There are less games than the consoles get, but how many games do you really need to buy every month? Do you really need a new game to come out every week? Quality over qauntity. Most games that come out for consoles are pure shit, its pretty rare that great games hit. Beyond that, if you're bored with PC games, buy old ones. There are tens of thousands of older PC games that I'm sure you can find a couple to take up your time until the next game you want hits, or do like I do and buy a console. I divide my time between PC and console games, depending what I feel like playing. You only have yourself to blame if you can't find a game to play.
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NVIDIA To "Simplify" Product Range
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
There are less games than the consoles get, but how many games do you really need to buy every month? Do you really need a new game to come out every week? Quality over qauntity. Most games that come out for consoles are pure shit, its pretty rare that great games hit. Beyond that, if you're bored with PC games, buy old ones. There are tens of thousands of older PC games that I'm sure you can find a couple to take up your time until the next game you want hits, or do like I do and buy a console. I divide my time between PC and console games, depending what I feel like playing. You only have yourself to blame if you can't find a game to play.
Yeah.. Nvidiots naming sceme is pretty much idiotic at this point... has been for quite a while.
Ati's and even 3dfx's naming sceme has always made alot more sense and been sooo much simpler.
One of the main reasons I didn't buy another Nvidia card after my 7900GS fried was because of their stupid naming scheme as of late.. and their cards can't do F@H stuff.
Now on the other hand.. I wish I could run CUDA stuff on my 3870...
Ati's and even 3dfx's naming sceme has always made alot more sense and been sooo much simpler.
One of the main reasons I didn't buy another Nvidia card after my 7900GS fried was because of their stupid naming scheme as of late.. and their cards can't do F@H stuff.
Now on the other hand.. I wish I could run CUDA stuff on my 3870...
But what about the people that want to play CoD4 on thier 17 or 19" LCD? Why should they be stuck paying for the extra 256 megs of ram they're not going to use? If they only have $150 have that 8800GT 256meg available... don't make them spend $50 more to get the same performance from the 512meg flavor.
To make it simple for the plebians... why not have 2 or 3 standard suffixes? Maybe N,H,U for Normal res, High Res, Ultra Res. Then have a chart on the back listing which resolutions N, H, and U correspond to... and a note explaining (in simple speak) that resolution is linked to need for video memory, and that too much is worthless.
In any case... lets stop diluting this thread, we can discuss this over some beers friday night if you want
That works for me.
NVIDIA's naming schemes have been getting worse and worse with every generation:
The 6xxx generation, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 6600 -> 6600 GT
Performance: 6800 -> 6800 GT -> 6800 Ultra -> 6800 Ultra Extreme (rare)
The 7xxx generation, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 7600 GS -> 7600 GT
Refresh: 7650 GS (rare)
Performance: 7800 GS -> 7800 GT -> 7800 GTX 256MB -> 7800 GTX 512MB (rare)
Refresh: 7900 GS -> 7900 GT -> 7900 GTO (rare) -> 7900 GTX -> 7900 GX2
Refresh: 7950 GT -> 7950 GX2
The 8xxxx series, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 8600 GT -> 8600 GTS
Refresh: 9600 GT
Performance (get ready for this): 8800 GTS 320MB -> 8800 GTS 640MB -> 8800 GS 384MB -> 8800 GS 768MB -> 8800 GT 256MB -> 8800 GT 512MB -> 8800 GTS 512MB -> 8800 GTS 1024MB -> 8800 GTX -> 8800 Ultra
Refresh: 9800 GTX -> 9800 GX2
Try to make sense of that lineup.
The 6xxx generation, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 6600 -> 6600 GT
Performance: 6800 -> 6800 GT -> 6800 Ultra -> 6800 Ultra Extreme (rare)
The 7xxx generation, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 7600 GS -> 7600 GT
Refresh: 7650 GS (rare)
Performance: 7800 GS -> 7800 GT -> 7800 GTX 256MB -> 7800 GTX 512MB (rare)
Refresh: 7900 GS -> 7900 GT -> 7900 GTO (rare) -> 7900 GTX -> 7900 GX2
Refresh: 7950 GT -> 7950 GX2
The 8xxxx series, from slowest to fastest:
Mainstream: 8600 GT -> 8600 GTS
Refresh: 9600 GT
Performance (get ready for this): 8800 GTS 320MB -> 8800 GTS 640MB -> 8800 GS 384MB -> 8800 GS 768MB -> 8800 GT 256MB -> 8800 GT 512MB -> 8800 GTS 512MB -> 8800 GTS 1024MB -> 8800 GTX -> 8800 Ultra
Refresh: 9800 GTX -> 9800 GX2
Try to make sense of that lineup.
