So....RTX 5050, 5060, 5070, 5080, 5090. How did we get this naming scheme? Even more do, why dont they use terms like 5040, 5030, 5020, 5010, etc. I'll explain all of this since the history is kinda interesting.
Going back to the GTX 200 series
The origins of the modern naming scheme go back to the GTX 200 series from 2008-2009. And it even goes back further as I'll express with their even older schemes, but I do wanna discuss this.
So...yeah, Nvidia used to have like 9 or so product tiers. These ranged from being really cheap crap, to really high end.
At the bottom end was the GT 210. And if you've ever heard of this, it probably comes off as infamous as being one of the biggest POSes to ever grace gaming. It was infamous for not being able to run much of anything, and being virtually useless today. No one wants this thing. It was awful.
The GT 220 and GT 240 werent much better. Both were budget cards that were dated. They typically were sub $100, although I think by the time you got up to the GT 240, you got something okay that could come close to the venerated but aging 8800 GT/9800 GT. Not bad for sub $100, but by the time we got to this point, this was becoming budget performance because of how fast the industry moved and how much performance uplift Nvidia could get out of it.
The GTS 250 was the official midrange card. It matched the previous flagship, the 9800 GTX+, and it was available for around $150. It wasn't bad. Once again, aging, kinda budget, but decent. The real mid range price/performance king was the GTX 260, the lowest end of the more higher end gaming cards. Originally it as released for an eyewatering $400 or something, but eventually dropped to around $250, which was pretty reasonable. Again, they had to compete with AMD at the time, and it was on par with AMD's HD 4850 at the time, which was their third highest end card (because even then AMD was always second rate, but hey, their aggressive pricing offered good market corrections at times).
The GTX 270 was a bit more power for a bit more money, with the GTX 280/285 being the highest end cards at the time. And then the 295 was a dual 280/285 model for the spare no expense RTX 5090 type crowd. The series was initially overpriced, but again, AMD forced a market correction and it set the modern standard, virtually every series after followed this general format.
We had cards like the GT 420 and 440 which were crap, GTS 450 was okay, being close to a 260, the GTX 460 was on par with the previous 280, and had to compete directly with my HD 5850 at the time. The 470 and 480 were more premium cards, premium being around $350 and $500 respectively. And things kept continuing.
Eventually, Nvidia stopped producing the 10-40 cards. They simply werent big sellers. people wanted these cards for gaming performance, and the sub 50 cards ended up being borderline ewaste. And again, back then, even the 50 series was cheap, generally going for around $150ish or so, with the 60 series being $200-250ish, the 70 series being $350-400ish, etc. This is why we never had many sub 50 cards starting with like the 900 series on. No one wanted anything below the 50 cards because the 50 cards were the bare minimum that could actually game decently.
The before times
Even before the 2 digit cards, the last time we had 4 digit cards, nvidia followed a similar scheme. You'd have high end cards be 8 or 9 models. We had stuff like the 6800 GT, the 7950 GT, the 8800 GT and GTX, the 9800 GT and GTX. These were all typically expensive, although the 8800 GT and 9800 GT became quite affordable models that were close to "60" cards in pricing, while getting like 80% of the performance of the much more expensive GTX cards.
You'd have more midrange cards like the 9600 GT, 8600 GT, 7600 GT, and 6600 GT. They didnt use the 7 cards a lot for some reason, skipping straight to 6, but these models were often much cheaper than the 6, but also a lot weaker. Typically around half strength or so, although the 8600 GT seemed exceptionally weak given what a jump the 8800 GT was (it was closer to 1/3 performance), and the 9600 GT on the other hand was about 75% of the 9800 GT despite costing a lot less. And pricing varied. Historically it was closer to $200ish, so more like your typical "60" card even then (so basically the same general naming scheme). Although at one point the 8800 GT and 9800 GT dropped down pretty cheap due to competition from AMD and then dropping their 200 series, which again, had previous flagship performance at 40-50 card tier performance.
Speaking of 50 series, yeah, we had 5 series cards too. The 9500 GT was like a budget card, similar to the 8600 GT, but around $100ish mostly. Again, crap used to be CHEAP. You'd get acceptable, but kinda bare minimum performance out of them. Previously you had the 8500 GT which was kinda crap, but I guess it was similar to a 6600 GT.
