NVIDIA rumored (again) to be renaming its GPU lineup in the name of simplicity

We won't even begin to suggest that NVIDIA is the only company out there with, shall we say, less than crystal clear naming schemes, but we're really hoping the latest whispers (which we've heard once before) about the outfit are true. TG Daily has it that undisclosed "industry sources" have suggested that the GPU maker will be dropping the 8000- and 9000-series names in an effort to simplify the model tags that appear on its products. Instead of breaking into the 10k+ club, the outfit will purportedly resort to using simple(r) letter prefixes to denote performance levels: "G" for baseline, "GS" and "GT" for mid-range and "GTX" for high-end. We're told that the new naming arrangement could be revealed officially as early as October 15th, but 'til then, we'd recommend doing some hefty research before buying something you only thought could run Crysis.

[Via Electronista]

[Holger @ Sep 26th 2008 10:30AM]

always a good idea to simplify...

but I guess they are introducing a G model now... and what about the mobil versions?

plus haven't they already introduced some of this with the new 260 & 280 cards?

[OneLove @ Sep 26th 2008 3:02PM]

I don't care what the fuck you call them, just as long as I get excellent power to price ratio and no defects. (...and stop stealing all my slots)

[icepop4who @ Sep 26th 2008 10:30AM]

i don't about you guys, but i find nvidia's name scheme pretty simple. i thought they already have GTX 260 and GTX 280.

[tuaamin13 @ Sep 26th 2008 4:52PM]

And now you have the GTX260 Core 216...
There's rumors of a die shrunk GTX280
They were doing better, and just botched it.

[Captain_22 @ Sep 26th 2008 5:51PM]

For most the naming scheme is okay, but if your are looking at cards that you have not used before it becomes hard to understand what the difference is, over the entire range of cards you see that oddities form like GS and GTX+ how do these compare against say a 8800GTX vs. 9800GTX+ obvisouly the answer would be the latter. But for those buying the cards who is to know what the plus means??? Is it a faster card? Is it HDMI, Extra features?

A unified naming scheme would be sweeeeeet

[Wwhat @ Sep 27th 2008 9:35AM]

They'll never keep it up.

[YourTechSupport @ Sep 26th 2008 10:37AM]

Let's give them cool names like w/ Ferraris and Lambos.

Or T-Mobiles....
"The Bleeding Edge"
"The Bleedinger Edge"
"The Bleedingerer Edge"

[Flashpoint @ Sep 26th 2008 10:37AM]

I miss the good ole days.

VOODOO
VOODOO 2
VOODOO 3


Now the Nvidia lineup is so dificult to understand. Maybe if they have a simple sliding scale graph that shows the progressive power of the card.

And Intel is just as bad.
It used to be just Pentium, Pentium 2, Pentium 3, Pentium 4...
Then they introduced some XIIXIIX bullshit and then they got rid of that and released Core2 Duo and Core 2 Quad and now they have a sticker showing a bunch of human brains. 1 Brain = slow, 5 brains = fast.


I'd perfer the industry makes stickers for off-the shelf computers and video cards that says:
[Can't run Crysis]
[Crysis: Medium]
or... [ CRYSIS certified: Very High]


I'd buy that !

[Flashpoint @ Sep 26th 2008 10:39AM]

and before anyone says anything, YES, I know that voodoo was 3DFX

[Knives_Out @ Sep 26th 2008 10:42AM]

Diamond Viper V550

[Christian Martin @ Sep 26th 2008 10:43AM]

Good that you admitted that; my wife worked for 3DFX right up until the time of collapse and was about to hunt you down.

[Precurse @ Sep 26th 2008 10:49AM]

Did you know that Voodoo was made by 3dfx?


Sorry.. someone had to say it :)

[thatrotierkid @ Sep 26th 2008 12:15PM]

@precurse

actually no, no they didnt

[Ignatius @ Sep 26th 2008 1:53PM]

That's not a bad idea with the Crysis stickers. Crysis could be used for like the next 10 years as a benchmark for card's power.

I think it's the only game in existence that actually can tax three GTX 280s.

[Casper42 @ Sep 26th 2008 2:09PM]

Except that if you dig around, you will find Crysis tends to be fairly CPU bound alot of the time.

So how can you have a sticker that says Crysis:Very High when you have no control over the machine and they could be running a Celeron 430 or Sempron LE.

[Knives_Out @ Sep 26th 2008 10:40AM]

well I hope the next generation of video cards from nvidia is better than the 9xxx series.

[thewunderbar @ Sep 26th 2008 10:41AM]

Wait, wasn't this news like, 5 months ago? I thought my RSS reader screwed up.

Engadget, meet the GTX 280 and GTX 260, the first cards that use the new naming scheme, and have been out for over a month, announced long before that.

[Kamokazi @ Sep 26th 2008 10:52AM]

Actually they've been around since JUNE, but who's keeping track. Obviously not Engadget. Good job at re-reporting old news:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/07/nvidia-to-simplify-product-range-as-it-courts-consumers/

[aznofazns @ Sep 26th 2008 10:50AM]

yeah i'm pretty sure nvidia's just going to do GTX200, then 300, then 400, and so forth. If they change it again then my next laptop GPU will be ATI or Intel, just to spite them.

