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Dell's Misleading Graphics Card Buying Advice
Barence writes "Dell's website includes a guide to graphics cards for PC novices which contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation. The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a 'standard graphics card,' is displaying a Windows desktop that's washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a 'high-end graphics card,' is showing the same desktop – but this time it's much sharper and more vivid. They're both outputting at the same resolution."
... using words like "misleading" and "unfair." It's fraud, plain and simple.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
There is no such thing as a "standard" graphics card
I can barely read this article, I better get a new video card! Shameless comes to mind.
Maybe Dell is comparing the VGA port of onboard graphics vs. DVI/HDMI of a discrete card. I do notice a difference between VGA and DVI on a 17" monitor.
Why don't they put two naked chicks fondling the expensive card monitor behind it . . .?
And Roseanne Barr behind the cheapo one . . . ?
Then I would know which one to buy!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Dell’s page says that its picture is for “demonstrative purposes only”
Dell should rephrase it and clearly state that this is for "promotional purposes only" instead.
the images look the same on my low end graphics card. I guess I should upgrade.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My theory is that both displays are actually showing a bird's-eye view of a Windows desktop, as rendered by a redstone emulation of an X86 processor. The visual difference is because the worse card needed the "Fancy Graphics" and "Smooth Lighting" options turned off.
They took it down shortly before the reporters got to it, this was what it looked like before: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8082/dellimage2.jpg
Anonymous Coward
From the look of the two monitors on the 'example' page, it looks like they're showing 27 or 30 inch monitors. If that's true, then the comparison of the 'low end' Radeon 3450 at a max of 1920x1200 to a 3470 or higher with a max resolution of 2560x1600 (the native resolution of a 30 inch monitor) will look something close to the example photos.
Not labeling the examples with the types of cards used, resolutions, sizes, etc is close to unconscionable for a business computer comparison / assist site.
The funny thing is that even if that's true, then the lowest end baseline integrated intel graphics chip would match the high end in display resolution, and therefore, sharpness on any monitor Dell sells.
Is this really worth any kind of discussion?
The people who would be fooled by this, would not have the capacity to adjust their monitor settings in Windows, let alone possess the skill necessary to Photoshop an image's brightness and contrast.
So you're saying it's okay to defraud people if they're ignorant?
Here's a tip: everyone's ignorant about something. In fact, everyone's ignorant about most things. You know enough to spot the fraud in the Dell ad, great, good for you. But I guarantee you that there are people working very hard to part you from your money who will do their best to find the gaps in your knowledge -- and they will find those gaps, because you have just as many of them as everyone else does.
Normally, when (not if, when) that happens, people will be sympathetic. In your case, they'll point and laugh.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Dell super video is much good. Much much gooder than standard picture. Definition is very high! Don't buy cheap standard video!
Buy Dell video, I rating A++++++++++! Very happy very sharp picture!
I know that in Europe we have fairly strong advertising standards regulation and in theory every ad is supposed to be "legal, decent honest and truthful". I see the odd case of outrageous ads being challenged but for the most part we get exactly the same litany of gullible customers being sold products they don't need: €100 hdmi cables, ultimate broadband for Facebook browsing etc.
I am not sure that any amount of regulation can stop it. I have become quite resigned to the whole business and I accept it as a kind of ignorance tax. While I can be smug about the fact that I am knowledgeable enough about tech products to avoid paying this ignorance tax I am quite sure that in other areas where I am less knowledgeable I am probably duped into paying more than I should.
Why don't they put two naked chicks fondling the expensive card monitor behind it . . .?
You're getting it all wrong.
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The big difference is that in the UK and EU there's an excellent chance that this is illegal. Strange as it may seem, unlike the US we actually require adverts to be somewhat true - and not just by tacking on a timestretched disclaimer sped up to a garble at the end. For example, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" ad campaign was ultimately sunk because fresh beer does not, in fact, taste better. Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages, the damage was done.
I would urge as many of you that summon up the enthusiasm to send a polite email to the Advertising Standards Authority. Since this portion of the Dell website is aimed at UK customers, they must abide by UK laws.
strikes again...im having a hard time caring. and for those who say dell is resorting to cheap tricks, its a fact for the big two that anything they sell from ram to monitors is a cheap trick. CPU's get whitewashed as helping twitter run faster, and memory gets the usual 'more tabs' treatment. customers dont notice, but nerds do. The only travesty here is the number of people outraged without realizing they arent the target demographic.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's not just misleading, it's actually lying. The pictures are accompanied by the phrase "Images shown are for demonstrative purposes only". But they're not demonstrative of anything like the difference between a high-end and low-end graphics card.
