NVIDIA hopes you'll be better able to distinguish its products if it renames them all
By Tim Stevens 
posted Aug 20th 2009 8:33AM
posted Aug 20th 2009 8:33AM
What's in a name? Very little if you're buying computer hardware lately. Back in the day, you could easily compare two CPUs because their names were simply how fast they were -- now you've got series of processors and graphics cards with naming conventions dreamed up by marketing gurus who don't know a front side bus from a school bus. NVIDIA had been shooting for something simple with its G, GT, and GTX lines, but it looks like last year's talk of a re-tooling of its lineup are coming true; all those seemingly straightforward letter prefixes seem set to be dropped in favor of "GeForce" followed by a number. The first to bear this re-branding will be the 40nm, DirectX 10.1 GeForce 210, set to hit the retail channels in October, followed later by the GeForce 230 and GeForce 300. How exactly they all will compare remains to be seen, but we're going to go ahead and speculate that bigger number probably equals higher cost.
Just an excuse to resell old models over and over and over and over..
and over and over and so on.
what? They are new products....
Actually the re-badges will be the 100 series.
@jon: You promise?
Will they be sending us stickers to re-badge our current video cards and boxes. :)
which are in turn retools of the 9000 series...
If they have DirectX 10.1, how exactly are they old models?
Not to mention the audio support
@Mike
They've been rebranding for a while now the 9800GT and GTS 240 GPUs are just an 8800GT that's overclocked. The 9600 and GTS 250 are also rebrands. I think even the 9400 is just an 8600 GPU. The amount of innovation at nvidia is comprised entirely of the GTX260 Core 216, GTX275, and GTX285 (the 295 is just 2 285's slapped together). It's starting to get ridiculous.
So now, I can't wait (sarcasm) for a rebranding of ALL of their graphics cards which will apparently make it easier for us to distinguish what's what. I think the end-goal here is for them to be able to sell us the same shit for the fourth generation of GPUs now. Meanwhile ATI has been innovating with each new generation.
"All of the parts belonging to GT200 [NV60-NV65] series of chips will be renamed into GeForce 2xx. GeForce 9 series [NV55] becomes GeForce 1xx and the upcoming GT300 [NV70] series will simply be named GeForce 3xx [example: 360 and 380]."
From BSN, bad site I know, but I read the same 1 or 2 other places, this was the most direct quote.
Is that a promise? No. Just a possibility.
In before OVER NINE THOUSAND
Remember when GeForce 3 first came out? That was exciting. It was also the last time that I shopped for a graphics card, so that's the best anecdote I can come up with for this story.
Remember when first GeForce came out? It was named GeForce 256. I wonder if it is faster than GeForce 210...
You fools. The Kyro II's tile based rendering is far superior to T&L!
nvidia, make up your mind then.
keep renaming and renaming
damn pissed
Good ol' GTX
awwwwwww, damn its gone.
I'm still running the 8800 GTX, and it still kicks ass for most games. Why can't big green just stick to G , GT, GTX, it seemed logical to me.
Agreed, but probably the renaming will make it seem like "upgrading", which is not.
Again, big corporations, sometimes do stunts like these, thinking the consumer is ignorant.
Sounds like it will end up being "GeForce" and then the price..................................
$210
$230
$300
that made me laught
I bet this was inspired by Neil Trevett after he saw his American Express bills.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/367492/nvidia-vps-gold+digging-girlfriend-calls-him-piggy
Hahahaahah XD
Ok, take that and multiply it by 2 and you get the actual price.
Heres your new naming scheme Nvidia
GeForce "Cheap crap that is actually last generations model in a new package"
GeForce "Middle of the road, capable and priced so regular folks might buy it"
GeForce "Give us your kidney because importing hardware from the future is expensive"
Sure its a mouthfull, but there's no misunderstanding.
That's what they naming scheme they now actually means, only each product line is just "GT", "GTS", or "GTX."
Dammit, this comment system has no edit button
they = the*
Is the comment/ranking system actually working properly? Or is this a dream?
lol i was gonna say something similar:
GeForce "OKay"
GeForce "Good"
GeForce "Extreme"
i like yours though.
Really, is it that hard for the people that actually buy and spend time doing the research on video cards to tell the difference. I assume that Nvidia is doing this for the people that don't have any idea on what kind of card they have or want.
