Alphabet soup award: ATI and NVIDIA's GT/GS/GTX/PE/SE/XL/XT
Last year's middle finger towards ATI and NVIDIA has morphed into muddled confusion. Both companies have expanded their graphics lines with a slew of GT, GS, GTX, PE, SE, XL, and XT versions of various products. Graphics card partners have added to the mess, as well, tagging on their own Turbo, Overclocked, Xtreme, Performance, and Golden Sample monikers. Each flavor can feature a different pipeline configuration, memory bus width, and core and memory clock speed, all of which impact overall performance. To add to the confusion, some configurations are OEM-only, while others are widely available in retail.
This tangled web of graphics products is enough to make even a seasoned enthusiast's head spin, and if we have a hard time keeping all the versions and derivatives straight, Joe Sixpack doesn't stand a chance. It would be much easier if GPU makers limited their product lines to a manageable number of derivatives or if manufacturers settled on a standard way to present each card's vital specs, but neither thing seems likely to happen. Prepare for even more confusion in 2006.
