Someone is finally waking up to the fact that only hardcore, rabid fans are the ones that completely understand all the designations of the last few crops of nVidia chips. The average Joe, or light enthusiast, is left in the cold, needing to do several minutes, to a couple of hours of research about the graphics chips, the memory, and various other things before the purchase of a video card.

To make things worse, the comparative reviews of video cards are few and far between. Even then, the crafty reviewer, not wishing to offend the company that is giving them a lot of swag, will maneuver better than a rock crawler around some dangerous hills with the wording of the review - seldom is any honest, here-it-is-and-I-hope-you-don’t-like-it review given.

nVidia and ATi (yes, I’ll continue to call them that!) make things worse, by using overlapping numbering schemes, with no alpha designation to help clear confusion. For example, a nVidia 5500 is a faster card than a 6200, but nowhere is it stated clearly that the numbering system is silly - until you look around. It isn’t on the box, it isn’t on the website without much digging. If the user goes to the store to buy a card, the employee is usually a low-paid dolt that is enthusiastic about his job, and his spiff he’ll make when he sells the unit his manager told him to.

Hopefully, that will soon change.

The news comes from the company’s Vice President of Business Content Roy Taylor, in comments made recently to GamesIndustry.biz.

NVidia’s attempt to become more consumer friendly is a challenge it understands must be tackled to broaden its appeal to consumers not yet become acquainted with the brand, which is still linked in most buyers’ minds to graphics cards. Consumers accustomed to low-cost computers are typically de facto users of Intel’s integrated GPUs, and it’s this market that NVidia now wants to crack.

A glimpse of NVidia’s Web site reveals the company has six different desktop lines of video cards, with some lines, including its popular GeForce series having multiple series subsets.

For example, NVidia will launch its GeForce 9900 video card — code name GT200 — series just a few months after launching the 9800 GXT graphics card, and the 9900 GTX will likely replace the 9800 GX2 in the future. Last month, NVidia re-announced its GeForce 9800 GX2 to accompany the GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9600 GT GPUs.

NVidia has yet to release a roadmap for when this consolidation will begin taking place.

The Santa Clara-based company’s internal product range modifications will come at a time when its first quarter profits rose 34% but still missed analyst outlooks. After Q1 ended on April 27, NVidia reported income of $176.8 million, or 30 cents per share, but financial analysts anticipated stock profit of 38 cents per share.

NVidia remains in control of the GPU market at present, with AMD still having difficulty benefitting from its 2006 purchase of ATI. Recently, Intel and NVidia have traded barbs, with an Intel engineer claiming during the Intel Developer Forum that discrete graphics cards will eventually become “unnecessary” for consumers.

“The better question to ask is this…’Moving forward will there be a need for a high-end CPU?’…probably not,” NVidia Director of Public Relations Derek Perez boldly predicted shortly afterward.

In other articles, and statements, clarification will soon be the thing that will help the average Joe determine his need for the product. It seems as though the chest thumping will be left to Mr. Ballmer, as the heads at nVidia are stopping to use some sound marketing techniques.

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Tags: nvidia, ati, graphics chips, marketing plans, customer confusion