BillParrish
Supreme [H]ardness
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obsolete
almost obsolete
obsolete next week
might last a year
almost obsolete
obsolete next week
might last a year
Mr. Miyagi
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I miss the simplicity of nVidia's and ATi's old product lines. Nothing simpler than:
6800 > 6800 GT > 6800 Ultra
9800SE > 9800 > 9800 Pro > 9800 XT
6800 > 6800 GT > 6800 Ultra
9800SE > 9800 > 9800 Pro > 9800 XT
When I did my first build, nVidia had exactly three cards in their current range: The GeForce Ti 4200, 4400, and 4600, each faster than the last. The beginning of this mess began when they released the 4800, which was really a 4200 with an AGP 8x interface (which made zero difference in performance). Granted, they also had the MX line for their budget cards, but there was really only a couple of those.
I say go with pure numbers. First number indicates generation, remaining numbers indicate performance. And preferably, they'll start with 000 for the slowest card. So for the 9x00 series, they would have done 9000 for the budget card, 9200 for the mid range, and 9400 for the high range. That would give them enough room to fit updated cards in, and leave enough room on the top for speed bumped cards of the same generation. (face it, they're not going to release a card slower than the original budget card of a given generation)
I say go with pure numbers. First number indicates generation, remaining numbers indicate performance. And preferably, they'll start with 000 for the slowest card. So for the 9x00 series, they would have done 9000 for the budget card, 9200 for the mid range, and 9400 for the high range. That would give them enough room to fit updated cards in, and leave enough room on the top for speed bumped cards of the same generation. (face it, they're not going to release a card slower than the original budget card of a given generation)
Mohori - How about the days of the TNT2. Granted, I wouldn't ever want to go back to the days of single flavor video cards (like you I prefer the fast/faster/fastest method of the 4000 series), but going to another extreme you can't get any easier than that.
Oh man, flood of memories now.
A Riva 128 with a Voodoo2 12MB card was my first decent build since I finally had a little money to put a decent rig together with. Before that I was rocking a 486/33 for all four years I was in college, then after that I was sharing my sister's Packard Bell Pentium 2 (ugh) with whatever the onboard was at the time for another year.
Yeah, rough...
A Riva 128 with a Voodoo2 12MB card was my first decent build since I finally had a little money to put a decent rig together with. Before that I was rocking a 486/33 for all four years I was in college, then after that I was sharing my sister's Packard Bell Pentium 2 (ugh) with whatever the onboard was at the time for another year.
Yeah, rough...
TheBluePill
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Bringing back the "MX" for Low end Parts would be helpful to consumers..
Dropping the Suffix "GT/GTS/GTX" would be grand as well.
Dropping the Suffix "GT/GTS/GTX" would be grand as well.
Yeah...it was all good until they started recycling numbers, now it is a hideous mess just like the way Athlon processors were named before. seems odd a company that can design the worlds fastest graphics technology cant figure out a simple naming convention that allows you to easily understand wtf you are looking at and what generation.
TheBluePill
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I've got it! instead of Model Numbers, Just put a Price Tag on them.. The More expensive the part, the faster it is, the less expensive, the slower. When new stuff comes out, drop the price on the old parts!
I think Nvidia hired my old boss from when i worked retail many years ago. He always used to tell me. "Just put the product out there, someone is dumb enough to buy it." I would always laugh at it, but it was true.
I do agree that the naming scheme is a little off, but Nvidia is not hurting from it. I would be pissed if I bought a GTS (g80) and found out it was slower than the GTS (g92). Not sure if this will get resolved but it would be nice to see it fixed.
I am positive that this has happened. How many people on online forums have had to be corrected on which model they should purchase? A pretty large number based on how many people I and many others have had to steer in the right direction.
I suspect there are a large number of people who buy the G80 that never find out a G92 exists.
Actually, I think the Athlon naming scheme was decent. It was a simple number indicating performance level. A 2400 was 20% faster than a 2000. The problem was that they started adding suffixes, and once a suffix was in, they wouldn't drop it. So it went from Athlon 1400 to Athlon XP 2500 to Athlon 64 X2 3800.
Personally, I think the Intel processor numbering scheme is stupid. A Pentium 4 or Celeron was single core, and Pentium D was dual core. But then Celeron D is single-core again. And then you have the 3xx and 4xx series of Celerons, both being sold at the same time. And then there were the Pentium Dual-Core processors (not to be confused with Pentium D's, of course). Add on to that is the Celeron E1400 and the Pentium E2200--is it the same CPU, just clocked higher or lower? And I haven't even gotten to the Core, Core Solo, Core 2 Solo, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo thing. I guess what it comes down to is this: there are way too many products, with not enough differentiation between them. And I think that's exactly the trap that both nVidia and ATi have fallen into.
TheBluePill
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Those are the same people that really dont care.. Honestly.. Performance between all of the 8800 Cards are impressive enough to satisfy the "average" consumer..
There are currently 11 Versions of the 8800 Card, with Countless "Sub" versions if you count the OC'd Ones.
