NVIDIA to Simplify Their Product Lineup to Help Appeal to Wider Audience

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Most of you who visit this site are hardware enthusiasts, and picking out a new GPU, CPU or any other piece of computer hardware is not likely too much of a hassle. But that's because you know what to look for. You read reviews, like the ones here. You study up on manufacturers websites. You read whitepapers. You know what's going on. But what about those who are not computer enthusiasts? Picking out hardware can be hell!

NVIDIA released their 9800GTX not too long ago, a top-of-the-line single-GPU offering. But is it better than ATI's 9800PRO? Exactly, that's the problem with naming schemes nowadays. The 9800PRO is about five years old, and horribly outdated in GPU lifespan terms, but how's an uninformed buyer supposed to know? Or how about the sheer amount of different models at a given number range? The 9-series just came out and there are already four different ones, with more en route.

Well thankfully, NVIDIA is looking to change this problem, and not a moment too soon. Their goal is to simplify the product range to make it easier on the uninformed consumer. How they plan to do this is unknown, but I'm personally glad I'm not the one in charge, because I have no immediate ideas. Well, except for starting back at number 1 and actually going in order as performance increases. I'd scrap the special product versions as well. GT, GTS, GSO, GTX, GT500... so confusing.

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Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Roy Taylor, VP of Content Business Development, admitted that NVIDIA's current range of products is over complicated and too confusing for many customers. Taylor went on to say the company faced a "challenge" but needed to make its products more consumer friendly.

Source: Games Industry
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[Kougar]

This from the company that hasn't EVER had such a deliberate obfuscation of their product lineup for the sole purpose of making higher profits?

GT, GTS, GS, GSO, GTX, GX2, Ultra... these have been in use since the 6800 line up, give or take a few more.

However this is the company that just released The 8800GTS 512mb as the 9800GTX, the 8800GS as the 9600GSO, and will be releasing the 8400/8500/8600 parts as rebranded 9-series models at a future date. Except for the 9600GT there has been nothing new about the 9-series, except the profits from selling G92 chips in a higher price bracket.

I haven't ever been more on ATI's side of the fence than ever now, it sucks that ATI can't offer a better product, and the moment they do NVIDIA can simply die shrink yet again to further increase clockspeeds to match the performance, when ATI eventually does.

 

[Rob Williams]

Kougar, I am having a hard time disagreeing with anything you said there. I agree that NVIDIA has been the shadiest of the bunch, by far. I still love their GPUs as they offer the best performance for the money (right now), but I agree they haven't been helping things up to this point so far.

One step I think we need to make is putting as much RAM on a card that's needed. This mid-range card with 1GB of memory is ridiculous, and confuses a LOT of people. I once had a friend who went to the store and came back with a 512MB card (at the time that was high), thinking it was an upgrade to the one he had. As it turns out, it was actually a downgrade, but because 512MB is higher, he thought it was better.

There needs to be a lot of work done here in simplifying things, but it expands past GPUs. Of course, it could be argued that cars suffer the same fate, and it's true for the most part.

Tough situation, I guess.

 

[Kougar]

Well, I want to be impartial so my point doesn't get ignored, so to be fair I should point out that the memory sizing issue is more a problem because of the card manufacturers that use custom card designs. NVIDIA never made an official GPU beyond 640/768 RAM (that I recall!), but groups like Palit, Zotac, and still many more have taken to doubling the memory. You do remember that article that someone put 2GB on a 8800GT card, even. Almost every card maker is doing so by putting 512mb on their leftover 8400GS stock just to push it out the door, and as you said it IS working.

If we are going to bring the end manufacturing companies into this, they honestly make things much worse on their own. In addition to as you pointed out the memory sizes, they change the clockspeeds and offer multiple SKU bundles. It is almost expected they offer 3 types of cards for every single model. Stock, mild, and extreme. Just like XFX has their basic cards, their Extreme cards, and their XXX cards each one with progressively higher clockspeeds and all with different prices and SKUs. There are more welcome changes as well, such as some cards with much better power circuitry designs (three phases verses two), and also Gigabyte's tactic of useing All Solid Capacitors on their GPUs (same concept as their motherboards, something that seems to actually show results with GPU overclocking I might add!) Of course that could of been the custom cooler, and I did forget to mention custom coolers is another thing...

Come to check, I did forget about the lesser used SE, VE, LE, XL, XT, and TC that they have used in the past mostly with 6-series cards. (Yes, three of those were ATI's codenames even!)

Edit: I should add... There are some convincing rumors that suggest 9900 series will be a 55nm "G92b" core... NVIDIA should adopt the motto "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" as their slogan!!

 

[Rob Williams]

Edit: I should add... There are some convincing rumors that suggest 9900 series will be a 55nm "G92b" core... NVIDIA should adopt the motto "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" as their slogan!!

That pretty much says it all, and it's unfortunate. Tech enthusiasts see through this, but the normal consumer wouldn't. It just bugs me that instead of seeing a new design, we get rehashed products with higher clock speeds. That's what the 9800GTX is, but it's so well-priced, it's hard to be too upset.

You are right about the official memory spec... I shouldn't really blame NVIDIA for that. At least when the 8800GTX 768MB came out, it was the best card on the market, so there wasn't too much fibbing there. Of course, that's not the case now, heh, and it's still on sale (and normally costs more than the 9800GTX with 512MB).

As for the better power solutions, those are worthy of some attention. I know Gigabyte boasts higher phases on their boards, but I'm not having as much luck with their X48T-DQ6 as I did with the ASUS P5E3 Premium. While the P5E3 went beyond 500MHz FSB, I can't even seem to get the DQ6 to reboot at 510MHz. I actually had to clear the CMOS to get back in.

On graphic cards, I think is where the greatest benefit for that would be seen.