Who are PNY, EVGA, 3D FUSION....all that to Nvidia??

I am new to DIY own pc...and recently I am upgrading my video card.
NVIDIA is what I know is good and looking for to fit my need, rite, but
then when I check stores online, I see so many GeForce product....and
somehow I see a sticker of NVIDIA on the box in pictures, so I wonder
what is the situation between them, which added up a question to
think....if they are "basically the same," should I get from NVIDIA
ones or they are really the same? Thanks!

schrieb:

I am new to DIY own pc...and recently I am upgrading my video card.
NVIDIA is what I know is good and looking for to fit my need, rite, but
then when I check stores online, I see so many GeForce product....and
somehow I see a sticker of NVIDIA on the box in pictures, so I wonder
what is the situation between them, which added up a question to
think....if they are "basically the same," should I get from NVIDIA
ones or they are really the same?

Nvidia doesn't make gfx cards. Nvidia makes the gfx processors (GPUs)
and sells them to board makers who solder them on their gfx cards...

Benjamin

And there are some good board makers, and there are some bad
ones. If you do not choose a reputable dealer, and, instead, go
with one of the "kid stuff" board makers, you will truly be sorry!
In addition, there are "sales" companies who seem to be holding
a lot of refurbs and damaged stock. If you get a cheapie, that is
what you will get. And finally, nVidia has deemed it unnecessary
to support older games in their drivers. You will have problems
in the games more than 2 years old with a newer nVidia card.
The games will not recognize the card, and auto-detect settings
will not work. That tends to corrupt the "write-backs" in those
games, and the wrong settings caused by that will crash the
game. If you can find an older nVidia GT model, you might do
OK.

johns

johns schrieb:

And there are some good board makers, and there are some bad
ones. If you do not choose a reputable dealer, and, instead, go
with one of the "kid stuff" board makers, you will truly be sorry!

That's right!

And finally, nVidia has deemed it unnecessary
to support older games in their drivers. You will have problems
in the games more than 2 years old with a newer nVidia card.

Don't tell my over two year old games that run fine with the latest
Nvidia drivers that they shouldn't ;-) You certainly can name a few
games that have problems with current Nvidia drivers, right?

The games will not recognize the card, and auto-detect settings
will not work.

Games don't need to recognize the type of gfx cards any more because
they usually use standard APIs like Direct3D and OpenGL which are
transparent to applications...

Benjamin

Tell that to Far Cry .. hope you enjoy all those LOW autodetect
settings on your new 6800 GS .. and all the artifacts if Far Cry
sets anything to Very High.

johns

johns schrieb:

Tell that to Far Cry .. hope you enjoy all those LOW autodetect
settings on your new 6800 GS .. and all the artifacts if Far Cry
sets anything to Very High.

Where is the problem? FarCry runs fine on a 6800GS without artifacts...

Benjamin

Cranking all the Far Cry sliders to max, the 6800GT I have can still do
about 42 frames/sec without artifacts at 1280x1024. (AMD Ath M @2083/166)
Using drivers newer than the 77 series may cause problems.

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
johns schrieb:

Tell that to Far Cry .. hope you enjoy all those LOW autodetect
settings on your new 6800 GS .. and all the artifacts if Far Cry
sets anything to Very High.

Where is the problem? FarCry runs fine on a 6800GS without artifacts...

Benjamin

Chuck wrote:
Cranking all the Far Cry sliders to max, the 6800GT I have can still do
about 42 frames/sec without artifacts at 1280x1024. (AMD Ath M @2083/166)
Using drivers newer than the 77 series may cause problems.

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
johns schrieb:

Tell that to Far Cry .. hope you enjoy all those LOW autodetect
settings on your new 6800 GS .. and all the artifacts if Far Cry
sets anything to Very High.
Where is the problem? FarCry runs fine on a 6800GS without artifacts...

Benjamin



Regarding older game "incompatibility"; the reason some older games
don't properly detect newer hardware is due to having hardcoded
preferences for specific cards. Via standard API's, a game can query a
piece of hardware for specific "ID's" (like VENDOR_ID, DEVICE_ID etc)
that tell it who made the card, what specific model is it, and thus
associate that ID with different graphics settings.

The problem lies in games that are no longer supported or updated to
include newer hardware, they can't properly detect it and revert to
generic settings (i.e. "Unknown Geforce based", or even "Generic Riva
TNT" for certain older titles).

So, you get the lowest common denominator for autosettings. But this
isn't the fault of NVIDIA or their drivers, it's that the games used
hardcoded settings and are unmaintained. Sometimes NVIDIA does
application detection to alleviate outstanding issues with specific
games, especially when a developer relations chain (if one exists!) has
failed to produce results.

As a future example, if at some point Half-Life 2 is not patched
further, or falls out of maintenance; it will not autodetect the
appropriate settings for future hardware very well. It stores a list of
ID's in its bin\dxsupport.cfg file and uses that to set specific
settings and internal options to better support hardware specific bugs.

So it's not that older games won't run with new hardware, you just have
to configure them manually and I haven't seen any game yet that has such
arcane configuration options that even a neophyte gamer cannot
understand them enough to get it running.