By Mike Chambers - August 27, 2001

INTRODUCTION

id Software's GLQuake

It wasn't until the TNT debuted a couple of years later that NVIDIA became a legitimate contender in the 3D graphics chipset market. Since that time, I've been riding the NVIDIA wave, as many of you also have, to an enriched gaming experience.

MadOnion's 3DMark2001

With graphics cards becoming more powerful and game developers embracing leading-edge development tools, image quality in the games we play will continue to improve.

id Software's Doom3

NVIDIA has often stated that a major goal of theirs is to render a frame of photo-realistic 3D graphics in 1/60th of a second (60 frames per second).

nV News is a fan site for owners of NVIDIA-based products. While we report on a variety of computer hardware and gaming topics, the majority of our content is related to NVIDIA and their add-in partnerss.

nV News has been on-line since April of 1998 and provides news, reviews of NVIDIA and other PC products, and a message board for our visitors to use.

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nV News has also joined forces with NetShelter Technology Media. Should you wish to broaden your advertising across their network of advertisers, please fill out the following form.

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WILL NVNEWS POST MY NEWS?

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WHO IS NVIDIA?

NVIDIA Corporation, traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol NVDA, is a leading designer of 3D graphics and motherboard chipsets for consumer and professional markets. Their products, which are branded under the TNT, GeForce, Quadro, and nForce names, span a wide variety of personal computing and workstation platforms including Windows, Macintosh, and various implementations of Linux.

NVIDIA has recently entered other technology markets and struck a deal with Microsoft to deliver the video and audio components for the Xbox game console system. In June of 2001, NVIDIA announced the nForce motherboard chipset.

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nV News is considered to be an "NVIDIA affiliated" web site. By remaining in contact with NVIDIA's public relations department, we are able to keep visitors abreast of events that are happening within the company and upcoming product announcements. Although NVIDIA is "tight-lipped" concerning future product announcements, that doesn't keep our forum members from reporting rumors that are spread across the grapevine.

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NVIDIA's Chief Executive Officer and President is Jen-Hsun Huang, who co-founded the company in 1993 along with Chris Malachowsky, Vice President of Hardware Engineering, and Curtis Priern. We have assembled the following links about Jen-Hsun (pronounced as Jensen).

• Wired Magazine - Meet NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang
• CNET News.com - NVIDIA: Inside? Outside? Everywhere?
• Stanford University - Presentation by Jen-Hsun Huang and Q&A Session (Streamed Video)
• Clubic - Exclusive Interview with Jen-Hsun Huang (translated by Google)
• Microsoft - Jen-Hsun Huang's remarks at the 2003 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC)

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Referred to as add-in card partners, these companies use components designed by NVIDIA in their graphics card offerings. NVIDIA does not sell graphics cards to the consumer, while the add-in manufacturer does. A listing of add-in card partners can be found at NVIDIA's web site.

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Major computer retailers, such as Best Buy and CompUSA, and local computer shops carry NVIDIA based graphics cards. Many add-in card manufacturers have on-line stores where their brand of graphics card can be purchased. NVIDIA also maintains a where to buy page.

Our popular Price Page contains links by graphics chipset and add-in card manufacturer to vendors who are selling NVIDIA based graphics cards on Pricewatch. The For Sale/Trade forum can also be used to buy and/or sell computer hardware.

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You would normally contact the vendor, by phone or using their web site, where you purchased the graphics card for support. If you are technically inclined and can exhibit some patience, you can visit the outdated GeForce FAQ.

You can post a message in our NVIDIA Graphics Cards forum as many of our forum regulars are usually willing to lend a helping hand. If your problem is related to Linux, please use the Linux And NVIDIA Graphics forum. There are also a number of forums at other web sites that may provide assistance.

Here are a few other suggestions, in no particular order, from our forums. Note that we cannot be held accountable for any undesirable effects these suggestions may cause.

• Install the latest official reference graphics driver from NVIDIA. In some cases, a previous driver set may correct a particular problem.



• Use the graphics card on another computer. This procedure can determine if the graphics card is faulty.



• Ensure that your power supply is adequate. Many new graphics cards require external power and a power supply that can deliver a minimum of ### watts is recommended.



• Ensure the graphics processor is getting proper cooling by verifying that the fan on the graphics card is working.



• Hold the graphics card up to a light and see if there's a gap between the graphics processor and the heatsink. Sometimes a heatsink can be slightly warped and will not have enough surface area touching the graphics processor to cool it properly.



• Carefully remove the heatsink in order to verify there's enough thermal paste or that a thermal pad is making contact with the graphics processor.



• Stability can be compromised by an running on an AGP bus speed greater than 66MHz. If the front side bus (FSB) on the motherboard has been increased, you may need to gradually lower it until the system becomes stable. Also check to see if there's an AGP divider option available in the BIOS.



• The AGP voltage might be fluctuating and dipping below the minimum voltage. Try increasing the AGP voltage in the BIOS to the next highest setting.



• Check for an updated BIOS for the motherboard or graphics card.

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Try this link.

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The official release of the latest drivers can always be downloaded from NVIDIA's web site

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Yes. Detailed documentation is provided in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.

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A great place to start for Linux related driver questions is our Linux discussion forum. This forum is popular since NVIDIA provides a link to it from their Linux drivers page.

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There are various programs that can be used to measure the performance of your graphics card. Please refer to our Benchmarking Guide, which is still useful but somewhat outdated, and the Technology Page on how to benchmark and where to obtain popular benchmarking programs.

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Overclocking is a technique used to increase the clock speeds on a graphics card in order to gain performance. NVIDIA based graphics cards contain a processor and memory clock speed both of which can be adjusted independently. While overclocking is usually not recommended by manufacturers, many of them provide overclocking software. For instructions on how to overclock using NVIDIA's reference drivers, please check out the GeForce FAQ.

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The most popular user-developed tweaking program for NVIDIA based graphics cards are aTuner, GeForce Tweak Utility, nvHardPage, and RivaTuner. An excellent tutorial on RivaTuner can be found at BoogleTech. Keep in mind that enabling driver features that are exposed by these programs is normally done by automatically updating the Windows registry. It's a good idea to become familiar with a feature before using it.

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Yes, NVIDIA maintains an FTP download server that contains demos, documentation, drivers, screensavers, wallpaper, and videos.

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You can find game and technology demos at NVIDIA's FTP download server, nZone, or their demos web page. The X-Isle: Dinosaur Island is an impressive demo and can be downloaded from MegaGames.

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