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Should a '9200' Brand Mean a 9200 GPU?
newsdee asks: "An enormous controversy is going on at the X1000 forums over laptop parts. Some Centrino-based laptops bear a label advertising the Mobility Radeon 9200 brand, but users have found out that the laptop actually contains the 9000 chip. The list of affected machines is as follows: Compaq Presario X1000, HP Pavilion ZT3000 and the HP Compaq NX7000. ATI's and HP's response have been that the label is promising performance and not a specific chip. Yet users seem to not like this at all, apparently because most of them define 'brand' as equating to product. According to reviews, there are no differences (same scores, same clock speed) between the chips other than AGP 8x support, which the Centrino chipset does not provide. I seem to remember that this is not the first time that this kind of thing has happened in PC hardware. Can anybody share insights of whether this is right or wrong? Should I complain about my 9000 chip that delivers what the 9200 brand promises, knowing it has not been overclocked?"
Even if it performs like a 9200, if it does not have a 9200, it's False and Misleading advertising- and that is quite illegal. Even if it's a mistake, the companies guilty of this typically end up on the end of a class-action suit and pay out some small rebate or similar.
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My 15" Titanium PowerBook, the last round of the series before they became the 15" AlPB, was advertised to contain a Radeon 9000. Nevertheless, bus scanning output from in shows I actually have an 8500. What's the difference? I really don't know. Nevertheless, seems a bit deceptive to me.
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Just for you information:
Radeon 9000 = AGP 4X
Radeon 9200 = Radeon 9000 + AGP 8X
Centrino = AGP 4X
So, HP thought they might as well stick in some Radeon 9000 and no one would tell the difference.
That actually makes it worse; HP is not only lying about the GPU, HP is passing of their laptop as a AGP 8X machine since sticking a 9200 in an AGP 4X machine is a dumb-ass configuration (it may work, but not up to spec). Since the comparative cost of a GPU is much lower than that of the rest of the laptop, that's the bigger lie.
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I agree with the parent, and I really don't know how "Caveat Emptor" got modded 5, Insightful. There was NO fine print stating that these buyers would get a Mobility Radeon 9000, instead of the promised 9200. (A note to mods: Just because someone is FP, doesn't mean they have anything valid to say.)
And for all of the people out there who say, "Well, what does it matter, they got the same thing anyway," I remind them that for the majority of consumers (including myself!) who didn't know that 9000 ~= 9200, lots of them might have bought an X1000, a ZT3000, or an NX7000 specifically because of this "better" graphics chip.
Lastly, I'm not an advocate of frivolous lawsuits, but in this case, where literally thousands of consumers have been deliberately tricked (unless HP/Compaq can somehow prove it was a mistake that these machines were being loaded with 9000s), I think that if HP/Compaq is not willing to issue a refund or replacement notebook (with a 9200!) to anyone who was fooled, they should be taken to court in class-action.
As consumers, we cannot allow companies to use deceptive marketing tactics in order to sell their products. That is, unless you want to live in a country where you need to reverse-engineer everything you buy just to see if you actually are buying what is advertised.