1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 NVIDIA is reportedly pulling the plug on its GTX branding. 2 00:00:05,280 --> 00:00:08,880 Once a mainstay of the graphics card world going forward, 3 00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:14,240 it appears that NVIDIA's products will all be labeled with RTX branding instead. 4 00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:17,460 But why would NVIDIA kill off such strong branding 5 00:00:17,460 --> 00:00:20,920 that commands tons of mindshare in the marketplace? 6 00:00:20,920 --> 00:00:25,120 To understand this, it's helpful to look at some quick history of the GTX brand. 7 00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:28,560 It first popped up all the way back in June of 2005 8 00:00:28,560 --> 00:00:32,880 as part of the G4 7 series. Back then, it was less of a brand 9 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:37,080 and more of a designation to let people know they were getting a high-end card. 10 00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:41,480 As the first ever GTX card, the G4 7800 GTX, 11 00:00:41,480 --> 00:00:45,320 set users back a princely 600 bucks. 12 00:00:45,320 --> 00:00:51,280 Oh, that hurts. But outperformed all other cards at launch 13 00:00:51,280 --> 00:00:55,640 in demanding games of the time, such as Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2. 14 00:00:55,640 --> 00:01:00,200 Big era for twos. We first saw the more modern G-Force GTX 15 00:01:00,200 --> 00:01:06,680 followed by a number branding with the GTX 260 and 280 released in June, 2008. 16 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:09,680 And GTX continued to represent the mid-range 17 00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:15,240 to high end of the market all the way through the release of the G-Force 10 series in 2016 18 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:20,200 with lower-end models getting different designations like GT or GTS. 19 00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:23,900 However, there was a significant shift in branding in 2018. 20 00:01:23,940 --> 00:01:27,260 When NVIDIA unveiled its now familiar RTX branding, 21 00:01:27,260 --> 00:01:32,180 which was created to indicate that a GPU had extra ray tracing hardware built in. 22 00:01:32,180 --> 00:01:36,940 All of NVIDIA's mid-range and high-end cards that used the new Turing architecture 23 00:01:36,940 --> 00:01:41,300 and featured ray tracing became part of the RTX 2000 lineup 24 00:01:41,300 --> 00:01:44,500 while lower-end and mid-range Turing GPUs 25 00:01:44,500 --> 00:01:50,120 that didn't feature ray tracing instead became part of the GTX 1600 stack. 26 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:54,500 To make it clear that while these cards did have the new generation's architecture, 27 00:01:54,500 --> 00:01:58,260 they didn't have ray tracing or other bells and whistles like DLSS 28 00:01:58,260 --> 00:02:01,300 due to the lack of ray tracing and tensor cores. 29 00:02:01,300 --> 00:02:07,380 But since then, we haven't gotten any GTX cards based on the newer, ampere, or lovelace architectures, 30 00:02:07,380 --> 00:02:11,260 which are RTX only. So why exactly does it seem like NVIDIA 31 00:02:11,260 --> 00:02:14,660 has just given up on producing non-RTX cards? 32 00:02:14,660 --> 00:02:20,260 Although real-time ray tracing was seen as wildly impractical in a consumer graphics card 33 00:02:20,260 --> 00:02:23,860 for a long time, advances in technology enabled NVIDIA 34 00:02:23,860 --> 00:02:27,300 to put ray tracing hardware and AI-focused cores 35 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:32,360 not just in high-end cards, but also in mid-range models at an accessible price. 36 00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:36,680 The launch price of the RTX 2060 was $349, 37 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:40,060 and it's possible to get a current-gen RTX 4060 38 00:02:40,060 --> 00:02:45,100 for under 300 bucks. By contrast, the GTX 1660 is going around 39 00:02:45,100 --> 00:02:49,340 for only 190 bucks, only about a $100 delta. 40 00:02:49,380 --> 00:02:53,340 Do we need to call that a delta? Like, we're not talking about physics, you know? 41 00:02:53,340 --> 00:02:58,060 Like, I don't know, okay. About $100 less. 42 00:02:58,060 --> 00:03:01,780 And on top of that, the difference between a GTX 1650 43 00:03:01,780 --> 00:03:05,340 and an RTX 3050 is only about $20 44 00:03:05,340 --> 00:03:09,780 to get a card that's a generation newer and has the additional RTX features. 45 00:03:09,780 --> 00:03:15,660 Seeing as how NVIDIA is using these features as a way to set their GPUs apart from competing products, 46 00:03:15,660 --> 00:03:19,940 it's unsurprising they'd rather have these features all up and down their product stack 47 00:03:19,940 --> 00:03:25,020 rather than split their branding. But in addition to that, it turns out that lower-end GPUs 48 00:03:25,020 --> 00:03:28,140 actually aren't particularly high-margin products. 49 00:03:28,140 --> 00:03:34,300 And it's not like gamers were exactly lining up to buy discrete cards much lower down the product ladder 50 00:03:34,300 --> 00:03:39,260 than, say, a GTX 1650. So it made sense for NVIDIA to incorporate 51 00:03:39,260 --> 00:03:43,200 their much-ballyhooed features into their more value-oriented, 52 00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:48,480 but still viable for gaming products, like the RTX 3050 and RTX 4060, 53 00:03:48,480 --> 00:03:51,920 and just for go having a separate non-RTX product lineup 54 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:57,320 that didn't really have an obvious place anymore. Although it will take some time for AIB partners 55 00:03:57,320 --> 00:04:00,460 to put the remaining GTX 1600 series GPUs 56 00:04:00,460 --> 00:04:03,720 onto the cards themselves and get them onto the consumer market, 57 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:08,000 you'll probably see the last ones leaving the factory later in 2024. 58 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,020 Maybe one day, one of the last ever GTX cards 59 00:04:11,020 --> 00:04:14,040 will be worth some money if you keep yours mint in the box. 60 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:21,360 Can't make any promises, though. But I promise you, I'm so happy that you got here to the end. 61 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:25,080 Thanks for watching. Hey, like the video if you liked it, dislike the video if you disliked it. 62 00:04:25,080 --> 00:04:29,020 Check out our video on NVIDIA's first ever GPU, 63 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:33,600 the old ones, and comment below with video suggestions. 64 00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:37,560 Hey, and also I just remembered, don't forget to subscribe and follow. 65 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:38,840 I'm a little sleepy.