Rating a Graphic Card’s quality through the product’s name and series number

One of the simplest ways to rate a VGA chipset currently, is actually done through noticing the series number and the title of the product given by each graphic card manufacturer. For example, from nVidia you’d be familiar with 9600 GT, GTX 280, and 8800 ULTRA, while from its main competitor, ATI, there are HD 4870X2, 4670, 5770, etc.

To go into details, for nVidia serial numbers,

    1st digit    : Card series (e.g. 8800 GTX would mean that it is coming from the nVidia 8 series)
    2nd digit    : Ranging from 1-9, the higher the numerical value, the better it is (e.g. for 9600 GT,         it is considered as ‘mainstream performance’, while for 9800 GX2, it is notified as         ‘enthusiast performance’, and for 9400 G, it’s just ‘entry-level performance’)
    3rd digit    : Either ‘0’ or ‘5’, with ‘0’ being the standard version and ‘5’ being the improvised         version of the same series

    While the serial letters/word that follows, ranging from standard to excellent (from left to right consecutively):
SE, LE, GS, GSO, GT, GTS, GTO, GTX, Ultra, GX2

    Similarly for the 200 series, the same guidelines applies, except for the part that in this series the 4th digit does not exist (which usually comes in as ‘0’ in the standard products anyways)

As for the ATI products,

For the 3000 series onwards,
    1st digit    : Card series
    2nd digit    : Ranging from 1-9, the higher the numerical value, again, the better it is
    3rd digit    : Consistently given the number ‘3’, ‘5’, or ‘7’; the higher numerical value the better         the performance capacity

    For products below the 3000 series, the 3rd digit is non-existent, and is replaced by letter signatures:
XTX, XT, XT PE, XL, Pro, GTO, GT (left to right is in order of performance level, left being the worse and right being the best of them)