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Difference between GS GT GTS and GTX

Balthazar2 Posted messages 158 Status Member -  
marcmarais Posted messages 24260 Status Moderator -
Hello, I have a simple question about NVidia graphics cards.

I've been testing graphics cards at work for a little while now, and I'm curious about these suffixes.

I thought it was a bit like ATI where there were 7-9xxx, then X[1-8]xxx, then HD [2-7]xxx.

But with NVidia, despite the changing suffix, it seems to be the same architecture, so what's the difference basically?

There are other cards where GT and GTX are no longer a suffix, but a prefix, is it to highlight that it's an entirely different architecture?

Thank you

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3 answers

  1.
    marcmarais Posted messages 24260 Status Moderator 4 568
     
    Hello,
    Nvidia has used different prefixes over the years, indicating an increasingly powerful GPU:
    GS / GT / GTS / GTX

    The prefixes have been reduced nowadays, in 2014 there are only GT and GTX left, with GT designating the entry-level and GTX the mid- to high-end, but the boundary is not very clear

    The reason is mainly commercial; sometimes the same GPU has both names depending on the memory or frequencies, so it is not another architecture

    For example, for the GT 640, originally equipped with GDDR3 memory, Nvidia called the same GPU (384 compute units) GTX 650 when equipped with GDDR5 memory:
    https://www.hardware.fr/focus/74/nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-test.html
    It is all the more absurd that there is a GT 640 GDDR5 OEM (intended for integrators)

    The same controversy arose in 2011 with the GTX 550 Ti, whose GPU had the same number of compute units as the GTS 450, essentially having higher frequencies:
    https://www.hardware.fr/articles/823-2/specifications-test.html
    This GTX 550 Ti should have been called GTS 450 Ti or GTX 450 instead...

    I advise you not to pay too much attention to the suffixes, but rather to the number of compute/texturing/ROP units of the GPU, as well as the GPU and memory frequencies,
    which determine real performance.
    12