The fact that it's for business users does not in any way excuse Dell for flat-out lying to customers.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I ALWAYS expect advertisements to lie. Every claim that is not quantified and expressed in numbers is definitely a lie. Claims that are expressed in numbers are probably a lie. Only specs that are very easy to verify and actually define fitness for purpose can be relied on- like RAM size or dimensions. Claims that are hard to verify like quality or reliability or performance or health benefits will be lies. Salesmen who have vested interest will ALWAYS lie to you. You'll never get honest advice from people who stand to profit from your decision. Even independent sources are often biased one way or the other and often won't give advice that is best for you and your situation.
This doesn't just hold true for tech. This is true for everything you purchase from washing machines and pencils to computers and cars. I still don't understand how some people don't realize this and just walk into a shop and ask someone there to help with their purchase.
--Coder
The ASA are actually one of the most capable regulatory bodies within the UK. I've been continually impressed by them demanding peer reviewed evidence from manufacturers to support their claims, and by the decent balance their provide when people complain about adverts that go against their morals/religion.
A few years ago I read that the average number of complaints to the ASA that lead to the advert people pulled was 1.3 . In other words they take every complaint on their merit rather than from public pressure. So if you think an advert violates one of the standards, there is a good chance you can get it pulled.
The badscience forum provides an excellent Activisim section that can help when constructing these complaints.
Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages.
That implies that Bud tastes of something... Clearly false! NB: I've actually had some rather nice beers in the US (although they do tend to be from their mother's womb untimely ripp'd).
Back on topic, before USAians start talking about freedom of speech and censorship (personally, I couldn't care less if the adverts are censored as long as the bits in between them aren't) its worth noting that the ASA is an independent body, not an arm of Government, and the sanctions are usually limited to forcing the offending ad to be withdrawn.
Dell, however, should maybe study UK/EU adverts for expensive wrinkle creams to get some tips on how to sell snake oil without actually making any falsifiable claims (in surveys, 8 out of 10 people who's contact lenses we'd flushed down the loo thought the SuperTuboGraphics option reduced the seven signs of pixellation).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I have no idea what they mean by "financial modelling" (which they spelt wrong), but I can only imagine they mean "you're a trader and need 4 screens full of stock tickers". Not that I'm that worried about trader being ripped off by a couple of hundred quid, but then..
Why the hell do you need anything other than integrated graphics for presentations, spreadsheets, and rich media? What kind of spreadsheet are you writing where you need mid-range 4*anistropic filtering, and 16* anti-aliasing? More to the point, what spreadsheet software even DOES that? Presentations.. if you want to get laughed out of the theatre, go ahead and embed that massive 3D animation (I'm not sure you can do that in powerpoint, either). And "rich media"? You mean watching a fucking DVD? Intel GMA has the basic tools for coding mpeg decompression, so it's bullshit.
No, if you're ONLY going to use email, and probably turn it on once a week, basically you suck, get the integrated graphics. I might argue that word processing, with its enormous fonts and alignment processing might need more of a graphics chip than a spreadsheet, but probably not much.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Yeah, it's like AMD's new Bulldoer family of CPUs. They have all of a sudden doubled the core count of the CPUs so that their line of quad cores is now "octocores" and their octocore Opteron 6200 family of CPUs now have a whooping 16 cores.
What they did was implementing a form of hyperthreading by throwing in an extra integer ALU into each core. They changed the name "core" to "module" and now falsely claim that each "module" now has two cores. If that were true then the old Sun UltraSPARC T1 would be 32 core, the Pentum D would actually be quad core (as it is also specified to have two ALUs per core), and all Intel processors that support hyperthreading can double their core count.
Tests done by Anandtech and other people indicate an underwhelming performance on these CPUs so I was a little confused as to why they would resort to such a cheap and fraudulent marketing trick, but I have now figured out what this is all about. As many people state, the Bulldozer is mainly targeted at the server market with their Opterons (that also has shown abysmal results in server benchmarks) and when it comes to servers, not only the workload is different but also the software licensing. A lot of server grade software is actually licensed on a per-core basis, i.e. the license you pay for a certain piece of software is based upon the number of cores you intend to run it on and not the number of systems as is the case with PC grade software. Microsoft used to charge their server software on a per-CPU basis or per-chip basis but they are already transitioning into a per-core license model starting with their SQL Server Enterprise 2012.
So, by doubling the core count instead of just calling it hyperthreading, they can generate twice the license income for software producers.
If that laptop doesn't have at least 8 GBs of RAM and a 1 TB 7200 RPM HD or 256 GB SSD, with a separate video card, it cannot be sold. Your company depends on repeat business, correct?
