does anyone else think nvidia's naming policy...

[BudAshes]

The new card series they have coming out is the 9600 and 9800. I don't know about you, but I already had those cards like 5 years ago and they were made by ATI. How stupidly unoriginal can you get.

 

[DSF]

I don't understand why everyone makes a big deal out of this.

They've progressed through the 5000, 6000, 7000 and 8000 series. 9000 is the next logical step. If that bothers you, blame our number system.

 

[CP5670]

These cards are just rehashes of the 8 series. Maybe they didn't want to use the 9xxx numbers for anything good since those are associated with ATI, so they figured why not just put the 8800 refreshes under those numbers and skip to the next set of numbers (whatever they will be) for the actual new gen cards.

 

[thilanliyan]

The number of 8800 cards is more confusing than anything else from nVidia.

 

[nitromullet]

I do agree that if leaves something to be desired, but I honestly can't call any naming convention that forgoes the gratuitous addition of X's idiotic. That whole X thing (especially words like 'Xtreme') has gotten so old.

 

[BudAshes]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
I do agree that if leaves something to be desired, but I honestly can't call any naming convention that forgoes the gratuitous addition of X's idiotic. That whole X thing (especially words like 'Xtreme') has gotten so old.

but nvidia is naming their cards after old ati hardware that does the same thing, except it's older. Luckily their aren't more of the ati cards on the market, or that would be confusing as hell.

 

[Quiksilver]

I could careless if the names are going to be named after cards from a different era and company, It was the next logical step and makes perfect sense to me. What I don't like is when they re-hash cards using the same names they already used (eg. 8800GTS 512).

 

[AmberClad]

I don't see how it's even relevant to compare Nvidia's numbering scheme to someone's else. If you're going to get into that whole can of worms, then why not starting comparing an AMD 9600 to an Intel QX9650 (wow...amazing how much impact that 50 difference in product number makes!)

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver
I could careless if the names are going to be named after cards from a different era and company, It was the next logical step and makes perfect sense to me. What I don't like is when they re-hash cards using the same names they already used (eg. 8800GTS 512).

Exactly. The people naming new Nvidia products must be on drugs. It's idiotic enough to reuse the 8800gts name for a card that's on par with the old gtx, but it's even more ridiculous to slap 2 of those together and call it a 9800gx2.

 

[Cheex]

Since GT, GTS, GTX kinda refers to cars too....

They should have named them 8800GT and 8800GTS Type R.

 

[Rusin]

..do hope that AMD will name their next series with some other number series than 4000, because Nvidia already used that number series few years ago

 

[BudAshes]

why not just name the cards after their processor speed and ram. Too simple?

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: BudAshes
why not just name the cards after their processor speed and ram. Too simple?

Actually that would make it more complicated than it already is, cause then you have to factor in every manufacture that doesn't use the reference core/memory/shader speeds.

What you end up with is a whole new can of worm 10 times more confusing than the last naming system and I'll gladly take "GeForce 9800" over "Geforce 9 G98 700/1000/1800 GDDR4" any day. (yes most of those numbers were just made up)

It's pretty hard to even get the two confused anyway cause you have a) nvidia vs ati, b) geforce vs radeon, c) unimpressive specs(at least now) vs impressive specs, d) GT/S/X/Ultra vs none, e) ddr2 vs gddr3/4, f) agp vs Pci-e.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver

Originally posted by: BudAshes
why not just name the cards after their processor speed and ram. Too simple?

Actually that would make it more complicated than it already is, cause then you have to factor in every manufacture that doesn't use the reference core/memory/shader speeds.

What you end up with is a whole new can of worm 10 times more confusing than the last naming system and I'll gladly take "GeForce 9800" over "Geforce 9 G98 700/1000/1800 GDDR4" any day. (yes most of those numbers were just made up)

It's pretty hard to even get the two confused anyway cause you have a) nvidia vs ati, b) geforce vs radeon, c) unimpressive specs(at least now) vs impressive specs, d) GT/S/X/Ultra vs none, e) ddr2 vs gddr3/4, f) agp vs Pci-e.

Not to mention that to really have any way of comparing two cards you'd have to know not only the core speed and memory size, but also the number of SPs, the shader clock, memory clock, memory bus width, etc.

 

[postmortemIA]

re-hashed cards could easily been 8700 and 8900 series

 

[ja1484]

All videocard naming schemes are ridiculous if you look at it in the abstract.

