NVIDIA Moves Into Direct Retail Sales of Video Cards

[random_n]

I'm pretty sure they were Sapphire cards with ATI branding on them and I don't think they even sell their own anymore (at least I haven't seen them around in a long time).

Radeons prior to the 7500 and 8500 were only built by ATi - there were no other brands with their chips. I don't think it was until the 9700 that Sapphire built the ATi branded ones.

Ah, the good old days when ATi had only two capital letters and headquarters in Canada. Computer hardware was exciting back then! :yes:

[treemonster]

it really annoys me to no end how hard many make it.

let me qualify that-

it really anoys me to no end how hard AIB partners for both brands make the warranty/RMA process.

i often get accused of ebing an nviida fanboy on neowin, but if anything i'm an evga fanboy. and here's why. they don't simply slap together a website and forums and phone CS. they have great forums with staff reading them all day and night and respond to issues, the website is easy to use, and the phone CS is NA based.

i''ll compare to asus which makes both nvidia and amd cards: i dunno about their phone CS but up until fairly recently their website has been a mess and a PITA to navigate, their forums are mainly threads with 0 replies, and requests for volunteer mods, and when i signed up to them i couldn't get past a form error that couldn't be fixe no matter how i entered my phone number. and asus is generally regarded as a quality brand.

[threetonesun]

Radeons prior to the 7500 and 8500 were only built by ATi - there were no other brands with their chips. I don't think it was until the 9700 that Sapphire built the ATi branded ones.

Ah, the good old days when ATi had only two capital letters and headquarters in Canada. Computer hardware was exciting back then! :yes:

As was finding drivers that actually worked for the game you were playing :-D

I remember being incredibly jealous of people with NVidia chips while chugging along on my AIW 7500.

[treemonster]

As was finding drivers that actually worked for the game you were playing :-D

I remember being incredibly jealous of people with NVidia chips while chugging along on my AIW 7500.

i vaguely recall the independently written drivers for both brands that usually worked better than the official drivers. omega or something?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Yes and no. It is old news as it was reported back in January that it would happen, and it did to a certain extent as XFX had no access to Fermi, but according to what I just read, it finally officially happened today and they are no longer an "approved Nvidia partner."

Which why I left xfx out in my Intial commen because xfx no longer counts.

Oh geez, seriously? :pinch: Well you put in BFG in your comment, and BFG's totally dead, so yeah...

Does that mean anything for people with lifetime warranties on their cards? Now I can see why XFX started offering ATI/AMD cards all of a sudden earlier this year.

Radeons prior to the 7500 and 8500 were only built by ATi - there were no other brands with their chips. I don't think it was until the 9700 that Sapphire built the ATi branded ones.

Ah, the good old days when ATi had only two capital letters and headquarters in Canada. Computer hardware was exciting back then! :yes:

Oh yeah, I remember how my friend was laughing at me for boasting about my Radeon 9200 back in 2003/2004. I envied those guys with Radeon 9800s. :rofl:

I still have that card. Still works fine.

[treemonster]

Oh geez, seriously? :pinch:

Does that mean anything for people with lifetime warranties on their cards? Now I can see why XFX started offering ATI/AMD cards all of a sudden earlier this year.

well imho... xfx has more room to compete with ****ty amd(ati) AIB partners with their lifetime warranty than they do with nviida which at the very least has evga amd maybe they didn't count on bfg leaving the market. they pretty much have the best warranty in the ati ecosphere right now without much effort.

as for bfg, some people say nviida screwed them, but tbh, they left more than th egraphics car bsuines behind, liek PSUs and other products, from what i hear. nad are no longer honoring the warranty on anything.

as for xfx RMAs from nvidia cards? you can expect to get a replacement in the form of an amd(ati) card from what i hear these days.

[treemonster]

Oh yeah, I remember how my friend was laughing at me for boasting about my Radeon 9200 back in 2003/2004. I envied those guys with Radeon 9800s. :rofl:

I still have that card. Still works fine.

my first discrete video card was a 9200. it wasn't much better than my emachines' IGP(amd XP 2400+ based system) but it sure felt good. like losing your viriginity.

yeah i was a late comer to the video card market, but imho, there wasn't a big deal for it before a while after when i came into it. on that kind of rig you could have better graphics than today's xbox 360 games imho.

the 9800 was crazy good back then, and i envied people with one. thoug in retrospect maybe it wasn't really worth it, then again, it wouldn't have sttutered in glorious shader 3.0 enabled css when ther was a tonne of explosions and breaking glass on screen.

[rawr_boy81]

I always found it odd that NVIDIA didn't sell video cards directly to consumers. ATI (now AMD) has been doing it for a long time. I'm sure some of you remember the "Built by ATI" brand.

The only ones made by ATI directly are the FireGL brand, the consumer Radeon brand was put out to third parties years ago, I think for nVidia there is the same arrangement in regards to their Quadro and GeForce with the third parties.

I can understand the rationale with wanting to get back into the consumer side - keep as much value in house as possible and maybe optimise the design and drivers to give them a competitive advantage over their competitors.

[threetonesun]

i vaguely recall the independently written drivers for both brands that usually worked better than the official drivers. omega or something?

Yeah, Omega drivers. I think the ATi release schedule was once every six months back then. Seemed like every game you installed at some whacked out textures or frame rate hit until the new Omega drivers came out :wacko:

[Vice]

I got two GTX 480's and I just went with the cheapest ones available. I got 3 years warranty from Point of View. If I went with EVGA I think the warranty was 10 years but the cards started at ?100 more and since I wanted two that would have taken the price way to high just for a bit more warranty. In the past 3 years alone I've changed graphics several times so I don't see the need in paying way over the odds for a warranty I'll barely touch in time terms.

If NVIDIA expand there range and the prices are good I'll definitely buy from them in the future over resellers like BFG which as we have seen can be here one day and gone the next.

[treemonster]

I got two GTX 480's and I just went with the cheapest ones available. I got 3 years warranty from Point of View. If I went with EVGA I think the warranty was 10 years but the cards started at ?100 more and since I wanted two that would have taken the price way to high just for a bit more warranty. In the past 3 years alone I've changed graphics several times so I don't see the need in paying way over the odds for a warranty I'll barely touch in time terms.

If NVIDIA expand there range and the prices are good I'll definitely buy from them in the future over resellers like BFG which as we have seen can be here one day and gone the next.

yeah evga prices in EU are out of this world. i hear their phone support over there isn't as good or something as well.

i don't think i would buy from nvidia directly, based on the phone support being called about these cards and a guy in india saying such cards don't exist. bad CS is bad.