I don't disagree with your point, but I think your "minimum" specs are a little high. 1 TB 7200 rpm 2.5" HDDs don't even exist yet in the 9.5mm format that will actually fit inside most laptops. And if it has discrete graphics, then I'm not buying it. I value battery runtime over flashy graphics, and I doubt I'm the only one. And given that even the i945 integrated graphics in my five year old laptop can do flashy graphics (compiz) at 1920x1080 just fine, I doubt any modern chip couldn't. Unless you play games or run CAD software, discrete graphics are overkill.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
I mean, how else would you quickly and efficiently explain 3D acceleration to someone who has no idea what it is? Let's same I have a game and I want to run it at 30 frames per second. On a low-end card, I have to turn the details down and decrease the resolution to get the same speed - in other words, make it "blurrier." On the high-end card, I crank everything up and it looks nicer. Dell didn't want to get into the whole give and take of speed / detail / resolution, that's not who this guide is for. Blurrier is a good enough representation of those technicalities.
If there's anything wrong with this, it's that they used a desktop instead of a game screenshot. I supposed that potentially could cause someone to upgrade who had no legitimate need for a nicer graphics card. But with Aero and whatever desktop nonsense there is now, it's not that misleading.
And there you go. The first time, and probably the last time, that I've stood up for Dell.
Tests done by Anandtech and other people indicate an underwhelming performance on these CPUs so I was a little confused as to why they would resort to such a cheap and fraudulent marketing trick, but I have now figured out what this is all about. (...) Microsoft used to charge their server software on a per-CPU basis or per-chip basis but they are already transitioning into a per-core license model starting with their SQL Server Enterprise 2012. So, by doubling the core count instead of just calling it hyperthreading, they can generate twice the license income for software producers.
So your conclusion is that AMD did this to increase the total cost of their platform, making their chips less attractive to buy? You're rambling without making any sense.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I submitted the following to Consumerist. I looked for somewhere to tell Dell, "thought you'd like to know, I've submitted the following to Consumerist" but couldn't find any place to submit it. Whatever happened to old-fashioned contact pages? It looks like all the many ways to contact them involve signing in to Dell, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Bah.
=== submitted to Consumerist ===
Dell is engaging in faulty advertising. The image in the link is misleading. The different graphics cards would show a Windows desktop the same. There would be other differences between the cards, but that's not one of them. Here are links to Dell, Reddit, and Slashdot.
Dell:
http://content.dell.com/uk/en/business/d/help-me-choose/hmc-video-card-vostro-dt.aspx?ref=CFG
Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/mle4f/is_this_image_on_the_dell_website_complete_bcks/
PC Pro:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/11/23/dells-unhelpful-graphics-card-buying-advice/
Slashdot:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/11/24/022247/dells-misleading-graphics-card-buying-advice
I see people trying to guess how/why the images are different. You clearly have missed the comment under the image, or don't understand what it means. The images on those monitors were not produced by the monitors. The monitors were photographed while powered off. Then a graphic artist produces a picture for each monitor, and pastes it inside to look like a monitor producing the image. Thus "demonstrative purposes".
It is a standard marketing technique. Every TV advertised in a flyer is shown with artwork pasted in, not a picture of the TV showing the image. It is so common that if you believed that image is real, you would have to be Mr. Bean.
Dell cannot be nailed for this, because they have included the caveat phrase under the image. It means, in a fancy way, "don't take this as real evidence of the difference". It is just like a package of cookies. Big picture of the cookie on the outside, and underneath, it says "product enhanced in size for illustrative purposes".
If you don't get it, then adjust your set. It will be like this until capitalism and lies are replaced with something else.
Basically, they did say: Water doesn't prevent dehydration. They said: You can't claim bottled water is better at preventing dehydration than tap water, and you're claim implies that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
AMD's attempt to mislead the non-techical, a la 'Get The Facts'.
Check out this marketing asshole.
An old version of the Wikipedia article points out the bullshit of their older 'Vision' nonsense:
Some of the divisions made in the classifications seem dubious. For example, the basic "Vision" should be capable of watching DVDs, while "Vision Premium" can "Convert CD to MP3s". But any general-purpose personal computer capable of playing a DVD is also perfectly capable of converting CD to MP3s. So adding "Convert CD to MP3s" to "Vision Premium" instead of "Vision" is purely for marketing, without basis in technical reality.[citation needed]
They're still full of shit - their "Help Me Choose" page would have me buy a mid-range machine to rip CDs, apparently more demanding than watching DVDs. To "be a productivity powerhouse", though, I'd really better shell out for the best.
It's a pity. I really want to like AMD - they're a much-needed underdog.