Because any good tech head worth there salt is going to know the power and performance of the card they are buying.
My hope is that they don't follow the Intel model and or naming convention.
+1 for you good sir.
What is a video card?
Some people barely know where the power button on their computer is.
@Jeremy: I'm not really sure, I don't think they put them in laptops anymore.
nVidia is just doing this so that they can sell the 8800GT under another name AGAIN.
@dagamer43
I agree. my uncle pushed the recovery button on my y510 and proceeded through 30 minutes of instructions to restore my entire laptop and then created a new user. All to check his email. Had to show him what he should have done. 3 weeks later same story same person. Some people with benefit from this. The rest of us continue our research like usual.
Really i have been down the road of ...... you need to do this to make your computer to run right. Now i preface the conversations like that with. If you are not going to take my advice don't ask for it.
I have talked to friends too many times about computer issues and they have done the opposite and i and truly sick of wasting my breath.
It seems like the tech industry likes naming its products. Especially in the handset/cell phone industry. Pretty soon every single name will be trademarked. You won't even be able to name your kid anything because it'll violate some trademark copyright.
not that i'd care about naming my kid something like GeForce or Nvidia (if its a girl),
It should be fun tho :p
An i was going to name my next child NV 420
Stop cutting yourself and cut your hair instead.
You know, no matter what Nvidia does, it's still going to be better than the naming that ATI uses. I mean, what the heck kind of name is HD4567QFTWTFOMGBBQ. I swear, they add more random letters and confusing numbers in there. Also, why call it HD? Were their old cards only capable of standard def?
Haha, reminds me of when I got my ATI Radeon x1950xtx. Seriously, that many X's required??
Anyway, aren't their product names heaps smaller now anyway? Radeon HD4890. Geforce GTX 295. Heck of a lot simpler than the previous Geforce 8xxx GT/GTS/GTX/Ultra combinations.
And I think ATI started calling their cards HD when they added audio to them, but I could be wrong *shrugs*
@ masadav
that's funny, i guess that's where all those idiots with dumb usernames/gamertags get the idea from.
i've seen too many people with the name "xXasshatXx" -or whatever, it's incredible that they have no imagination to make a unique name and need X's to make it unique. seems more common with kids too.
i personally don't care what ati calls their cards, if i'm building a computer/replacing a card, i'll do a little research and make sure i know exactly what i'm buying. if only everyone did the same.
Not to belabour the point, but ATI had abandoned their sufficed Pro/XT/XT-PE naming scheme two years ago starting with the HD3000 series.
Now all cards are Radeon HDxxxx, with the higher number equating to a faster/pricier model. The "HD" prefix was added for marketing reasons, probably also to insure against future confusion with their older cards (i.e. 9700).
Well, previous naming was confusing, but the HD naming (starting from the 3xxx) is much easier. The first number is the generation number, the second the maket target (8 for high end, 2 for integrated crap) and the third the amount of overclock the card has.
They even has enough space between numbers to add some cards.
If they keep their sensible naming, the 5870 will be their next highest mos powerful card.
Oh, and I almost forgot the X2 in case you have a two in one.
To me that is much easier to identify than any other numering in the pc field (be it intel, amd with their cpus or nvidia).
What's so mindblowing hard about ATI's naming scheme haha
Radeon HD:
4350
4550
4650, 4670
4730, 4770
4830, 4850, 4870, 4890
More performance as the model number gets higher, no silly GT, GTX, GS, GTX+ etc. crap at all :P
I'd say 9400, 9400GT, 9600GT, 9600GTX+, 9800GSO, 9800GTX+ FTW, GTS 250 etc. is far, far worse :P
Yea, with ATI I know the exactly which one is faster. I know all of Nvidia card too but the GS, GTX, GT, and GSO, sometimes confuse me. I think that's their intention. I confuses consumer with name so you'll think the card are all alike and buy whichever card you're holding.
Geforce Really Slow
Geforce Slow
Geforce Regular
Geforce Fast
Geforce Really Fast
Now I don't need to have all my friends call me asking what video card to buy.
Come on man FAIL, where's the light speed and the Jesus speed card :P.
What about the GeForce Laptop Recall?