If they wanted something that made sense, they'd have maybe 4 variants for each chip, and it would be numerically simple with a simple suffix. Even then, there would be the problem of previous gen high end vs. new gen low-end.

i.e.

GeForce, GeForce 2, GeForce 3,....., GeForce 8

Variants:

GTX (equals 8800GTX)
GT (equals 8800GTS 640)
G (equals 8600whatever)
(vanilla) (equals 8400/lower)

So you'd have something like:

GeForce 8 GTX
GeForce 8 GT
GeForce 8 G
GeForce 8

This way, higher letters + numbers = always better, no confusion about it, within that generation anyway. I don't see an easy way to explain that a GeForce 7 GT is better than a GeForce 8 vanilla.

The current "segments" are way too contrived. Remember waaay back when there were maybe 5 variants of each card? Like, remember when GeForce 3 came out, and there were I think 3 versions? Vanilla, Ti 200, and Ti 500? I can see one or two more revisions in the high end, but more than that is just goofy.

I think the closest anyone's ever come to making sense with naming was the GeForce 6 series. 6200, 6600/GT, 6800/GT/Ultra. I know about the Ultra Extreme, but FUD paper launches don't count. And I know about the 6100s, but frankly once you've gotten down to that level, drawing distinctions is splitting hairs (hence the stupidity of naming the products differently). I think 5 flavors is about right. Anything else is bloating the market. We certainly don't need 3 or 4 variants at each of the three product levels.

 

[Cheex]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
re-hashed cards could easily been 8700 and 8900 series

I totally agree.

8450
8550
8700
8900
8950GX2

All would have been well.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: BudAshes

Originally posted by: nitromullet
I do agree that if leaves something to be desired, but I honestly can't call any naming convention that forgoes the gratuitous addition of X's idiotic. That whole X thing (especially words like 'Xtreme') has gotten so old.

but nvidia is naming their cards after old ati hardware that does the same thing, except it's older. Luckily their aren't more of the ati cards on the market, or that would be confusing as hell.

1) You're wrong, NVIDIA is not "naming their card after old ATI hardware". It is simply the case that naming convention NVIDIA choose a few years ago ended up creating a product model number that coincides with a previous ATI product model number. This already happened long ago with the GeForce 7200 GS and the Radeon 7200, and no one seemed to notice or care.

2) Is anyone interested in buying a GeForce 9800GTX or GeForce 9800GX2 really going to be confused and mistakenly buy a four year old RADEON 9800 Pro? Is it really that confusing?

 

[Keysplayr]

I don't think it makes one bit of difference in my life, so no. Not worth enough of my attention to be considered idiotic.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
I don't think it makes one bit of difference in my life, so no. Not worth enough of my attention to be considered idiotic.

Took the words right out of my mouth..

 

[BudAshes]

Now that I think about it, maybe its actually on purpose. The more confused the average person is about the kind of video card they are buying, the more likely they are to pay too much for a mediocre card that has some big numbers on it.

 

[betasub]

IIRC, on the original GTS card (Geforce2) it actually stood for Giga-Texel per Second - as it was the first retail card to achieve this. The GTS moniker then disappeared for several Nvidia generations, but I guess it was bound to return eventually once Nvidia became fixated on the GT moniker (Geforce6?).

 

[hans007]

i dont get why this is such a big deal.

there was a radeon 7500 and a geforce 7500. there was also a radeon 8500, and a geforce 8500gt. i'm pretty sure its unlikely to be confused seeing as its been 5 years.

its not like they are naming the card.

nvidia ATI RADEON 9600gt.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: BudAshes
The new card series they have coming out is the 9600 and 9800. I don't know about you, but I already had those cards like 5 years ago and they were made by ATI. How stupidly unoriginal can you get.

they could always switch to hexadecimal.

so we can buy the A800 and the BAAAA ?

 

[taltamir]

wait this is a first... someone is actually advocating that a company skip number to match their competitors naming scheme?
So the Xbox 2 being called 360 to make it a larger number then the playstation 3 is bad... and winamp5 coming after winamp 3 not so hot... but nvidia should go from 8xxx to 13xxx or maybe HD3xxx (since apperantly HD = 10) to match ATI?

The only thing stupid is that nvidia is calling so many different cards 8800GTS... or 8800 in general...