Graphics Card Extensions?

[lunky545]

Can someone tell me for least to greatest in performance what do the extentions ATI and Nvidia tag on to their graphics cards mean? (GS, GTO, GT,XT, XTX,XL, GTS, Pro)

I only need them all sequenced from least to greatest in terms of performance.

 

[lunky545]

Any takers? Please?

 

[ikjadoon]

Oooh, tough one. They are used by both manufacturers and different ways. Let me explain nVidia first:

GX2>GTX>GTO>GT>GS>>>>>>>>FX

Now, it doesn't always work that way. A 7900GT beats a 7800GTX. And a 7900GS beats a 6800GT. Weird, eh? Series comes first. Yet, there are a few exceptions.

That is the general way, though.

ATI:

XTX>PE>XT>GTO2>Pro>GTO>GT

This is the same way. It has many exceptions. A X1900GT will beat a X850XT PE.

These are very very very relative. An extension simply denotes different models among a series. Like there is a 7900GTX, a 7900GTO, a 7900GT, and finally a 7900GS. (Those are in order of speed, btw.)

Very confusing. Just look at benchmarks, they'll help.

~Ibrahim~

 

[Mobius]

No one can tell you.

ATI and nVidia are fuxoring retarded, and they use each other's suffixes but in reverse. So if ATI say "I'm gonna use XT" as my "super duper A1 suffix" then nVidia will turn around and use XT as their "Supar A1 Budget el-cheapo-nasty flavour" to try and diffuse some of ATIs marketing material.

See?

Best thing is foregt all that stuff, and just work from thebenchmark results in the games you'll be playing.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

From an earlier post of mine (cut and pasted here cause I'm lazy);


Simple way to think of the cards is this.

First number is generation, Second (or just the rest of the) number is the model and it's general position within that series, and finally the suffix letter combination is the Post Scriptum / variant of the model.

First number being higher usually means newer features (but that doesn't mean they are better than the older ones based on that alone)

Second number being higher usually means it's faster than those of lower number in this generation and mostly faster than lower numbers in previous generations as well. Usually equal numbers but new generation are faster too.

Suffixes are the hard part, but there's general rules for all manufacturers 'SE' means S-h*tty Edition or Sux Everywhere. But they've pretty muched stop naming cards that.

So you're left with ATi's and nV's own suffix combination.

ATi's general rule of thumb: SE<no suffix<GT<GTO<PRO<GTO2<XL<XT<XTX

nV's general rule of thumb: SE/LE<XT<no suffix<GS<GT<GTX<Ultra<GX2 (but nV has pretty much dropped Ultra [even though it was on the chips of the GF7800GTX-512]).

While these aren't hard and fast rules and there are some exceptions (R9500<R9600<R9800SE-128bit<R9600Pro<R9800SE-256bit<R9600XT<R9500Pro), that's about as clear as I think you'll find it (or I can make it) if you want to apply it generally, otherwise you're going to have to get each class compared.

----

And from the same thread Multipletic's illustration which adds clarity;

"I'll give you a quick example:

NVidia 7900 GTX

7 <-- Generation 7. More features than the previous generation.
9 <-- The higher the number, the more power it has.
00 <-- These two numbers doesn't matter in this case. (but can often be 50 instead of 00)
GTX <-- Higher model. Higher than a GT, or a GS, etc etc.

The general rule is that the medium range cards from the current generation have the same power (or more) than the high-end old-generation cards. Example: 7600GT = 6800Ultra --- 6600GT = 5900Ultra.
(It's not exactly like that, I'm just giving you an example)

Of course, the low-end current-gen cards are worse than the high-end old-gen cards. The 7300 series is worse than the 6800 series, and so on.[/i] "

----


The other thing to watch out for is reintroduced cards, lik the GF6200 refresh which has now been called the GF7100GS (shades of GF4MX imo) despite being the same chip. That kinda messes with attempts to understand things, but they usually fit within the ranges.

Something that is a good step towards understanding how everything shakes out is the VPU list at Adrian's RojakPot;

http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88

If you understand how the various components contibute to performance, then you can get a pretty good idea of where cards fit based on the specs in the list. But it's also not that easy as some cards look like they should have an advantage but don't.

 

[lunky545]

Extremely Helpful Thanks.