[eiki @ Sep 26th 2008 10:50AM]

man this article is sloppy, either vopy it wholsele or at least tell us model numbers, to avoid confusion e.g.....

'Industry sources told TG Daily that while the 8000 series is being phased out, all 55 nm 9000-series GPUs will carry a G100-series name. By the end of 2008, Nvidia will be offering today’s 9000 series as G100, GT120, GT130, GT140 and GT150 models.'

[eiki @ Sep 26th 2008 10:51AM]

'vopy' lool

[SlimPickinz @ Sep 26th 2008 10:57AM]

Wow I thought Vopy was some new tech speak, to be honest...LMAO

Video -copy?

Thanks for the "lol" or would've been going around, ranting...

"What, you dont know?! Ha! Vopy it! then."


smh

[m0nkey @ Sep 26th 2008 11:02AM]

Hope they will rename the mobile line. As it is now nothing makes sense.
A 9300M GS is slower than a 9300M G, but a 8400M GS is quicker than a 8400M G

[Ray @ Sep 26th 2008 11:05AM]

Is crysis the punchline or the joke?

[Shinigami @ Sep 26th 2008 11:17AM]

Crysis is no joke. A PC that can run Crysis at Very High with AA and AF at 2560x1600 @ 40+fps basically should be able to hand ANY other game at the same resolution and max settings. Just my guess.
Crysis is a joke because such PC didn't exist when the game went gold :)

[kjb434 @ Sep 26th 2008 11:07AM]

Is the renaming to get all the new chips a different naming appearance from the defective ones?

[tpadekar @ Sep 26th 2008 11:14AM]

They're probably trying to reuse the names so they can easily repackage the old cards and send them out in the market!! :-P

[CaptSaltyJack @ Sep 26th 2008 11:18AM]

I dunno about anyone else, but I'm getting tired of all the Crysis references. Is Crysis REALLY the most graphically intensive game on the PC? I somehow doubt it. What about Supreme Commander, I hear that one takes some mega power. What about Mass Effect for the PC, I hear that one's a goliath as well. Thoughts?

[TareX @ Sep 26th 2008 11:38AM]

Crysis is more about GPU.
Supreme Commander is more about CPU processing power.

On another note, as a member of the OHA, NVidia should be working on a Tegra (dedicated for WM7) equivalent chip for Android...

[TareX @ Sep 26th 2008 11:41AM]

On what framerate would a single-core 9800M GTX, Quad Core laptop run Crysis on Very High (DX10), AA on... etc.?

Would adding another 9800M make a difference?

[Knives_Out @ Sep 26th 2008 12:03PM]

Farcry 2 will be coming out soon .. you'll need a quad SLI for that.

[kal326 @ Sep 26th 2008 11:57AM]

So basically they took existing products and started the numbering over and moved the suffix to a prefix. That sounds like a lot simplier and easier to understand system.

[jptech @ Sep 26th 2008 12:14PM]

no one realizes what this is about?

They're trying to avoid consumer fallout over the potential flaw in all of their 55nm products.

[Knives_Out @ Sep 26th 2008 1:37PM]

yep. change the product name and viola! ... the problems associated with 8xxx and 9xxx disappear.

I hope laptop manufacturers like DELL start putting in more ATI cards.

[whatishalo? @ Sep 26th 2008 1:14PM]

Crysis, Schmysis....will they show prOn??

[yh @ Sep 26th 2008 1:46PM]

As long as the company is consistent, I don't really care what their naming convention is. Take for example the old Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 series. As numbers went up, so did the performance. Tack on a "pro" to the end, and you know that it'll have better performance than the non-pro. For most people, thats all that they really need to know. For the enthusiast, naming should really be based on the chip generation. Changing chips mid cycle and not renaming isn't really good either. moving from G90 to G92 and still keeping the same naming structure is bound to confuse. Tacking a "+" or a "512" to the end doesn't really help much either...

[Macbeth @ Sep 26th 2008 1:56PM]

Actually this article is kinda wrong, nvidia is naming its upcoming die-shrunk 8/9-series parts GTX 1xx. They have been doing the GTX thing for awhile now.

they should just have incremented the existing names some way like 9850 GTX, or 9900 GTX, but no that would be too logical.

[GDDR5 @ Sep 26th 2008 2:07PM]

When's Nvidia gonna get on the GDDR5 train? I want 1GB of that in a GTX 260 NOW!

[Yellowcheese @ Sep 26th 2008 5:12PM]

I could be going about this all wrong, but wouldn't it make more sense to drop all this 8000, 9000 crap and just replace that with the year it came out? GS 2008, GT 2008, GTX 2008. Then when they come out with new ones, we have 2009 and so on. If the customer wants to know the specs of a particular card, they can always dive in to the details, but by having a consistent naming convention like that, the customer would know which was the faster one each time they looked (and newer).

[John E Woven @ Sep 26th 2008 5:27PM]

Kinda wish they would go with MX instead. And Ultra.