Wednesday, September 1st 2010
Gigabyte Sells HD 5670 512 MB HyperMemory Card as 1 GB
Gigabyte is allegedly into dubious marketing schemes once again. A disgruntled user in East Asia who picked up the company's GV-R567HM-1GI graphics card was shocked to find half the "advertised" memory available to him. The GV-R567HM-1GI is an ATI Radeon HD 5670 based graphics card that physically has only 512 MB of GDDR5 memory, yet advertises on its box and labels that the card provides 1 GB GDDR5 memory with ATI HyperMemory technology. The "HyperMemory" part is very inconspicuous and nowhere on the front box is the actual memory amount mentioned.
For the uninitiated, HyperMemory technology is an age-old technique used by ATI usually on its lowest-end SKUs, to increase the amount of memory available to the GPU, by sharing a fixed amount of memory from the system's main memory. NVIDIA has an identical technology called TurboCache. The allegation here is not entirely that of false marketing, but dubious marketing practices. For starters, the card is a GV-567D5-512I that is rebadged, next, the actual memory amount is not mentioned on the front of the box, making it difficult for unsuspecting buyers who don't know what HyperMemory is, to determine the actual memory, and third, there is pure false marketing involved in calling "512 MB GDDR5 + 512 MB system shared" as "1 GB GDDR5", there's no DDR5 PC memory standard. AMD's guidelines (refer pg. 14) are clear on the matter of dealing with HyperMemory branding. If you come across this card priced close to 1 GB models, you're definitely not signing up for a "1 GB GDDR5 card".
Source:
PCDVD
For the uninitiated, HyperMemory technology is an age-old technique used by ATI usually on its lowest-end SKUs, to increase the amount of memory available to the GPU, by sharing a fixed amount of memory from the system's main memory. NVIDIA has an identical technology called TurboCache. The allegation here is not entirely that of false marketing, but dubious marketing practices. For starters, the card is a GV-567D5-512I that is rebadged, next, the actual memory amount is not mentioned on the front of the box, making it difficult for unsuspecting buyers who don't know what HyperMemory is, to determine the actual memory, and third, there is pure false marketing involved in calling "512 MB GDDR5 + 512 MB system shared" as "1 GB GDDR5", there's no DDR5 PC memory standard. AMD's guidelines (refer pg. 14) are clear on the matter of dealing with HyperMemory branding. If you come across this card priced close to 1 GB models, you're definitely not signing up for a "1 GB GDDR5 card".
79 Comments on Gigabyte Sells HD 5670 512 MB HyperMemory Card as 1 GB
Bad Gigabyte..... :ohwell:
The Asian Guy:
-Instead of whining like crybabies, read some facts about graphic cads. The performance is not based on Memory!
-If you know GPU-Z, then why the hell you have no idea about HyperMemory you idiot!
Gigabyte:
-Why change the model numer of the card? If it is 512 then let it be so!
-Why still use an old marketing trick like Hypermemory?
The result:
nVidia is guilty! They started all this bullsh1t with TuboCache!:roll:
hypermemory cannot add more memory to the card, so it cant actually raise it above 512MB - and even if you were on drugs at the time, since no system in existence uses DDR5 ram - it cant be 1GB of DDR5.
HM to 1GIG DDR5 that say`s it all, the lower case to" how with ddr3 memory?
I think it's the buyer's mistake for not researching before buying.
I was looking to buy a card, and I didn't know what TurboCache was. Guess what? I walked away, researched, and went for a different card.
If you don't want to get sucked in to this, the answer is simple; Research Before You Buy.
Still you've got to admit, to the untrained eye, that can be quite misleading...
And I thought HyperMemory was just a gimmick for laptops...like mine...
Also, most costumers just want to buy something that is recent (thinking it is better than it's 4-5 year old card) and ask for another guy to install it, so they really don't know what they are doing. I remember when PCI-e was new, people would buy PCI-e cards and ask me to install it on their boards, the problem being that they only had AGP slots.
BAD move from them...
Have bought their mobo with Xpress Recovery function just to find out it doesn't even work in SATA mode. They of course don't mention that anywhere on their webpage. And i was familiar with it in the IDE days and was a pretty cool feature.
BIOS Recovery. Same thing. They advertise it, but they don't explain it anywhere how to use it.
When i had problems with corrupted BIOS, i couldn't recover it because i knew there is some Dual BIOS super duper recovery but it wasn't explained anywhere. Not even in the manual! Thank god the store replaced it directly for me.
And i could go on and on with their crap. So i'm not really surprised what they did here.
as if the card featured Hypermemory 1GB.... AND GDDR5
however this picture here cannot be misinterpreted, like I stated I go by these model numbers when buying a Giga card and this would, wiithout a doubt, make me think it was a 1gb OF GDDR5 card.
that says 1GB DDR5 - and under no circumstances does this card have 1GB of DDR5, hypermemory or not.
the side I'm taking is that this whole box is misleading as fuck, considering its a 512mb card.
(It is not an excuse for Gigabyte though)
It says "HM to 1GB", so yeah, one could be stupid enough for not understanding what HM is, but it also adds "GDDR5" to the mix. Now I can understand, so it "HyperMemory"s it to 1GB, let's say from 512MB (not really stated on the box, it could have been 1MB - 1023MB), but how the hell does it turn 512MB system memory from DDR2/DDR3 to GDDR5 in the process? Magic?
It could be an unfortunate sum of omissions that rendered the packaging and labeling misrepresentative of the contained product. A customer really shouldn't have to decipher the barcodes label.
The box should have stated the actual physical memory size too. That is the problem. And I'm sure it's just a mistake, Gigabyte sells countless products, and I don't think they'll get rich by misleading it's customers on purpose with one card.
I rarely buy without looking for a few reviews and detailed specs whether its a 20$ game on steam or a 1250$ prebuilt oem computer.
If you buy things on a whim at the computer store your bound to get screwed sometimes.
Like my Lian Li TR-3B Thermal Monitor / Fan Control, it only controls fan speed based on programmable temp and its either 50% or 100% when temp limit is reached, with annoying alarm which was removed.
I guess I'm just lucky I saw the TurboCache on the other card; and since information is addictive; I wanted to learn about it!
I've never fallen for a trick like this, and I don't think I will, but at least I know to watch out for Gigabyte from now on. Bad trick by one of my favourite manufacturers.
There won't be any fuss if Gigabyte had just included that on the box itself. The fact that they didn't and listed only the HM is dubious. Something like "HM to 1GB (512Mb GDDR5 on-board)" works...alot of other makers use that terminology on specing their box.
It's like buying a new processor and all it lists on the box is it's overclocking headroom ie. OC to 4.7GHz!!. What about the stock speed? It could be 2Ghz for all I know. Sure I can look it up on the web but I also want confirmation from this particular box what I am buying.