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Could they have picked a more confusing name? They already had a Turing based Nvidia RTX 6000 from 2018 [1]. Then the RTX A6000 came out based on Ampere. Now this new one has to be called the the "NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation". This is going to be such a headache for anyone who has to requisition things through a purchasing department at work: "No I don't want the RTX 6000 or the RTX A6000. I want the RTX 6000 Ada."

[1]https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/design-vi...

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They're also going to have a whole "RTX 60xx" series in like 4-5 years, aren't they? Seems like a really dumb choice to use the RTX branding with the same number format for a totally separate product line, but maybe they're banking on that confusion to have people accidentally purchasing an 8 year old RTX 6000 when what they really wanted was an RTX 6050.

Or since Nvidia is historically stupid with naming systems and can't stick with them, maybe the RTX 4-digit numbering goes away before 6000 series.

They had a chance to keep a numbering system going when they did the GTX 1xx, GTX 2xx, GTX 3xx.... GTX 9xx, GTX 10xx, and could have gone to GTX 11xx and been set for as long as they wanted (well over a hundred years) counting up toward GTX 99xx), but instead they went to GTX 20xx and RTX 30xx so now they're going to run out of numbers again.

Bets on what's next? Do we hit RTX 10,000 and then jump back down to XTX 100?

PTX (Path Tracing) is the suspected next paradigm. Will it they move to 5 digits or 6? Do the tiers become hundreds or thousands or do they stay in the same place?

Just to think that this all started with the GeForce 1, 2, 3, 4, and then oh shit, now we’re up to 5900? It’s probably Radeon’s fault because no one knew how it iterated all the way to a Radeon 9800 all of a sudden.

Numbers don’t lie people, stop fucking with it. We’re up to the GeForce 20 basically. Marketing is a helluva a drug.

Well, dial it up to eleven because it’s one louder! That’s your marketing at work.

I used to joke with a friend when they asked why I didn't upgrade my graphics card (a 9800 GT), that it was at least 9 times better than their 1080 Ti.

Wasn't the first one called GeForce 256?

Somehow I hope Intel really does successfully break into the GPU game with more rationally named products. And yes I know how absurd their names can get.

How would you suggest rationally naming GPU products? Tflops, shaders, means nothing to the average consumer. Can this one run the newest call of shooty on the “best” settings? GPU performance is usually presented as relative to another piece of hardware to demonstrate the improvements.

It doesn't have to be based on a particular metric, they should just pick a numerical sequence and stick to it. I would suggest:

G-M, where G is the generation and M is the market segment. They could even make M a letter (A, B, C) to avoid confusion (rather than using 50, 60, 70, 80, which was the closest thing they got to a convention). A=awesome, B=better, C=consumer. They can stick a W on the front for workstation cards, and give them another letter at the end for special high-memory runs or whatever.

So this could be something like the: w20a-h.

They've wrapped around two times already.

Few examples: there was GeForce MX 4000 (in 2003), GeForce GTX 480 (in 2010) and now GeForce RTX 4080.

Intel at least had the decency to go into five figure numbers with their CPUs.

Like 80486? Which I guess was 3 years better than 68000.

Do they have an internal product codes separate from marketing names, e.g. Model A2649, Model 1900, 0F10383, 11A511, 3270, 993, etc., or are their internal systems all like "RTX6000ADA"?

I think they do it on purpose to keep the average consumer from being able to understand the price/performance to expect between the SKUs in each generation. If they’re selling what should be a 4060Ti as a 4080 [1] they need to “reset” the naming scheme every once in a while when they run out of names at the top end.

IMO it’s shrinkflation for GPUs and the naming confusion is used as an attempt to hide it. My prediction is they change the entire naming scheme for the next generation because the current scheme invites historical comparison and criticism like the Reddit post I linked.

Watch them switch to pure, meaningless names. It wouldn’t surprise me.

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/xk2nsf/the_40...

