ATI's naming convention sucks the sack

[straxusii]

Why the hell do we have 5970, 5870,5830,5770 etc what a load of tosh.

Why not simply have:
5900 (5970)
5800 (5870)
5700 (5850)
5600 (5830)
5500 (5770)
etc

Or is it too dangerous to give the consumer a clear idea of which cards perform best?

 

[straxusii]

It's easy for us to understand as we are enthusiasts, that's not my point.

 

[straxusii]

Surely they want to also imply similarity. The 5870 is similar to a 5850, a 5750 similar to a 5770. Also calling something a xx30 or xx10 can sometimes imply that it's crap

You mean like a 5970 is similar to a 5770?

 

[straxusii]

Nvidia's naming scheme is a lot worse than ATIs. As the guy above said, there was the 8800gt, then the 9800gt which you'd assume to be quite a bit better (as it's the next generation, such as the 7800 was a lot better than the 6800) but no, it's exactly the same card, then they even carried it on to their newest series with the GTS 250, same card, different name. Now THAT's confusing naming imo.

Also, the 320 and 640mb 8800gts cards are worse than the 8800gt 512mb, but the 512mb 8800gts is better than both. Why did they give it exactly the same name? It's just extremely annoying.

I wouldn't defend Nvidia's 8 series naming at all, it was a farce, the GTX2XX series was clearly better than ATI though

 

[straxusii]

5970
5870
5850
5770
5750

Says a heck of a lot more than

5900
5800
5700
5600
5500

The first number SHOULD be the generation (we will ignore the 5100 series), the second number is the chip:

59 = 2x cypress
58 = cypress
57 = juniper
56 = redwood

The third/fourth is what performance bracket of the chip:

70 = high
50 = mid
30 = value

Pretty clear to me.

I'm talking about for consumers, not us enthusiasts. You seriously think all that makes sense to the average consumer?