappears on its own...

[Arika]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

But they also got hate for that because the tech community wasn't exactly happy with that either...

to be fair the tech community is never happy about anything anyone does

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, porina said:

1030 is the core which is unchanged, however you may re-rant about the 1060 thing here. Ram has never really been labelled well apart from the quantity. Specific cards may use ram from different vendors with different performance characterisitcs e.g. Samsung GDDR5 is generally considered a better clocker.

Ahem...

https://www.asus.com/us/Graphics-Cards/GTX1060-O6G-9GBPS/

https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Graphics-Card/GV-N1080AORUS-8GD-rev-10-11#kf

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, Sierra Fox said:

to be fair the tech community is never happy about anything anyone does

Well people were quite happy with Ryzen because we finally got competition back and Intel finally launched a proper new line of products.

[Arika]

Just now, samcool55 said:

Well people were quite happy with Ryzen because we finally got competition back and Intel finally launched a proper new line of products.

which has caused even more arguments than it used to

[samcool55]

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

is their PR team run by Noctua? o_o

Well at least when they were confronted about the color/shape difference issue they released a statement it shouldn't matter which after testing turned out to be true. (at least the differences were too small to properly measure, let alone be noticable). We will probably get no reaction at all from nvidia about this... At least that's what i'm expecting.

[samcool55]

2 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

which has caused even more arguments than it used to

There's nothing wrong with argumenting about stuff as long as it's done properly

[Dabombinable]

This only makes my GTX 650ti OC 2GB look even better.

[Murasaki]

37 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

No, not GDDR4.

 

Straight up Desktop DDR4 in GT 1030.

what the fuuuuuuuuck

[TheRandomness]

I'm going to wait for EVGA to release one before probably buying one.