Biggest Ripoff in Hardware History?

[beedubaya]

Me and somebody were talking about some of the worst video cards for the money to ever come out, and I thought it would be interesting to do this poll. Pick what card you think was the biggest ripoff in hardware history and tell me why.

 

[Mr. Switch]

From the Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on the 5800 Ultra
the most important contribution we've made to the graphics industry.

Woah, how wrong was that statement! Hands down, the GeForceFX 5800 Ultra is the worst videocard ever concevied. The 5800 Ultra barely shipped because it sucked so much. It had to use a dual slot "Dust-Buster" because the core clock speeds were well over 550MHz stock. Nvidia used 128-bit DDR2 memory instead of 256-bit DDR1 memory like its competitor, the 9700 Pro. The 5800 Ultra had IQ issues up the wazoo because of crappy drivers and dangerously high clock speeds. to top that all off, the 5800 Ultra was still slower by a long shot despite it being louder than a vaccum cleaner, having core clock speeds that have yet to be matched, and being $150 more than its competitor. The few people taht bought the 5800 Ultra would of done better just by throwing their money in the sewer because Nvidia really dropped the ball on that one.

 

[Apokalipse]

I say the X800 Pro.
the 5800 was replaced by the 5900, and then they also made a 5950, then the 5800 sort of dropped out

 

[Harper]

Did not relised that there was a NVidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra

Then again, you for Geforce 3. Which in an entire shortly lived Chipset generation. I think that was around for 3 months before nVidia released GF4.

 

[003]

5800 Ultra, hands down.

 

[nuke]

003 is right. 5800 blows.

 

[gaara]

Why is there no SLI up there

 

[DoomUK]

Why is there no SLI up there

Beacause there's too many of us SLI-ites out there that will flame you to death for speaking in such a tounge

No, SLI isn't a rip-off in the same sense as an overpriced single video card with crap specs. You aren't forced to buy a second 6600/6800/7800 series with only a handfull of titles to support the performance benefits of SLI (but you can still use SLI AA - 16x - in all games).

To wave the flag for a moment, SLI support is improving. Try running the F.E.A.R. SP demo on maximum settings (soft shadows on blah blah) on a single 6800 GT/ultra or even a single 7800 GTX solution. Then try with a second card - the performance gain is quite magnificent.

 

[gaara]

I don't care...SLI is still a lazy half assed excuse to try and increase performance...imagine if AMD and Intel stopped engineering faster CPUs and just suggested that you buy a second processor to increase performance

You're still paying double the price for only about 40% performance increase

SLI to me is as stupid as buying two 13" TVs to "double" your viewing area rather than just buying a single 26" TV

 

[Nubius]

I don't care...SLI is still a lazy half assed excuse to try and increase performance...imagine if AMD and Intel stopped engineering faster CPUs and just suggested that you buy a second processor to increase performance

You're still paying double the price for only about 40% performance increase

SLI to me is as stupid as buying two 13" TVs to "double" your viewing area rather than just buying a single 26" TV

bingo...that was always my complaint with SLI...instead of being creative and working to create one helluva single GPU, or hell I'd even take a dual GPU card, noooo "lets just put two cards in one board!" and hell now we've all seen that "4 cards in one board!" nonsense......NONSENSE I TELL YOU....

Soon you will have a seperate box next to your computer with ultra fast cables connecting the two, and that 2nd box will be nothing but the graphics processing lol.