March 9, 2007
How I lost 128MB of Video Card Memory: Dell, ATI HyperMemory, nVidia TurboCache
Quick! What’s the difference between this video card…
…and this video card?
Did you guess that the first video card had 128 MB more memory than the second?
Bzz. Nope. They’re the same video card in the same Dell machine! Wait… maybe Vista ate the 128 MB of memory? Nope! That’s not it either!
Here’s another question - how much memory do you think the video card in this screenshot from Dell’s website - the one labeled “256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache” - has?
Did you guess 256 MB? Well, if so - you made the same mistake I did. Except I made it twice.
Here, let me explain to you how much memory this 256 MB video card has. We’ll use Dell’s help page, linked off of Help Me Choose:
That still says that it’s a “256MB x16 nVidia GeForce 7300 LE TurboCache” card. Let’s scroll down a little…
Nothing there… let’s scroll down some more….
Ah hah! There it is!
Don’t see it?
Here it is called out:
Of course! The “256MB x16 nVidia GeForce 7300 LE TurboCache” entry had a footnote which explains how much memory there’s actually on the video card - which is 128MB!
It turns out that ATI has HyperMemory, and nVidia has TurboCache. Here’s how ATI describes this technology:
ATI develops HyperMemory technology to reduce PC costs
Yep, I think that says it all. So the Dell I bought in July, thinking it had a 256 MB ATI X600 HyperMemory video card so that it would be great for Vista, actually only has 128 MB onboard (apparently the driver tricks XP), and the Dell I just instructed my parents to buy so that they could enjoy Vista Ultimate has a 256 MB nVidia TurboCache video card, which actually only has 128 MB onboard.
I’m not sure if I should be angry at Dell or not. After all, I guess I should’ve known to follow all the footnotes and do research on what these buzzwords really meant. As a customer, I should’ve known better and have been more wary and distrustful of the marketing and help page.
Caveat emptor indeed.
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27 Comments to “How I lost 128MB of Video Card Memory: Dell, ATI HyperMemory, nVidia TurboCache”
March 12th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Smells like a class action law suit to me.
March 15th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
This is where, in the ‘Get a Mac’ commercial, Justin Long just kind of shrugs while John Hodgeman starts flickering and stuttering with poor refresh… Though admittedly this is more about Dell and video cards than Windows. If I had to buy a PC for myself I’d be lost.
My Mac Pro has a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, which SEEMS to have a real 256mb of VRAM…
March 15th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
I’m sure at some point, someone will point out that I did spend only $900 on this computer.
The cheapest Mac Pro that I can configure is around $2120.
Of course, the cheapest Mac Pro is also likely far more powerful than what I have.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Well you got me on the price tag. Macs are closer in price than they used to be, but they’re still more than a comparable Dell.
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I don’t really know what is worse, but in latin america don’t even have the little advise explaining that the onboard memory is 128MB…
http://lastore.dell.com/store/frameset.asp?c=ve&entity_key=DIM9200_REC_CAT&entity_type=CFGSET&l=es&s=dhs&shopper_country=ve&shopper_language=es&shopper_segment=dhs&store_key=LATRANS
This happened to me too, and I’m right now asking them for an explanation. I’m asking as if I don’t know anything and their answers are very ambiguous.
Lets see.
March 28th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
same happened to me. ((GeForce 7300LE)
I called Dell, and after a good 40 minutes of going in circles, they put me through to tech support. Then installed Dell Support and the representative took a look at the card properties. He agreed that the wrong card had been installed (After all, the order says ‘256mb’), put me back to customer service, and supposedly, they are sending me the correct card in the mail. The customer service representative assured me that the card had ‘256 mb of physical memory’, which I asked her to note on my case file.
I’m not getting my hopes up, and I’m expecting the exact same card in the mail. Then I’ll have to go through the same thing again. Hopefully I’ll be able to get somewhere with it. My beef is that the footnote disclaimer described above is not on the same page as the ‘build your own computer page’, but buried in another page.
I’ll update here as time goes by.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:07 am
I spoke with Dell tech support, and they informed that it would be about 2-3 weeks maximum to get a driver that supports the right amount of memory.
