nVidia GTX confusion

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi all,
so, my son just bought a new Gigabyte GTX970 after we thought we'd done our research.
But the numbering convention continues to confuse.
How come the GTX 780 beats the 970 in performance charts. One would expect the higher number to be newer/better?
At pretty much the same price point we could/(should?) have bought a 780Ti?

Why do they AMD and nVidia do this?

 

[snips86x]

Surely it would depend on the comparison you're looking at?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1036?vs=1355

The 970, if using the nVidia naming convention, would be the same as a 770, so the 980 would be the same as the 780. Obviously they won't be identical and the next iteration of cards would be quicker.....well.....to a degree!

 

[Banzai_Joe]

well i was looking at gpuboss and http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu
for quick comparisons really.

 

[ashmanuk67]

If your a new customer to the world of graphics cards it can be confusing,I think it's only obvious to the hard core gamer/followers.

I have a GTX770 so the GTX970 would be it's direct replacement (why did they not use 800 as the next product numbering)?
One of the main strengths of the 900 series's is the very efficient core, heat and also DirectX 12 ready.

They do seem really good cards.

 

[rtho782]

with nvidia, you break the number into parts.

980 = (9)(80)

The first number indicates "Generation". The second two indicate positioning in the product stack. If there is a "Ti" version, it's a slightly later card slightly enhanced.

nVidia and ATi both increment the first number at least once a year, as laptop manufacturers need new numbers for their new laptops to sell. So, nVidia had already used numbers starting 8 in their laptop chips, albeit with renamed and overclocked 6 and 7 chips, so went to 9 for the new desktop generation.

Often, an earlier desktop chip is renamed to join in the next product stack. So, 770 is the same chip as 680, but it's not as close to the top of the product lineup for the "7" generation.

In fact, the 430, the 530, and the 620 are all the same chip. The renaming happens quite often.

The 780ti is absolute top of the "7" Generation. Right now, the 980 is top of the "9" generation, and beats the 780ti in most things by a small margin, while being much more power efficient and carrying many new features (up to 4 displays, more memory, DSR, DX12, etc etc)

The 970 was never intended to replace the 780ti, or really the 780. It smashes the 770 though.

Yes, 780 and 780ti are dirt cheap because they are discontinued and stores are selling off stock. Should you have bought a 780ti? Only you can answer that.

 

[triss]

Your 970 will beat a 780 in nearly everything except power usage so dont be worried you bought IMO the right card.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Cool, thanks fellas.
In all honesty me and my son are pretty hardy gamers. but we've both had AMD all the way until now. And i confess i didn't really keep my eye on the trends, and when you do that you can create a huge hole in your knowledge i guess.

He does want to plug 'at least' 3 monitors into it, so maybe the 970 was the best buy for him. He's doing 3D game design at college, so i reckon he wants all sorts on different screens at the same time.
Ya know what kids are like!