Why are motherboards so stupidly named??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was recommending some bits for a build on another forum and recommended the following motherboard by mistake:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=3243

I meant to recommend the following motherboard:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=3096



I like how Ebuyer snuck in the inferior motherboard at the same price as the better one:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/196403



So basically the GA-MA770T-UD3P has a far better VRM than the GA-MA770T-UD3 and yet the best the marketing department could do is add a P??

[scaryjim]

It's better than that, CAT: the other Gigabyte 770 AM3 board ebuyer have is the GA-770TA-UD3, not the GA-MA770T-UD3P. Neither of which is the GA-MA770T-UD3, of course.

But I agree, you'd think they'd try harder to distinguish the different boards a bit more from each other...

[jim]

I did at one point understand the Gigabyte naming structure... they seem to take a base name and then make all sorts of little alterations depending on what features it has.

One letter to show what kind of caps, one to show whether it's got the 3 Oz copper, one to show whether it has one or two PCI-E x16 slots, one to show whether it's DDR2/3... so you get one motherboard like the 770T that then comes in MA770T, 770TA, MA770TA, -UD3, -UD3R, -UD3P... until nobody has a clue what they're buying. And naturally the suppliers only stock one or two Gigabyte 770T boards each, so you can never get the one you're after anyway.

I think they should just concentrate on fewer models... it would be nice if they could decide what the best spec was rather than creating every conceivable setup and then letting the consumer decide

[Pob255]

P for extra Power?

The gigabyte naming system does make sense when you know what all the letter codes mean.
However I agree, get it right the first time gigabyte so you don't have to make so many revisions & variations.

[arthurleung]

You surely don't understand consumers. If a consumer is given 10 choices and randomly pick one, it is obviously that having many product lines will mean the consumer is likely to pick your brand.

[jim]

I don't think they are though... it's very unlikely that one retailer is going to stock the 11 different iterations of Gigabyte's P55 range. (Made up figures)

[Lee H]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte_Technology

Now you can all know what the letters refer to in their naming scheme.

[aidanjt]

Welcome to the world of commercial marketing. Where stupidity is abound.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte_Technology

Now you can all know what the letters refer to in their naming scheme.

Thanks for that!

OTH,it is still a fail for the Gigabyte marketing though!

It seems that the P stands for the following:

"P - Silent Pipe, RAID, Extra PCI Express slots, extra SATAII ports."

Nothing about the number of phases the VRM has!

[scaryjim]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte_Technology

Now you can all know what the letters refer to in their naming scheme.

So what does the A stand for in GA-770TA-UD3?

[Cheapy]

So in that case where do the Gigabyte GA-770T-USB3
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...-SATA-RAID-ATX

and the Gigabyte GA-MA770T-ES3
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...3Gb-s-RAID-ATX

Come into it?

[bandsaw]

So what does the A stand for in GA-770TA-UD3?

I think (don't quote me!) it's the "333 Onboard Acceleration" - USB 3, 3x USB Power, SATA 3.

[jim]

I hate Gigabyte doing that... my old P35-DQ6 was the same. It claimed to have "6-Quad Features".

In reality, as I wrote at the time, rating each out of 10:

Quad Bios - 4/10 - Mostly marketing hype, despite having a range of BIOS backup functions, I refuse to believe that you would ever actually require the use of four methods. In fact, it's very difficult to find out what the 'four methods' actually are. Whatever they are, I can't say I have any interest in discovering what they are.
Quad Cooling - 6/10 - You can't deny that it has some ridiculously huge cooling cooper fins attached to it, but it's got to be a bit unnecessary, and I'm not really convinced it's got a lot to do with Quad-anything. Maybe it stands for "Quadruple the Amount We Actually Needed".
Quad eSATA 2 - 9/10 - I think I've got to hand it to Gigabyte on this one, they indeed do have four eSATA break out plates.
Quad Triple Phase - 3/10 - I have a suspicion that this is related to the power supply to the processor, in that it's a 12 phase Voltage Regulator Module. And what do you know! 4 multiplied by 3 is 12. 3 gold stars for mental arithmetic Gigabyte, but can't you just admit that it's 12, not quadruple-triple?
Quad Core Optimized - 5/10 - Indeed, the board does support Quad-Core processors, but so do all of the P35 boards. I'm not convinced it's anything to declare to the world.
Quad DDR2 Slots - 8/10 - Again, you've got to hand it to them. It is indeed the case. However, I'm not sure it's really the greatest achievement for a motherboard - it's not exactly common to find one with 2 DDR2 slots.

[Pob255]

now that's some marketing hype.
It's like the monitors we where getting that had "vista compatable" stickers on them

[jim]

now that's some marketing hype.
It's like the monitors we where getting that had "vista compatable" stickers on them

Yeah that's ridiculous... everybody knows it's only Vista Compatible if you bought the Morphy-Richards/Vista Compatible Power Lead to go with it

[Scottyyy]

I agree, it can be a bit silly. I was looking at Asus' motherboards on their site and went to the P45 chipset section. There's literally 20 different versions of the P5Q. P5Q-E, Deluxe, SE, SE/R, SE2, Pro, Premium, WS, etc. How many combinations of the same board can you have honestly?