Once again by the time you got to the 400 cards you were getting crap. The 8400 GS goes down as one of the worst cards ever made, similar to like a GT 210. It was only good as display adapter and that was it. But it was like $60. So we're talking REAL cheap. Better than integrated I guess, but kinda like buying a GT 1030 today. THe 9400 GT was better, similar to the 8500 GT. Some people I knew used that one, and their gaming abilities with it actually surprised me. They seemed to be able to run stuff I never thought they'd be able to run on it. So I guess it wasnt THAT bad, but yeah, again, super cheap budget card, not really made for gaming. Eventually they stopped making these mostly.
There were also weird budget cards like the 6200, the 7300 GT, that were also display adapter tier, but I considered them when I was shopping for my first card. I went AMD for the HD 3650 for obvious reasons (8600/9500 GT performance for less than $100 and compatible with my old AGP system).
And yeah, again, similar scheme.
Going back to the modern day
Yeah, after a while anything below the middle of the road "5" series stopped being produced due to lack of demand. They were just display adapters with weak gaming abilities. A 40 series card like a 9400 GT, 240, 440, they weren't BAD BAD, but it was like...for a little more money you could get a 50. For a little more than that, yuo can get the 60. So eventually the sub $100 market just collapsed and became a sea of ewaste, in retrospect it always was basically. It was boots theory of economics all the way down where you'd get diminishing value from cost savings as youd lose more performance than you'd save money. Didnt stop them from occasionally releasing stuff like the infamous GT 1030, or the short lived 1630 which was ridiculously overpriced for what it was (a GT 1050 for like $130 when you could get 970/1060 performance from a 1650 for like $30 more), but yeah, again, you can see why the value just wasnt there. So I dont feel bad for the loss of the lowest end cards. Outside of maybe having a 30-40 tier display adapter model they were rarely worth buying.
The real problem comes from the inflation of the rest of the stack. Due to the problems with the RTX 2000 series and onward, 60 tier cards are 70 tier pricing a lot of the time, and that's relatively luxury relatively speaking. We're talking like, $300-500, which used to be the high end. For the lowest tier, or second to lowest tier card. The 3050 and 5050 both had MSRPs of $250, historically 60 tier territory. And those would be the new low end. They wouldnt even bother below that. AMD DID try with the 6400 and 6500 XT, but those were anemic and again, boots theory of economics at work. And nvidia just straight up abandoned the REAL 50 tier with the 1650/1650 super being the last card they ever produced for it. And that's what I see as the real problem here. Once again, RTX killed gaming. It killed the affordable entry level $150 gaming card. Because there's no way for them to make an affordable RTX card with all the new bells and whistles at that price level I guess. it wouldnt be worth it, and if you tried, well....do I gotta show you the 6400 and 6500 XT again on the AMD side?
And that's the problem too. It's a similar problem of what happened with the 40 card before it. You'd go from 9800 GT, a relatively high end card, to the GT 240 and get similar performance. And here, it seems like the market was perpetually stuck at offering RX 580/GTX 1060 performance at that tier forever. So they just sold the old cards which couldnt do it any more despite being quite venerated for their time, and they never released new ones.
Now the baseline for gaming is around 1.5x that performance with the 3050, with the real baseline being closer to 2x with the 3060/4060/5050/6600/7600 tier cards. And i gotta wonder if, in the long term, they abandon us too and just start their product stacks at like $400 and if you dont like it, tough. Again, do i gotta keep belaboring the point? The market is screwed up.
Again, it's fine to kill the sub $100 market, it seems like you couldnt make a good GPU at that price no matter what you did. People wanna game on cards, the minimum viable card was like, the GTS 250/450/1050 ti/1650, etc. Anything below that is crap. So they stopped producing it. Fair. Next.
But now we're talking like sub $300 being on the chopping block. it's getting ridiculous. Not all of us can just pay more and adapt to higher prices, a lot of us will just drop out, stick to older hardware, and play lower end games. heck, it's already happening. This is how you get a situation where your average gamer buys 1 game a year and most money is made from a handful of whales. Now the only gamers that matter were the ones bringing their "80" money to the table and everyone else can either adapt or do without. it's getting ridiculous.
Anyway, I know I'm ranting a lot but I wanted to give further thoughts on this so people understand what exactly we've lost over time and just how good and affordable and accessible PC gaming used to be.
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