They obviously do care if they are willing to drop over $250 on a card. We're not talking about a budget card with the 8800GTS. If by "care" you mean that they need to keep 1000% up to date on the news of a new 8800 GTS card that kind of snuck in under the radar behind the 8800GT launch then yeah, I guess they don't care.
I don't buy that argument. If they know that the 8800GTS 512MB is actually faster than the 640MB version, they'll almost always buy the faster one. Problem is that it isn't obvious, or even known unless you really keep up to date with hardware websites. I can't blame the customer for being misled or confused by a ridiculously confusing naming scheme by the manufacturer. I keep on top of all this stuff and even I think it is stupid.
And before people say "if they were enthusiasts then they should read HardOCP/TechReport/Anand/etc", I have to say that IMO it isn't the responsibility of hardware websites to say "yeah, that 8800GTS with less RAM is actually way faster than the 640MB one". It is the responsibility of hardware sites to benchmark cards and provide analysis, not devote a few extra paragraphs to explain things because nvidia has adopted ridiculous naming schemes that make no sense to anyone without reading disclaimers and explanations from outside sources.
The name on the box should say everything, like in the days of the 4400 series. I'm glad that nvidia is going back to easier naming schemes.
They bought the 8800 GTS 640 over the 8800 GTS 512 (the 640 is generally more expensive) because they don't care? That makes no sense....
Exactly. The current naming scheme is idiotic and misleading. Consumers shouldn't be blamed for being confused by it.
TheBluePill
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When I say people dont care, I mean they dont care to inform themselves.
People plop down large sums of money all the time on things they have no idea about. They will often take a salesmans word on it or just pick something.. Sometimes its a gift.. Sometimes its an impulse buy. Dropping $250 is generally a larger purchase, granted, but there are a whole lot of people that will walk in the store with a budget and buy whats in that budget with no research.
I was in retail computer sales about 11 years ago.. 90% of the consumers that I sold to saw some computer game they had to have and wanted a graphics card to go with it and were willing to pay 'x' ammount of money for what every I told them was best for the money. No Idea what so-ever the pros and cons of any of the parts, they just wanted to play the games or buy their kid a graphics card.. Or just to have "the best". I did what I could to educate them, but most just said "give me the best thing for $150".. and that was that.
People plop down large sums of money all the time on things they have no idea about. They will often take a salesmans word on it or just pick something.. Sometimes its a gift.. Sometimes its an impulse buy. Dropping $250 is generally a larger purchase, granted, but there are a whole lot of people that will walk in the store with a budget and buy whats in that budget with no research.
I was in retail computer sales about 11 years ago.. 90% of the consumers that I sold to saw some computer game they had to have and wanted a graphics card to go with it and were willing to pay 'x' ammount of money for what every I told them was best for the money. No Idea what so-ever the pros and cons of any of the parts, they just wanted to play the games or buy their kid a graphics card.. Or just to have "the best". I did what I could to educate them, but most just said "give me the best thing for $150".. and that was that.
I agree with that but there is a limit. The only place you can really see that the 8800GTS 512MB is faster than the 640MB version is on hardware websites. Like you said, most people want to walk into a store, see which is fastest on the box, buy it and go home. nvidia is the one that needs to be communicating this information via marketing, whether it is through the naming of the cards (8900GTS, I dunno) or something else. That's all I'm saying, that nvidia needs to be much more straightforward with their naming instead of having the overlap that got way out of hand with the g92 GPUs and the way they chose to name the cards they were in.
It was very straightforward before with the 4400 series: fast, faster, fastest. Easy.
Again, I am glad that nvidia is simplifying their naming scheme again. To actually defend what they've been doing the last few years just blows my mind because there is absolutely no reason for it. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to tell the customer which is faster, not some tech website that caters only to the hardcore.
You know...as much as 3DMark scores are a world removed from gameplay...
It might be a lot less confusing if products were named like:
GeForce[3DMark Score at some predetermined standard for settings and resolution]
Radeon [Series Number] [3DMark Score at some predetermined standard for settings and resolution]
Then, consumers would be able to tell both which generation they're buying and the relative speed of all cards from the same brand (at least roughly, since 3DMark isn't half perfect...).
It might be a lot less confusing if products were named like:
GeForce[3DMark Score at some predetermined standard for settings and resolution]
Radeon [Series Number] [3DMark Score at some predetermined standard for settings and resolution]
Then, consumers would be able to tell both which generation they're buying and the relative speed of all cards from the same brand (at least roughly, since 3DMark isn't half perfect...).
Oops - I meant GeForce [Series Number] [3DMark Score at some predetermined standard for settings and resolution]
UnlimitedMP
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This is a welcome change. GS, GTS, GT, GTX etc etc...
I'm not sure 3Dmark is the best way. But an average of say CoD4, Company of Hero's, and TF2 to generate a number would be good. But yes, SOME kind of number would be really, really good.