Picture from the Brick Testament

If you ask any hardware reviewer, they tell you that NVIDIA's naming conventions have been very muddled this year. Let's take a few examples: the 9800 GTX is pretty much the same, performance wise, as the 8800 GTX. There are three 8800 GTS cards: a 320 MB version, a 640MB version, and then later, a 512MB version, which is faster than the 640MB version. Then most recently, there is the GTX 260 and GTX 280 series -- but no GTX 180 ever came out.

Well it looks like GT 100 cards might be coming out after all. With rumored releases of new cards coming from NVIDIA, comes a shake-up of their naming conventions. According to "inside sources" cited on TG Daily, all of the GeForce 9000 cards will be re-labeled with new names from a GT 100 series -- names like GT 120, GT 130, GT 140 etc. 

Furthermore, as new video cards arrive, NVIDIA will be utilizing the classic naming conventions of having GTX moniker for their top GPUs, GT for the performance line, GS for the mainstream GPUs, and entry-level cards gaining merely a 'G'.

This seems like a good way to go in the long term, but undoubtedly consumers will be a perplexed when the first, new GT 130 cards come out while GTX 260 and GTX 280 cards are sitting on the shelf already. When card shopping, consumers might have to take a little 'crib sheet' with them to figure out which is what, what what was, and when what will be turning into that.