"Soapy" hardware

The computers are becoming more and more consumer products. With the same approach to marketing.

We are already accustomed to Microsoft approach - to sell the worst operating systems as the "latest hit" (same as adding earlier trash coffee-beans to the good coffee and sell it as a "new flavor", taking the previous "version" off the shelves).

But it was not so in hardware market - at least till resent NVIDIA hocus-pocuses.

The first trick was to declare that their graphics cards need PCIe 2.0 x16 connections - a blatant lie - the tests show that even GeForce GTX280 does not fully utilize PCIe 1.1 x 16. Secondary NVIDIA cards in SLI mode do not use PCIe connections at all (except for identification and power). The only exception is GTX280, that needs some x2 or x4 interconnection. Same is true for AMD cards in CrossFire - x4 interconnect is "over the head" for most of them (well, cannot say that about the ATI FirePro V8700).

Same lie was NVIDIA nForce 780 and 790 chipsets support of PCIe 2.0 - they do not!

The lie about chipsets supporting PCIe 2.0 was later backed be AMD and even Intel (Intel 5400 chipset has max. effective throughput of 2.5 MB/sec - more than PCIe 1.1, but much less than PCIe 2.0 specification - though in some documents Intel states that this chipset is not fully PCIe 2.0 compatible).

Small wonder the smaller players began to "overestimate" the productivity of their hardware (some SSD producers add 10-20% to the products specifications, even some computer case vendors "sum up" number of 5.25", 3.5" and 3.5" convertible from 5.25" bays, claming to have 12 and more bays in mini-tower case).

Later I'll try to give a list of such "soapy" products.