That's similar to what Intel was doing with the numbers following the i{3,5,7,9}:
Then I stuck with AMD for a while (the HD 4870 followed by the R9 390, both were very compelling options from a $/perf standpoint when they were current from what I remember) and by the time NVidia came back on my radar again they'd gone through another whole ~10 generation cycle of 3 digit numbers and were back on the four digit ones again.
Would you like to buy my Xbox One X Box?
Why sell this generations X070 equivalent as an x070 when you can call it an x080 instead and know that a very large chunk of your customer base wont look at the actual specs before paying an extra ~$100 for it? Probably not good in the long term, but who cares about the long term when you can boost sales numbers on a new product now and make shareholders happy.
How do we account for nuances on AMD, Intel, or Qualcomm chips? Does that apply to other ARM chips?
And then there is the issue of trademark, copyright, and branding, which could get into legal struggles.
A naming scheme:
Manufacturer Code: A short abbreviation or code for the manufacturer, e.g., 'IN' for Intel, 'AMD' for AMD, 'NV' for NVIDIA, etc.
Component Type: A short abbreviation for the component type, e.g., 'CPU' for Central Processing Unit and 'GPU' for Graphics Processing Unit.
Generation: A two-digit number representing the generation of the component. For instance, '01' for the first generation, '02' for the second generation, and so on.
Performance Tier: A letter representing the performance tier of the component, with 'A' being the highest tier and 'E' being the lowest tier. This can be expanded to include more tiers as needed.
Sub-Tier: A two-digit number representing the sub-tier within the performance tier, with '01' being the highest sub-tier and '99' being the lowest sub-tier.
Examples:
IN-CPU-03-A05: This would represent an Intel third-generation CPU, in the highest performance tier (A), and positioned in the fifth sub-tier within that tier.
NV-GPU-02-C15: This would represent an NVIDIA second-generation GPU, in the middle performance tier (C), and positioned in the fifteenth sub-tier within that tier.
CPU SKUs work exactly the same way? intel has gone longer than nvidia without restarting the numbering, so they need two digits instead of one.
> intel has gone longer than nvidia without restarting the numbering, so they need two digits instead of one.
Nvidia started the current numbering with 200 almost at the same time, with the 10XX series they added a fourth digit.
The naming schemes are completely, completely, retarded but they also aren't that hard to guess
It doesn't help that there's also a random mix of river codenames and I can never keep straight which number they belong to.
Nobody is surprised that a 3-series can refer to different cars, and the exact model (E46, G20) is not mentioned in marketing.
> It doesn't help that there's also a random mix of river codenames and I can never keep straight which number they belong to.
I’ve never known codenames to do that. Plus they don’t necessarily match generations.
The codenames are hard to keep straight, especially when they started making everything a Lake, but at least you can see then list of products formerly known as X and see the whole family.
The basic process for CPU selection is pick the architecture, pick the number of cores, pick the speed tier. But none of that is clearly communicated with the model number.
Honestly, I'm somewhat convinced that Intel did this scheme intentionally to sell older hardware (hey this has an i5/'gold' too and it's slightly cheaper!), but perhaps it backfired: folks who already have an iX think that new fancy iX laptop isn't worth it.
Here's hoping there's a tell-all book in a few years with some insight.
In the grand scheme of things, it's still better than the Microsoft Xbox naming convention.
Both Gold and Celeron don't really mean anything. Celeron is often available with the same architecture as the other brands, often with less cores, maybe less speed, maybe some features disabled, but especially if you're comparing across architectures, the brand isn't important, the details are.
Then the products inside seem to be in performance order. A 3080 is better than a 3060 is better than a 3020 (if that exists).
I know it gets messier than that. The fact that they add the titanium versions kind of screws with it. And in the last year they had that card they had to renumber because a change to its memory configuration (?) made it perform wrong for its moniker.
But at least you know a 3080 is two generations newer than a 1080. Compared to the seemingly random numbers on CPUs it’s simple.