Will update.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:27 am
[...] indicated previously in this blog, I bought a video card that was sold as a 256MB, but in fact it only has 128MB of [...]
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Thank you! I thought I was the only idiot in DELL-HELL. jUST BOUGHT MY FIRST COMPUTER, BOY WAS I EXCITED TILL THE BULLS*** STARTED. My 22in monitor only has a fraction of the pixels they advertised and my onboard vidio card has no place to plug in the dvi cord from the monitor. the fabulous tech support said to go to Radio shack and buy a converter to make my thousand dollor bundle work. of course it didnt because it was still an analog port so I figre I need the video card you are talking about to plug in my dvi monitor. Does this ever end?
April 5th, 2007 at 1:39 am
[...] just bought a new Dell for my parents recently - and aside from the video card fiasco that I blogged about earlier, there was also a bunch of craplets/crapware/bloatware/junkware that I had to clean out. Some of [...]
April 8th, 2007 at 10:07 am
well if you were too ignorant or lazy to find out what HyperMemory and or TurboCache meant before you bought it, or to read all the details(yes, even the fine print) then i dont see why you would complain about it now. you only have your own ignorance to blame. any person that actually knows something about computers, gaming and video cards has heard of those two things before. those types of cards started coming out like maybe two years ago. so its nothing ‘new’.
April 10th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I did the mistake … Complain … They sent me an other card … Well they sent me the exact same card … Now i have 256mb onBoard but on two separate video card
…
Dell begin to have problem since vista is showing the real onboard memory .. Before that they sold 128mb (turbocache) card has 256mb card and it never showed anywhere.
I guess I should complain again and i’m sure i could get them to send me the ATI x1300 for free. But i’m just sick of waiting for support on the phone and will go buy it in a store and will never buy a dell computer ever again.
The law is very clear (in canada anyway) what you announce is what you should sale. Having a footnote on an other page doesnt count.. And still if you announce 256mb it should be on the card. Because the 128mb missing is not in the box and is bought separatly with your ram.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I had a similar expirience with DELL in Germany. Here in February, when I ordered my Inspiron with ATI X1300 Mobility, I am absolutely shure, they did NOT advertise 128MB Hypermemory, but simply 128MB.
I noticed Turbocache with the NVIDIA card, they had as an alternative. So I decided to stay with ATI.
Unfortunately, I did not make a screenshot of the advertisement, which they now changed.
The X1300 I received, only has 64MB.
I had a lot of discussions with Dell, but then I gave up.
Will not buy a DELL again.
Now I am hardly trying to figure out, what does it mean, that the ATI Catalyst SW tells me, that the card has 319MB Hypermemory !!!!!
Does it mean, it picks 256MB from system memory ?
Because Vista is mem hungra, AND I only have 1GB RAM installed, this makes me nervous.
Looks like I will get in touch with DELL again.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Still haven’t gotten a satisfactory response from Dell. They sent me the same card again, and this time when I called, the representative was nothing short of rude and arrogant. I asked to speak to his manager, and he replied that he was a ’senior representative’, and would not put me through to someone else. According to him, this is not a misrepresentation of the card, the footnote is ‘clearly’ included. (Aside from the fact that 2 sales support and 1 tech support logged on via Dell Connect did not pick up on it). The best I could come up with is to get my money back on the card. i asked about returning the entire system, and he replied that I would have to pay the shipping if nothing was technically wrong with the computer. You could almost see the smirk over the phone. they sent a packing slip to return the card, and they will refund my $60 CAD upon delivery.
I ordered a GeForce 7600GT through ncix.com. Good price, with rebate, and shipping is resonable. Still waiting for it. In the end, it’s going to cost me another $100 to get the system i thought that I had.
I submitted a complaint under the ‘unresolved issues’ website, but still haven’t heard anything in the past two weeks. I don’t think that it’s a good possibilty I will ever purchace from Dell again. Should have bought local. It’s too easy online for a disclaimer to replace responsibilty.
Cteach
April 15th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Yeah we listened to a talk in management class about how great Dell was.
