Nvidia exec admits GPU line-up is numerically 'challenged'
Too many cards, too many choices
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Nvidia has admitted that its vast array of graphics chips is bewildering consumers, who find increasingly difficult to work out what does what.
The confession comes from erstwhile Register columnist Roy Taylor who admitted to website GamesIndustry.biz that "there is a need to simplify [the range] for consumers, there's no question".
He added: "We think that the people who understand and know GeForce today, they're okay with it - they understand it. But if we're going to widen our appeal, there's no doubt that we have to solve that problem."
A quick look at Nvidia's website reveals the extent of the problem: seven GeForce 7-series product lines, each with up to two members - labelled LE, GS, GT etc - along with four classes of GeForce 8-series GPUs - again with sub-labels GS, GT, GTS, GTX and Ultra - and two 9-series lines suffixed GSO, GT, GTX or GX2.
Just to keep buyers on their toes, the GeForce 9600 series isn't as powerful as the 8800 line, despite the higher model number.
And that's just the desktop product line... And before the arrival of Nvidia's next generation of GPUs which is surely not very far off now...
It all derives from the desperate competition waged between Nvidia and AMD/ATI, and the need both firms felt to fill every possible price point in a bid to keep the other out and fight off the growing threat from Intel's integrated graphics offerings. Enough already.
COMMENTS
@ Buff Flexington
That would be a good example, if BMWs weren't already poorly named.
BMW 335i = 3 litre turbo
BMW 325i = 3 litre n/a
Now if BMW can't be expected to number their products according to the amount of oomph you can squeeze out of them, should nvidia have to? Admittedly Nvidia's naming is a helluva lot more vague, and the resultant differences between products not always as obvious as in a beamer.
Paris, because she'd just buy the pretty one with the drop-top.
My 7800 isn't a 7800 anyway (they wouldn't allow the name on an agp card)
NVidia needs to give up on numbers I think they have run out anyway!
Time for the next Gen.
And remebmer sequential! or explanatory! not jibber jabber!
Keeps getting more confusing
It keeps getting more confusing as time goes on.
It used to be a GTS was faster than a GT.
The 8 series changed that. the GTS came first and the GT was an improvement on the GTS w/ a die shrink & price cut.
They would do well to look at BMW for an idea of how to name their chips.
330i
330is
s is the sports model, so they could add a letter at the end if the card is factory overclocked. Otherwise, if they just stuck to numbers; it would make the cards easier. Everyone knows 9 is higher than 5. Not everyone knows the difference between GTS & GTX
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