Why nVidia is not the best anymore

King of the graphics accelerators, nVidia's products can be found in a very wide range of computer technology.  GeForce is the known name behind video game technology, and considered the best by PC gaming enthusiasts around the world.  It was not always this way, however.

Initially video games were developed by programmers who focused more on the processor in the computer, and not the video card.  In the early days of personal computers, the video card's sole purpose was to provide a picture to your monitor or television set.  As video games advanced, however, the Diamond company determined that better games, with 3d technology, could be developed with enhanced video cards, also called graphics accelerators.  Although they pioneered this technology, they were soon eclipsed by other companies.  The first to truly take the forefront of graphics accelerators was 3dfx.

3dfx quickly became famous for their Voodoo and Voodoo II graphics cards, which would allow people to play games such as Quake and Quake II in true 3d, rather than depending on 2 dimensional sprites and other tricks that game developers employed to simulate a 3d environment.  Their Voodoo 3 line was probably their best product, but later versions of their graphics accelerators ran afoul of design problems.  For various reasons, 3dfx went bankrupt, and was purchased by a rival company, nVidia.  Fans of 3dfx waited expectantly for nVidia to continue the Voodoo line, but instead, it launched its own new brand of 3d graphics card using their newly acquired technology, the GeForce card.  It shut 3dfx down entirely, and also refused to support cards that had been manufactured by the company before its downfall.

To this day, I have held a bit of a grudge against nVidia for their business practices, and have never really liked their video cards.  It was difficult, however, to ignore their products outright, after all they advertised quite heavily, and everyone swore by them.  I noticed, however, that my first nVidia card, a Voodoo 2 MX card, started to develop scorch marks on the card directly behind the GPU - which I had never experienced with any other product.  The card would cause instability in my system, especially when playing games, and would freeze up repeatedly.

The picture at the top of this article is a GeForce 5200 FX 128MB AGP video card that I just extracted from Willow's computer after she complained that her system was booting to a black screen.  Pixels were dancing across the screen during startup, even before loading windows, so it was pretty apparent what the problem was.  If you click on the thumbnail to zoom in, you will notice only the top-left and bottom-left capacitors are undamaged.  The rest are ruptured, and a couple are even leaking.

To be fair to nVidia, I do have to mention that the card manufacturer is EVGA, but I also have to mention that EVGA has a pretty decent reputation among gamers.  I also find it interesting that this particular GeForce card is only about two and a half years old.  In general, I expect my computer electronics to last at least 3 years, and preferably 5 or more before they fail.  There is no problem with any of the cooling fans in Willow's computer (she in fact has more fans than she needs, including one that blue air directly over this card from the side of the case, and her power supply has sufficient wattage.  This card simply overheated, and that is what caused the capacitors to explode.  The reason it overheated?  nVidia products draw a lot of power, even supposedly low-powered cards like the GeForce 5200 FX.

What is more disturbing are the multiple reports of newer series of GeForce GPUs suddenly failing, often within the first year of their use.  Although nVidia has not stepped forward yet to admit that the problems are real, nor have they offered a recall for the affected products, it is widespread and affects several laptop systems as well, including many Mac books.  In other words...the giant is starting to topple.  I predict it will not be king of the 3d graphics world for much longer, at least not without a significant change in how they develop their products.

In the meantime, I will stick with a respected brand that has over a decade of reliable product, and is now owned by my preferred CPU manufacturer (ATI and AMD).  If you are a gamer, and you want your graphics cards to last you more than 2 years, I recommend you switch to ATI if you have not already done so. 

Bear in mind that in perhaps just a few years time, there will be GPUs embedded in CPUs - and it will be the processor's job to handle 3d graphics in computer games once more.  What company has been both a processor manufacturer and a video card manufacturer?  AMD and ATI.  I suspect great things will be coming in the not too distant future.