But what do we mean by this?
Let’s go back and take the much-loved GeForce 10 series as an example.
Many are quite fond of parts like theGTX 1080and1080 Ti.
The GeForce GT 1030 was released in May 2017 with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.
Still, it was usable, and at just $70, it wasn’t exactly expensive.
There was a reasonable amount of backlash, but that didn’t stop Nvidia.
The quietly released follow-up models were often worse than the original versions.
The 12GB model came with GDDR6 using a 192-bit wide memory bus for a bandwidth of 360GB/s.
So, in terms of value, the 8GB model was a poor deal.
Now, we arrive at the GeForce 40 series.
For those unaware, Nvidia launched theGeForce RTX 4070for $600 about a year and a half ago.
It featured 12GB of GDDR6X 21Gbps memory, resulting in a memory bandwidth of 504GB/s.
And without looking it up, most people wouldn’t know either.
After all, why should they?
So let’s see how the GDDR6 version compares to the GDDR6X model with some gaming benchmarks.
The key difference here is the memory speed, which drops from 21Gbps to 20Gbps.
As a result, the RTX 4070 is now just 3% faster than the much cheaper 7700 XT.
Once again, this moves the RTX 4070 closer in performance to the much cheaper 7700 XT.
This is a concerning gap in value.
In short, power consumption remains very similar between the two.
The bad news, however, is that it is still slower.
In fact, we weren’t sure how upset we should be about this move from Nvidia.
Our initial reaction to situations like this is usually quite negative it just rubs us the wrong way.
To put it bluntly, it’s pisses me off.
Nvidia advertised theRTX 4070 with 21Gbps GDDR6Xmemory, and that’s what it should have.
If availability becomes an issue, Nvidia should either discontinue the product or re-release it under a new name.
So, on behalf of consumers everywhere, we were frustrated.
This is yet another anti-consumer move by Nvidia.
After all, if no one cares, should we even bother?
We made it clear that performance had only regressed by 2-4%.
To make matters worse, the GDDR6 version costs the same as the GDDR6X version.
So, we expect them to continue doing so in the future.
And to be fair, it’s not just Nvidia though the worst examples tend to involve GeForce products.
AMD has also misled customers with dodgy product names, as we’ve seen recently with theRyzen 7 5700.
So, we’re not just singling out Nvidia here.