I should have known since it was from Texas. They are always trying to get things done cheaper.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I had the same problem with Dell. As per this site both 128 MB and 256 MB is avalibale:
http://www.nextag.com/nvidia-geforce-7300le-turbocache/search-html
May 21st, 2007 at 9:57 am
My comment is in response to the following one posted by “lol”:
well if you were too ignorant or lazy to find out what HyperMemory and or TurboCache meant before you bought it, or to read all the details(yes, even the fine print) then i dont see why you would complain about it now. you only have your own ignorance to blame. any person that actually knows something about computers, gaming and video cards has heard of those two things before. those types of cards started coming out like maybe two years ago. so its nothing ‘new’.
I didn’t know we had to graduate from IT school just to be able to purchase a nice computer. Call me naive - or in this case ignorant and lazy - but I trusted in Dell to provide me with the best recommendations for a system that runs well. My computer is being shipped as we speak, and I did tons of research trying to figure out what would be the best system to buy…just so I could play the Sims 2 without the gameplay skipping and jerking like it does on my laptop. I knew it was time for an upgrade and my past 7 years experience with Dell have been pleasant.
I’m disheartened to think that Dell participates in those “buyer beware…read the fine print” type of scams. I read that this is a great card, but that’s it’s Vista that sucks up all the stuff needed to make the stuff work right (forgive my “layman’s” terms). Maybe I’ll come back and let you guys know how my system works - since I requested they build it using Windows XP as the OS, instead of Vista (which saved me $100).
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Ha, I too would rather be “lazy and ignorant” than be rude and condescending (which in itself is a sign of tremendous ignorance).
If I hadn’t googled these video cards, just to see which was better, I would have taken Dell at its word about the memory. It is a sneaky bit of misrepresentation, though more blame lays with the manufactureres.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Having made the same mistake as you (I bought a Dell with a “256″ Mb Geforce Go 7300) I’m now resigned to having been ripped off by Dell. After two weeks of phone calls on an expensive 0870 number to Indians who’s grasp on English means that I was unable to make my issues understood and emails to their UK office complaining about this very issue, all I seem be be doing is giving Dell more of my money via the phone calls so I give up.
None of my colleagues at work have any sympathy for me as they’d all warned me that if I bought Dell I’d regret it. Well I bought Dell and I regret it, and that would be my warning to anyone else considering buying Dell equipment.
BTW Ignore “lol” he’s a troll.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I also was misled by Dell. I have been buying Dell machines for my office for many years. Recently bought my home machine with Vista and an nVidia 7300LE. Personally I don’t care for ATI cards, so when my only two choices for a 256MB card on the order page were ATI or nVidia, naturally I chose the 7300LE without clicking the “help me choose” link and scrolling to the bottom of the page to find the fine print.
Vista is reporting 128MB of on-board RAM. Contacted “home” tech support with no joy, then contacted the “premiere” support through my office with no joy, then got a satisfaction survey call from Dell…again no joy. Dell is taking the approach that the customer is wrong, which is not the way to conduct a successful business. I will look elsewhere for my machines in the future.
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July 23rd, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I’ve had my Dell PC for about 2 months and only just discovered this memory issue.
The really funny thing is that when I contacted Dell about the issue they sent me an email with a link to this page!!
This is a joke! and has seriously put a bad taste in my mouth. Dell you dissapoint me.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:45 am
I have the same experience as well. Dell should put the information up front rather than having the customers going to different web pages and only to find out in the footnote (very small fine print). They should do exactly what they have done to the memory information, put the word “shared” in video discription line in the order page. I called them and they cannot do anything about it. They made it sounded like it was my fault.
No more from Dell…….
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:01 am
If (apparently dumb) people can sue McDonalds for hot coffee and for selling food that makes them fat, you (apparently smarter) people should sue Dell and at least take your satisfaction over it. And I am being dead serious here. I would do that, if I ever bought from them.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Same thing happened to me. When I called Dell they said, “We expect you to know what you are buying”. I asked them to close my company account…
December 18th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Nvidia Sucks Ati is the best
February 27th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
After running into some video issues with WOW I decided to investigate the video card issue, since I had a brand new nVidia 256mb 8400m right… Oh wait… It only has 128mb on board also!
I am goddamn sure that I ordered a 256mb card… Now what do I need to do, fucking upgrade my 2 month old laptop?
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