Re: Nvida card

BillW50 wrote:
Ben Myers wrote on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:50:18 -0500:
Well, nVidia has a somewhat spotty history of designing graphics chips that run hot and fast. Add to this the fact that nVidia will sell its chips and reference hardware design to anybody at all, and you end up with all kinds of nVidia graphics cards made to various levels of quality by manufacturers of good and ill repute. If the card manufacturer uses a cheap cooling fan on the card and the fan wears out, the board overheats and it is history. If the card is used in a dusty dirty environment with (especially) lots of animal hair or feathers, the fans clog up, stop running, and the graphics chip burns up.

I suspect that Dell got sick and tired of dealing with nVidia graphics card problems.

On balance, I would prefer ATI. But, here again, you have ATI-branded cards (i.e. the cards themselves in addition to the chips) and Pacific Rim manufacturers wanting to make a quick buck.

Shop carefully.

FWIW, I have been using an older Diamond brand AGP card with an ATI chip for several years. No problems. Diamond once was a leader in branded graphics cards, but with several changes in ownership, who knows about Diamond now? ... Ben Myers

I too have had a few nVidia cards. And when they work, they work very well. But some have been iffy at best. I have had 7 Intel video cards now and they have been solid as a rock. Oldest one is 8 years old now.


I guess I've dealt with too many nVidia chip failures. I've replaced a number of failed/failing nVidia desktop cards, but the worst are the laptops with nVidia graphics. Some Dell laptops (e.g. Inspiron 5100/5150/5160 which I know well, and some Latitude C-series) offered the choice of nVidia or ATI graphics, implemented with a graphics that attaches to the motherboard. In this case, if the graphics bites the dust, the replacement is an easy 10-minute job. A friend of mine laments his older HP laptop with a now-flaky nVidia graphics chip soldered right onto the motherboard. His only choice is to replace the laptop motherboard, an expensive and time-consuming job.

Like you say, when an nVidia graphics card works, it works very well. I'd far rather have slower but stable long-term use, longer than a New York minute. But, then, nVidia thinks of itself as the high-performance graphics company, and their chip OEMs cut corners by overclocking to make matters even worse.

None of this shows up much in mainstream computer publications because we don't want to offend nVidia... Ben Myers
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