Dell & Alienware, why giving false informations on SLI/CF?

I noticed that Dell (and thus alienware) are trying to mislead people with SLI.
If you look carefully

Dual 512MB 8800ULTRA 1GB MEMORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While everyone know that you don't addition the memory....

 

Well...technically, in SLI or Crossfire...when your playing a game, it uses both sets of memory, adding up to 1gb or whatever.

Go load up Oblivion, say 1680x1050 or higher res, 4xAA and 16xAF, Qarls Texture Pack 3 for good measure and watch how close you get to 1gb...you'll be happy you did heheh.

 

Actually, that is totally incorrect. Both sets of memory is used, but the texture data is mirrored between the two sets, giving only an effective memory of 512MB still. Sorry, no 1GB...

 

Quite frankly the problem is that there are people out there who believe that larger amounts of video RAM automatically mean it is a better card.

As long as the card has an appropriate amount of RAM for the GPU and the resolutions/features it supports the performance gain is usually not worth the cost of adding more RAM.

Never mind the stats and the theories, look at what the GPU can do when someone who knows what the are doing is using it.

 

those who are misled wouldn't know the difference to begin with.

 

It is marketing speak. More = Better to most consumers. Dell and Alienware (and every other SLI/CF dealer) are not technically lying about the physical amount of memory you are getting with SLI/CF. What they neglect to tell users is that while the physical amount of memory exists, only half of it (the amount on one card) actually matters, because all of the data is replicated on the other card.

If I didn't know any better, I'm sure I'd be attracted to the bigger number.

 

Not gonna lie, they had me sucked in that terminology back in Early 06' when the 7950 GX2 was king of the crop.

2GB of Total Video Memory!

 

the day when you can have more video ram than system ram on a computer

 

Which is so ridiculous, I can't fathom how ridiculous.

Hey, who cares, if we were all using 64-bit OSes. But no, your 2GB of Video RAM just sucked your 4GB of System RAM down to 1.2GB because of all the lost addresses.

So wasteful!!

 

Wow. I didn't know this. Thanks for the info, everyone!

I think the marketing strategy in play here is to differentiate 512 MB 8700M GT SLI [which is the "technically correct" one] from 8800M GTX SLI. By stating it is "1 GB", it will seem A LOT better [although in truth, it is a lot better, but that's not the point]. If they state that it is "512 MB", consumers, especially the less knowledgeable ones [apparently including myself. lol] will think that, "Hey, $1,000 upgrade for a GPU that isn't all that better? NO WAI!" So yeah, I guess it's pure marketing that would seem logical to the consumer [1+1 isn't always 2, though!].