WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 NVIDIA is reportedly pulling the plug on its GTX branding. 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:08.880 Once a mainstay of the graphics card world going forward, 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:14.240 it appears that NVIDIA's products will all be labeled with RTX branding instead. 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:17.460 But why would NVIDIA kill off such strong branding 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:20.920 that commands tons of mindshare in the marketplace? 00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:25.120 To understand this, it's helpful to look at some quick history of the GTX brand. 00:00:25.120 --> 00:00:28.560 It first popped up all the way back in June of 2005 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:32.880 as part of the G4 7 series. Back then, it was less of a brand 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:37.080 and more of a designation to let people know they were getting a high-end card. 00:00:37.080 --> 00:00:41.480 As the first ever GTX card, the G4 7800 GTX, 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:45.320 set users back a princely 600 bucks. 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:51.280 Oh, that hurts. But outperformed all other cards at launch 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.640 in demanding games of the time, such as Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2. 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:00.200 Big era for twos. We first saw the more modern G-Force GTX 00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:06.680 followed by a number branding with the GTX 260 and 280 released in June, 2008. 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:09.680 And GTX continued to represent the mid-range 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 00:01:15.240 --> 00:01:20.200 with lower-end models getting different designations like GT or GTS. 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:23.900 However, there was a significant shift in branding in 2018. 00:01:23.940 --> 00:01:27.260 When NVIDIA unveiled its now familiar RTX branding, 00:01:27.260 --> 00:01:32.180 which was created to indicate that a GPU had extra ray tracing hardware built in. 00:01:32.180 --> 00:01:36.940 All of NVIDIA's mid-range and high-end cards that used the new Turing architecture 00:01:36.940 --> 00:01:41.300 and featured ray tracing became part of the RTX 2000 lineup 00:01:41.300 --> 00:01:44.500 while lower-end and mid-range Turing GPUs 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:50.120 that didn't feature ray tracing instead became part of the GTX 1600 stack. 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:54.500 To make it clear that while these cards did have the new generation's architecture, 00:01:54.500 --> 00:01:58.260 they didn't have ray tracing or other bells and whistles like DLSS 00:01:58.260 --> 00:02:01.300 due to the lack of ray tracing and tensor cores. 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, 00:02:07.380 --> 00:02:11.260 which are RTX only. So why exactly does it seem like NVIDIA 00:02:11.260 --> 00:02:14.660 has just given up on producing non-RTX cards? 00:02:14.660 --> 00:02:20.260 Although real-time ray tracing was seen as wildly impractical in a consumer graphics card 00:02:20.260 --> 00:02:23.860 for a long time, advances in technology enabled NVIDIA 00:02:23.860 --> 00:02:27.300 to put ray tracing hardware and AI-focused cores 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:32.360 not just in high-end cards, but also in mid-range models at an accessible price. 00:02:32.360 --> 00:02:36.680 The launch price of the RTX 2060 was $349, 00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:40.060 and it's possible to get a current-gen RTX 4060 00:02:40.060 --> 00:02:45.100 for under 300 bucks. By contrast, the GTX 1660 is going around 00:02:45.100 --> 00:02:49.340 for only 190 bucks, only about a $100 delta. 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? 00:02:53.340 --> 00:02:58.060 Like, I don't know, okay. About $100 less. 00:02:58.060 --> 00:03:01.780 And on top of that, the difference between a GTX 1650 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:05.340 and an RTX 3050 is only about $20 00:03:05.340 --> 00:03:09.780 to get a card that's a generation newer and has the additional RTX features. 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, 00:03:15.660 --> 00:03:19.940 it's unsurprising they'd rather have these features all up and down their product stack 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 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:28.140 actually aren't particularly high-margin products. 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 00:03:34.300 --> 00:03:39.260 than, say, a GTX 1650. So it made sense for NVIDIA to incorporate 00:03:39.260 --> 00:03:43.200 their much-ballyhooed features into their more value-oriented, 00:03:43.200 --> 00:03:48.480 but still viable for gaming products, like the RTX 3050 and RTX 4060, 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:51.920 and just for go having a separate non-RTX product lineup 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 00:03:57.320 --> 00:04:00.460 to put the remaining GTX 1600 series GPUs 00:04:00.460 --> 00:04:03.720 onto the cards themselves and get them onto the consumer market, 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:08.000 you'll probably see the last ones leaving the factory later in 2024. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:11.020 Maybe one day, one of the last ever GTX cards 00:04:11.020 --> 00:04:14.040 will be worth some money if you keep yours mint in the box. 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. 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. 00:04:25.080 --> 00:04:29.020 Check out our video on NVIDIA's first ever GPU, 00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:33.600 the old ones, and comment below with video suggestions. 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:37.560 Hey, and also I just remembered, don't forget to subscribe and follow. 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:38.840 I'm a little sleepy.