Getting ripped-off on new computers.

Myron_2

curfish wrote:

i dont blame the manufacturers at all on this one.

take buying a car people will look around for a long time, take it for a test drive, get there mate to give it the once over, try some others first and then finally haggle down a price.

why dont people do this when buying a pc. alot of people just buy the cheapest one.

the age old saying "you get what you pay for"

but then again its good for me cause im the one who gets to charge for installing new gfx cards and motherboard.

Good point. Next time I shop for a PC at PcWorld I'll ask to see the inside (under the hood) to make sure all the bits are there.

No, the board manufacturers are to blame here. It prevent the user easily upgrading the video adapter. There is no reason in this universe to leave out something that may cost about 5 pence to the board manufacturer. It woulds not cost any more to attach as the board is already designed to take the card edge connector and all the electronic components used to support AGP are there and connected.

It's a little like the Intel 486DX and 486SX con. The core of both chips are identical apart from one simple change to the 486SX to disable the maths co-processor on the silicone. So, in the SX the co-processor is actually powered up and ready to take instructions, but it can't because it's been made death and mute. A little like a surgeon cutting a nerve to kill the pain of someone who is in permanant pain.

Now, if Intel has produced a 486SX and in production actually omitted the maths co-processor core from the silicone then that's something else. The built-in math's co-processor is physically not present and then I can justify a lower price. Still, that's just discussion and history.

In this case, my gripe is that for the sake of a few pence, the user is forced to change the entire perfectly working machine for another just to accomodate a better video adapter than the built in one.

Erm... I built up a computer for a friend recently. That too has a built in video chip. Differnece is that the AGP slot is present because I've bypassed the deceiprive retailer's practice has been bypassed. (Retailer is out of the loop.)

There are many people out there that, unfortunatly, are non the wiser and not so technologically savvy and the trained sales people and way to convincing adverts just reel in the poor suckers.

Oh well . . . .

blinky

The thing with the 486 DX / SX

The SX and DX chips will be made on the silicon wafers. The process of making the core's isn't perfect and some will be flawed. At least initially the SX chips would be the ones which the FPU failed Intel's testing processing.

It's similar to how they produce processors at different speeds. They test them at the maximum speed and work down to the speed where they pass all the tests. This is commonly called speed binning. It is at this stage that they lock multipliers, turn off features.

Over time as the process matures, market forces will more likely dictate that more slower chips are required than they actually produce (as the yield increases), so they just use some of next higher rated core but market them at the lower speed. It also partly explains why processor prices drop - as the process matures more high speed cores are produced and less wasted = more efficient and lower costs. It's not just market forces.

This provides the logic behind overclocking.

It's not just processors, it happens with video card chips e.g. some Radeon 9500's on 9700 PCB's could have the extra 4 pipelines unlocked with varying degrees of sucess, and people are unlocking pipelines on the Geforce 6800 series. Even some of the NForce4 chipsets can be modded between the different versions with a bit of conductive paint.

leosayer39

Hi all,

Pipelines?

Please explain, simple terms please!

(I'm sure I have heard this term on '24'....hmmm...Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that one))

Cheers

Leo

blinky

In simple terms....

Pipelines are the parts of the GPU which generate the pixels.

e.g. Geforce 1 had 4 pipelines which could apply 1 texture per pass

The more pipelines the faster the graphics card at a given clock speed.

It get more complicated...

MarkyMarkD

Myron wrote:

When you mention empty APG slot do you mean that markings and solder points are present on the main0board, but the actual AGP card edge connector is conveniently (for the manufacturer and retailer) missing?

No, "empty APG slot" means an empty AGP slot (good) rather than a missing APG slot (bad) like my Dell :@ I have also had to go down the PCI graphics card route as the onboard one wasn't up to much.

Myron_2

Ah. Yes. If you get a computer what didn't even have a provision for an GAP slot then it's understandable, but if the provision for it is there, but the card edge connector is missing then that's simply an insult to one's intelligence.

T4i

Any motherboard with built-in graphics needs to be looked at carefuly. Some of them only like the built-in GPU to be used.