Wait for Pascal or upgrade to 980ti

[MrTeal]

So

4600 > 480/580
6800 > 660/680
8800 > 780/780Ti/980/980Ti

The numbers don't mean anything and were always confusing. What's faster GTX580 or GeForce 5800Ultra? The only reason I know is because I remember what came first. To someone who doesn't know videocards, you can't say that 580 beating 5800 Ultra is a logical naming convention.

GPU naming has never been logical, that's why you end up with five different GT 640s; three different dies from two different architectures and a mix of DDR3 and GDDR5.
5800Ultra and GTX 580 are a little different though, since those came out close enough to a decade apart. They aren't likely to be directly compared. With the architecture naming scheme, even if your average guy gets told that M stands for Maxwell and P for Pascal, that doesn't mean anything to them. The OEM manufacturers need something that they can at a glance show is better on a spec sheet; that's why we have the OEM HD8xxx where the extent of the changes was a single number to differentiate it from the previous generation.

 

[Seba]

It's just as confusing to someone who doesn't know GPUs what's newer GeForce 8800GTX or GTX780.

Those are very far apart in time so normally you should not have such problems. And the possible confusion about which is newer is generated by changing the naming convention, not by the naming convention itself. Similar on your other examples.

Their current naming convention is ridiculous since 750/750Ti are Maxwell, 770 is Kepler, while 950 is Maxwell implying 2 full generations ahead of 750/750Ti when it's just 2nd gen Maxwell.

What was 2 full generations in the past? That was like going from GeForce 2 to GeForce 4 or GeForce 4 to GeForce 6. Today, it's made up marketing with 750/750Ti --> 950. That's logical?

Is 770 a new generation compared to the 680? No, it's just a 685. What's 580? That's just a 485. So if we are honest with each other, their names haven't made sense since GeForce 9.

This is not a problem with the naming convention, but with Nvidia who chose to ignore it by skipping numbers, mixing generations and re-branding.

 

[Timmah!]

Why don't they just make it so you can always tell what generation/architecture the card is:

Kepler (K)
GT610/620/630/640/GTX650/650Ti/660/660Ti/670/680 would become:

K10/20/30/40/50/50Ti/60/60Ti/70/80

Then for refreshes, they could have called GTX770/780/780Ti as K75/K85/K80Ti or K90.

....

Maxwell (M) 950/960/970/980/980Ti would then be M50/60/70/80/80Ti or M90.

If they wanted to designate 1st vs. 2nd gen architecture such as differentiating between GTX750/750Ti (1st) gen and GTX950/960 (2nd gen) you'd just call GTX750/750Ti as M150/150Ti and M250/260.

The letter would always tell you what architecture you have, 1st number tells you the generation of that architecture and last 2 digits the ranking in the product stack, with Ti designating the flagship chip of that particular series.

So for Pascal you'd have:

GTX950 -> P50
GTX960 -> P60
GTX960Ti -> P60Ti (or just P65)
GTX970 -> P70
GTX980 -> P80
GTX980Ti -> P80Ti or P90

This way, no matter the generation, you'd always be able to tell so fast Oh ok this is a Pascal level chip, series 60 so about mid-way in the stack. In essence, the architecture letter designates the family of products, and the series is the standing within that family.

I certainly would like to see this kind of order brought into it, since the current state of affairs hurts my OCD. Then again, i doubt Nvidia would want you to know that their latest card is just rebadged previous gen product, when that happens. So i doubt they would want to go this way.

Then again. i dont think Pascal will be called GTX10x0.... it does not sound good IMO. And 1080 name could be confusing with FullHD resolution, as someone pointed out. Not going to happen. That said it may be four digit moniker again. I wonder if this time around they wont try out naming the products with actual names - like Sony did with their cellphones, when they ditched the K/W 700/800/900 naming in favor of (stupid) names like Xperia, Aino, etc... I mean we already have Titan, why not name the next in line/980Ti´s successor something similar like Atlas or whatever...