Strange NVidia trend
 

I've noticed something that baffles me. When NVidia releases a new card, they usually release Card and Card Lite. On paper, Card Lite seems to be less powerful than the previous Card. For example, there is now the GeForce 7900 Go laptop GPU. It comes in two flavors: 7900 GTX (Card) and 7900 GS (Card Lite). On paper, the 7900 GS seems to be less powerful than the 7800 GTX, based on this chart at Tom's Hardware whose information was provided by Nvidia http://www.mobilityguru.com/2006/04/...710/page4.html. I don't get it.

.. And the point is? They can't release anything less powerful than what's currently out there?

The GeForce 7600/7300 cards were announced and released after the 7800 ~

Or so FiringSquad would have me beleive

No. My point is the 7900 GS is part of the 7900 family, which is supposed to be a step up from the 7800 and it's more expensive. So it should be better, right? Releasing the 7600/7300 after the 7800 is different. Those are named in such a way that they are clearly not as powerful as the 7800. Such is not the case with the 7900 GS in comparison to the 7800 GTX.

It's just how the marketing works. Generally the GS is a low end into the family, the GT is the mid-end and the GTX is the best. The number (such as 7300 or 7900) is just indictive of the GPU it uses, not always how it performs.
For example, the GeForce 7300GS sound higher than the 6800GS, but it really was only meant to outperform the previous 6200s. The 7300 actually uses a newer GPU than the 6800, it just has less pixel pipelines enabled, thus slowing it down. It's how hardware makers market things, last time I checked the Sempron 3400+ was slower than even the Athlon 64 3000+.

Yup. I suspected it was a cheap marketing ploy to get the people who don't do their research to simply buy whatever has the bigger number 'cause higher numbers are better, right? And they maintain the illusion by making the low-end versions of the new cards more expensive than the high-end versions of the older cards, which are better.

And now for something completely unrelated: I have heard that all NVidia cards with the G70/71 chipset are incapable of running both high dynamic range lighting and antialiasing at the same time, while the Radeon X1900 or whatever it's called can. So for NVidia users, if they want that, they'll have to wait for the G80 chipset. It's kind of surprising, given how high-end these cards are and the fiercely competitive nature of the video card market.

The letters, LE, GS, GT, etc. aren't as sneaky as you make it sound. You get what you pay for (usually), so going by price, you are usually doing fine. The 7300 is considerably cheaper than a 6800, so that should tip them off.