Nvidia announces Fermi retail names

Not part of the 300-series as expected

NVIDIA JUST BROKE its traditional naming scheme as the Fermi cards won’t be the bearing the GTX 380 and GTX 360 model names that have been floating around for some time. Actually, they won’t even have the number three anywhere in the model names. Isn’t that something.

In an unusual move, Nvidia has announced the first two Fermi model numbers on Twitter and it seems like the company decided to skip all the controversy with its re-branding of lower end 300-series cards that aren’t DirectX 11 compliant by having Fermi jump an entire generation. Yes, you read that correctly, Nvidia won’t have any high-end 300-series cards, just like it didn’t have any high-end 100-series cards.

So this means that the first Fermi cards will be part of the 400-series and the first two cards will be the GeForce GTX 480 and the GTX 470. Both cards are based on the GF100 chip, but that’s as much detail as Nvidia is willing to share with us at this stage. Of course the company has unveiled most of the Fermi architecture, but this doesn’t bring us any closer to the details that everyone is waiting for, which are clock speeds and power consumption.

Isn’t that exciting, the GeForce 400-series comes early? Well, ok, it didn’t really, but we can’t blame Nvidia for shunning the 300-series moniker after the company decided to add even more re-branded cards here, something that hasn’t exactly gone down well with those in the know. And of course, a higher number always sounds better, right? Let’s hope they retain the wood screws on the final cards, just for kicks if nothing else.S|A

The following two tabs change content below.