What's in a name?

[brightblack]

We were discussing here at work today how much effect the naming of cards has on purchasing. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean 'I don't like the name 9600, so I wont buy one', or '9500 is higher than 7800 therefore I'll buy that', I mean the name additions and within company namings schemes.

Personally, I get confused between XLs XTs, Pro's, GT, GTX, GTO and all the other suffixes. I also spend a fair amount of time on spec pages trying to compare cards which sounded similar, 9500 vs. 9550 vs. 9600 plus Pro/ whatever suffixes.(Actually, that's how I ended up on this site.)

The questions then are: Do the companies do these kind of names to mislead intentionally, or is it purely to give them scope to do different core/memory configs? Also, do the profusion of names confuse, and has anyone bought a card, thinking it was a better card with different specs? (e.g. 9800 SE vs. 9800 XT)

[Mike]

ATi and Nvidia generally name things to differentiate between their own products, and that's a good thing. But lately they've taken to naming things just to confuse people. Like nvidia and the 6800xt, which is a takeoff on ATi's high end xt parts...and then ATi copied the GT for the x800GT cards...

These days it's impossible for a regular person to look at the name and derive anything about the performance...

[phranq]

Ati and Nvidia have been playing the name game for a while now. Ati for instance named their top of the line card the 9800xt, while Nvidia named their gimpy version of the 5900 the xt. More recently, Ati stuck the GT tag to the end of the x800 series, but it meant lower performance than the regular x800, unlike Nvidia's version of GT which means better. My father bought me an fx5700LE for Christmas last year, sounded cool enough...right? (On the other hand, that little card was a tank!)


Ati = xtpe >> xt >> xl >> pro >> gto >> nu(nothing) >> gt >> se

Nvidia = ultra/gtx >> gt/gs >> nu(nothing) >> le/xt

A few manufacturers have taken the liberty to create their own card suffixes. I know some Dells had 6800GTOs which were slower than the 6800GT for example.

Any suffix that has a relatively positive connotation in every day life should not be used on a low performing card like the Nvidia LE (Limited Edition) cards and the Ati GT (Grand Touring).


Another cheap method are the cards such as the fx5200 256mb. Anything that requires 256mb of video memory isn't going to run on an fx5200. This tactic is only there to sucker ignorant people who believe that the speed of a video card is dependant on it's MBs!!!! Anyway, that's how I feel about the issue.


Excuse my bad grammar, it's midnight and I should be sleeping.