I think they're intentionally going for confusion, at this point. I can't pinpoint which gen really pushed things in a bad direction, but it existed in the 3000 series, and an LTT video from yesterday even put it on full display, claiming a laptop has hardware that it doesn't have.

Disorientation marketing is a technique to prevent customers from developing their own mental model of how a product should be contextualised (better or worse than competitor/predecessor?). In place of such a model, the vendor substitutes their own messaging.

It also makes comparisons to rival products (AMD in this case) more confusing.

> Disorientation marketing

Is that really a thing? That strikes me as the same level of shady practices as things like Planned Obsolescence.

Based on the response of PC gamers on reddit to the 40 series cards, that's probably a good thing. People with 1440p@60Hz monitors complaining about cards meant to run 4k@144Hz being too expensive.

They have also created confusion (intentional or not, who knows) with the RTX 4080 12GB and RTX 4080 16GB having significant differences other than just the memory size. Some conjecture I've read around the internet is that it was the product the RTX 4070 should have been but was given the 4080 designation due to it's price bracket being significantly higher than previous x070 cards.

[1]https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-serie... (you'll have to manually scroll down and click the Specs tab)

I just want to add that they use the same numbering scheme on the laptop versions of the RTX cards which is just awful. Some of the laptop RTX cards are really equivalents to prior generation desktop cards, but it is not indicated on any level because a desktop RTX 20xxx is named the same as the laptop 20xxx.

They stopped giving a shit. They want you to upgrade to the next series ala Apple.

In what world is that not fraud? Imagine if Ford were to advertise a new F150 for an (apparently) good price and then offer two models:

"F150 V8": an expensive truck with a V8 motor.

"F150 V6" a cheaper V6 sedan.

Clearly, these are two different products, even though they can do the same thing. You're sneakily using a known naming convention in your official product name to deceive customers on the price perception of the 4080 and the performance of the 4080 12GB.

More like "F150 V8 5L" and "F150 V8 3L". Both are trucks, but the 3L is a V6.

Ford literally released a crossover SUV and called it the "Mustang Mach-E" despite having nothing whatsoever to do with previous Mustangs.

In a world where this company is based in a country with nil consumer protection :(

Maybe the EU can whip them into shape.

How about the model number reflects the price seeing how the '6000' card costs $6999. So just call it the RTX $6900 and be done with it.

Please don’t make such a parody of reality. I struggle as is.

Why can't the marketing people who come up with this crap pick decent, incrementing product model numbers?

There's a "renaissance" of this bullshit in the entertainment space, too, where apparently these loons think that resetting the numbers is cool. For example, "Doom" (2016) instead of the more sensible "Doom 4", because fuck that game that came out in 1994!

Or how Nvidia simply reset all their product numbers a while ago. My first graphics card was a geforce TI 4200! And now they are back to the 4000s!

Solution: Release a bunch of reviews of the rtx 6000 and the rtx a6000 against other new cards about 4 hours before embargo/release.

Get a few large channels on board and hopefully they won't try it again

I would love it if some reviewers had the guts to do this.

Unfortunately, it is probably also a way to get your early review sample privilege revoked.

I think the Doom thing is different as some of the customers werent eating solid food when the original came out.

The NVidia thing is a reflection of them having a hard time segmenting the market. The old “enterprisy engineers” vs “gamers” hasn’t worked for a long time, and they feel they deserve a bigger piece of the action on the server/cloud side.

They have an insatiable lust for higher numbers, that requires going out of sequence. My suggestion: just add another circle for each generation! So now we can be on DOOOOOM, and NVIDIA could have the GTX 10000000000000000000. I guess they'll want to use calculator notation, so like GTX 1E20, wait, dang it, my joke suggestion has become better than their current naming scheme.

Will also be a great name down the road if they eventually release an RTX 6000 series.

> requisition things through a purchasing department at work

Maybe NVIDIA will help people slowly start to realize that employees should not have to play the telephone game to make purchases.

Wait, is this a Quadro card or not?

No, there are no more quadros.

Yes, it’s a quadro card.

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