Many in the industry question Nvidia's motives for the admittedly awkward naming of their first G92 GPU's, shipped in millions of "8800 GT", 8800 GTS 512MB and "8800 GS" around the world since last fall.
I could atest first hand to some confusion in the minds of plenty of people who ask me for advice in their purchase decisions, but i also have somewhat of a theory about it.
Bear with me for a moment.
The G92 was to be the Geforce 9xxx right from the start, but the absence of a high-end refresh to the R600 ("HD 2900 XT") from AMD, and the chance to make it throughout the whole Holiday Season without having to show all the cards in the company's deck (pun not intended :D) were just too good to pass on.
Think of it as a two-part product family launch.
First they capitalize on the huge "Geforce 8800" marketing potential (it's, in many ways, the Radeon 9700 Pro from Nvidia) by calling two cheaper variants of the G92 by that name and ride the usual "Christmas shopping craze".
Second, it's no coincidence that the 8800 GTS 512MB is very similar to the 9800 GTS and 9800 GTX whose launch is near.
The 8800 GTS 512MB was probably to be launched alongside the 9800 GTX bearing the name "9800 GTS" back in November, divided from the high-end part only by it's core and memory clocks, besides a more elaborate PCB design (a lá 7900 GTX vs 7900 GT).
The 9800 GX2 is a quick answer to the Radeon HD3870 X2, but, honestly, it's only there to show off Quad-SLI once more, alongside Three-Way SLI (with the 9800 GTX, 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra in that case).
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