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NVIDIA Releases new Budget GPUs
Dennis Law writes "I was just checking out the latest GPU releases from NVIDIA. Non-gamers will be delighted to hear that NVIDIA also released a budget-edition of their new 7300 series, namely the 7300 LE. 'Targeted at the X1300 LE, this card will be priced lower than the GeForce 7300 GT at a price range of $49 to $69.' Now that's cheap enough for me to afford."
Defects in the manufacturing mean some components can't work at top spec, so they slow them, disable dud memory, etc. and make a cheaper product out of them to recoup the losses.
It's called price discrimination and it allows companies to sell products to those who will pay higher prices for higher prices. The principal keeps 80% of retail products companies in business. It's not predatory, it's not unethical, it's just economics. Keep in mind it happens both ways too - some customers are far less profitable than others at the same service and product level.
The wikipedia entry is a good primer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
They market them in different market segments. If they did that with identical chips, people would cry foul.
It may also be that they have multiple shader units and the ones that have more shaders fail get down-graded and sold at a lower price. Thus increasing process yields since they have to throw out fewer chips. Sort of like the difference between a 386/33 and a 386/25 in the old days.
Assuming that this is the exact same silicon, now that they have recouped investment, these low end chips may be from piles of accumulated failed chips; chips where only half the shader units passed tests, or where it only operated properly at half speed.
Working on the assumption that, like some other chips (AMD comes to mind), the features on a chip are enabled after a set of tests are run on it, or are enabled in-chip after passing some internal test, it is reasonable to assume that these are from the same silicon as the high end chips, but are faulty in some way, but not faulty enough that they can't be used. I imagine thats the difference between the 7800 GT/GTX - the GT had several (but not too many) failed shader units, and/or operated stably at a bit less speed than the minimum required for GTX classification.
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It's not a 7900, but the 7800GS is AGP.