nVidia playing silly buggers with names again

[Garp]

Originally Posted by A Place of Light

I recently bought an 8800.
You just never know when it's the right time to buy, lol.

If you look at `devine's list you'll notice you've bought the same chipset as in the most of their graphics cards, and I'll bet you paid less for it than one of those rebrands.

[Mark]

Sounds a bit like the Intel P4 rebrand, only much worse. Shocking.

So, we've now had from nVidia:

• Faulty thermal design on laptop chips.
• Withdrawing support for older chips without good reason (the newer drivers still worked with a fairly trivial hack).
• Spurious rebrands, just as an excuse to bump up the price and confuse everyone.

So, who wants to buy nVidia hardware now?

[A Place of Light]

Originally Posted by Garp

If you look at `devine's list you'll notice you've bought the same chipset as in the most of their graphics cards, and I'll bet you paid less for it than one of those rebrands.

I knew it was almost exactly the same card as the 9800GT, so as I don't game much these days it seemed like a good bet. Bought it second hand on the bay of E for £70 or so.

[Streeteh]

Originally Posted by Mark

So, who wants to buy nVidia hardware now?

You forgot to add the fact that they've pissed off both Microsoft and Sony with the way they behaved when manufacturing GPUs for their consoles. Combine that with the items you listed and they've alienated both the PC market and the majority of console manufacturers.

So, with that said, i would wager nobody wants to buy from them.

[divine]

Originally Posted by Streeteh

So, with that said, i would wager nobody wants to buy from them.

Apple seem happy to buy stuff from them. Apple were happy enough with PowerPC though until recently so...

[Garp]

I do, for one reason only these days. Their Linux drivers "just work".
I've had so many frustrations with ATI drivers under linux that it's never been something I've particularly wanted to subject myself to again.

[Mark]

Indeed. I got a 7300GS for my Linux box when I rebuilt it 18 months ago for three reasons - 'just working' drivers, passivly cooled, and none of that 'virtual' RAM nonsense.

[mok`]

Unfortunately I need to stick with nVidia for Linux support and CUDA (for my BOINCing).

Thing is, I bought 2 8800GT's for around oooh, £50 each from the OC of UK about 9 months ago, now similarly-specced cards are selling for about £80 new and about £60-£70 second-hand. First time ever Ive had hardware (particularly gfx cards) actually increase in value over time!

[Mark]

Originally Posted by mok`

Unfortunately I need to stick with nVidia for Linux support and CUDA (for my BOINCing).

MilkyWay@home has an ATI client in development if you're into such things (credit to br83taylor on OcUK for pointing this out).

[Garp]

I'm hoping OpenCL will continue to gain prominence and maybe make it's appearance in various forms like the @home projects.