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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

Can someone ELI5 what's the main difference between Nvidia 3000s, 3060, 3070, 3080, 3080Ti, 4000s, etc? I am just very confused about it and honestly I don't want to spend hours to understand something that should be immediately clear.

You can downvote me for being lazy, yes. But my point is that there's a ton of BS marketing going on in the IT industry, and Nvidia is no exception. Look at the 3nm process, which isn't about gate distance anymore. Etc.

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The first 1-2 numbers is the generation of Nvidia gpu. The latest 4 generations are 10xx, 20xx, 30xx, and 40xx. The last two numbers differentiate between gpus within a generation. The higher the number the better the gpu, xx70, xx80, and xx90 are common. So the newest gpus that Nvidia are putting out are the 4080 and the 4090, their newest generation and top two performing cards within that generation. In-between generations they usually release a ti variant of the card (3080ti) which is a moderately better version but not a new generation.

4xxx series is newest gen. As it goes they've made it more powerful and new technology to do so.

xxXx = Big X is "power". So 9 is highest, 8, 7, 6, 5 (3090/3080/3070) etc.

Bigger has more compute power, usually more RAM and more power requirements.

That's pretty much it. Figure out what you want to do, and then find a card that does that. Want ML? highest RAM you can get. Want high resolution gaming, high ram, high compute power.

On a simple level the more expensive cards have more transistors, more VRAM, and hence are faster and support running bigger ML models if your models have high VRAM requirements.

The newer generations also have a spate of new gaming, video, and ML technologies that make some aspects of all those things faster. TDLR: More expensive = better.

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