Announcing the Nvidia 2180...?
Or will it be the 3080?
Okay, full disclosure, I could end up looking like a complete idiot here. I have no sources, and this comes from nothing other than my own observations. But Nvidia and the entirety of the tech press are blowing my mind.
Points for 30 series
The entirety of the tech press from what I can see has accepted the conclusion that Ampere will be the 30 series of Geforce GPUs. This makes a lot of sense, since there was the 10 series, then there was the 20 series, now there's going to be the 30 series, right? It also sounds better. "Thirty Eithty" and "Thirty Ninety" sound a lot better than "twenty-one eithty" and "twenty-one ninety". There's also the fact of the Micron document that showed it being called the 30 series. That's an official document and couldn't be wrong, right? There are also cooler prototypes with the 30 series name written on them.
Points for 21 series
Well, official documents from Micron easily could be internal codenames based on what they think it'll be called, not necessarily that Nvidia has confirmed with them what they're calling it. It's also possible that Nvidia was using it as an internal codename because they didn't want people to know what they were actually calling it. Intentionally throwing people off their scent... for... some reason... I guess.
Honestly I'd be all about the 30 series like everyone else, except for the announcement for the announcement event. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/special-event/
This page went up 21 days before the announcement, 21 years after the first geforce cards came out. If it was just me noticing the correlation in those numbers, I'd just assume I'm crazy and seeing numbers on the walls, and it's probably being called the 30 series. But Nvidia points it out! Why draw attention to it? Why make a big deal of 21? Also on the 21st of August is also when the massive cooler for the 3090 was leaked, much larger than the above pictured 3080. But we also didn't see the writing 3090 on it, either. (btw I called the as-of-yet technically unconfirmed 90 naming scheme in early June: https://meyertechrants.blogspot.com/2020/06/nvidia-should-release-3090.html)
This is actually making me feel like a crazy person
I keep looking around and universally everyone's calling it the 30 series. Referring to the 3080 and 3090 is overwhelmingly accepted as the way to refer to it. But I'm like "what if it's called the 2180 and 2190? It looks to me like Nvidia is hinting at that, right?" I know I'm not the only one that sees it, as I've seen various others acknowledge the hint, but then just dismiss it, "knowing" that they're going to call it the 30 series. But then why make such a big deal about the 21? It's not like some neat round number that begs being acknowledged. If it was 20 or 25 or something like that, I could see them saying it was some notable anniversary. But 21? WHY?!?! Just to make specifically just me think I'm insane, or are they actually hinting at something?
Let's take a look at the messaging around the 20 series and the 16 series.
Before the 20 series came out, it was massively rumored that the cards would be called the 11 series. Yes, we had exactly the same debate going on then. After all, we didn't know which digit they'd increment after the 10 series, and we figured we'd learn after we saw which digit they incremented what the product names going into the future would be, indicating whether we'd be looking at the 12 series at this point or the 30 series. The contested consensus at the time, per my potentially flawed recollection was that it would be the 11 series. This was widely accepted right up until about a week before the announcement when it came out that no, it would indeed be the 20 series, and 20 series it was.
Nvidia had a reason for this. They said that the RTX features in the card begged a notable bump in the numbers; that it was so advanced relative to the 10 series that calling it the 20 series was appropriate. Then the 16 series came out, which notable lacked RTX features, and they claimed that they went with 16 because it contained the updated Turing architecture which notably included integer units and a new pipeline relative to the 10 series that allowed the 46CU (10TFLOPS) 2080 perform like the 56CU (11.3TFLOPS) 1080ti, or even better in many cases.
Messaging in naming for 21 series?
It's possible that Nvidia claims yet again that the gap in performance is large enough that they can justify calling it the 30 series, but the 10 -> 20 wasn't really about performance. At the same price tier in the high end, they didn't really improve performance much with the 2080 being very similar to the 1080ti on average in rasterization. However, the argument was about the tech; the previously mentioned rendering pipeline refactor plus RTX features. Mainly the RTX features. It's true that the performance of Ampere is likely to be an improvement of the vein of the 900 series to 10 series, with the 980ti being beaten by the 1070 in many cases, and a rumored 4x improvement to Ray Tracing performance which allegedly allow these cards to stretch their legs even when Ray Tracing is enabled (might actually be worth turning on? What a novel concept) not to mention what they've recently and may yet accomplish with DLSS in the few selected titles that support it. However, while they could still pull out a brand new and exciting feature that hasn't yet been leaked, it seems that mostly, the next gen is about improving the performance and accessibility for features that already exist. This may be the most compelling argument for staying in the 2000s for naming scheme. It also makes it pretty easy; if it starts with a 2, it supports RTX features. If it starts with a 1, it doesn't. For all we know, they may yet release a 17 series (though I doubt it).
Conclusion?
Yeah, you probably want me to make a prediction now don't you. Which I think they'll go with. Well, I've never been much of a sheep before, so I'm going to say it's going to be the 21 series. I'm fully aware that I'm going to look like an idiot when (optimistic if?) they release the 30 series. After all, the 30 series sounds easier to market. 21 series sounds kind of dumb. I actually think it'll be better if they do the 30 series, but then again, Nvidia has had some pretty notable naming gaffs in the past.
10 Bonus predictions: (while I'm on a roll with probably inaccurate predictions)
- They'll announce only the 2170 and 2180 on Sept.1st.
- The 2170 will crush the 2080 and come within spitting distance of the 2080ti for $649 for FE
- The 2180 will beat the 2080ti by ~15% for about $899 for FE.
- Nvidia will praise themselves for delivering unprecedented value to gamers despite being the most expensive cards of their segments in history.
- Radeon isn't going to make a 6000 series. They're going to reinvent their naming scheme all over again because they're worried the naming between CPU and GPU will get confusing, and they're bringing in a pile of new tech (RTX competitor) that they feel will need to be more easily distinguished from their past lineup, more easily marketable, and distance themselves from the driver reputation of the 5000 series.
- Navi 21 is going to beat the 2180 by an undeniable 20-25% margin for about the same cost.
- 2190 is going to beat Navi 21 by ~10% for about $1399 and enthusiasts will bitch about it but buy it and the 2080 over Navi 21 at a joint ratio of about 6:1 because few people spending that much money are considering a Radeon GPU.
- There will be no Supers in the 21 series. That existed only because they messed up with the 2080ti naming, and this time they're bringing in 90 naming to fix that. There will be mid-gen ti increments, probably on TSMC 7nm.
- Radeon will have a competitor to DLSS in RDNA2.
- RDNA2 will launch with actually excellent driver support because of the similarity between Windows and the XSX, but the internet will still be flooded with people saying to buy the 2180 over Navi 21 because of driver issues. A lot of "I bought [X radeon card] in the past and had to return it and never going back!" 1/4 of those will be true stories, the rest fake to support their Nvidia fanboyism.
Aaaand all of these could end up completely out to lunch. Will be interesting to see how many of them come true. I'm just getting my sources from the regular rumor mill people.
Thank you for reading!
As always, come visit me in Discordland to tell me I'm wrong! I mean I probably am, so low hanging fruit and all that, but I can also brag about how right I am if I am.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeyerRants
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