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Exactly this has happened to me early this week with a 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS) except I was lucky enough to catch it befo

by dirtbox 17y ago

Exactly this has happened to me early this week with a 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS) except I was lucky enough to catch it before the GPU itself became damaged. I thought it was merely a broken fan, so went about ripping apart a case fan and McGyvering it onto the card. However I haven't played any of those games, or really done anything terribly intensive aside from Zbrush and Maya, so I'm uncertain if it's related or merely a coincidence. Although, to be fair, I've never had a fan of any description die. Does anyone know of some way to check or ultimately claim for this?

Tuna-Fish 17y ago
> 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS) It's because it's the exact same card. On most rebrands, at least they bother to change the relevant identifiers, but 9800GTX+ differs from a GTS250 only by the number on the box. As such, the drivers have no way of knowing which of them you have -- they cannot even make a solid guess from batch numbers because unsold 9800GTX+ were repackaged as GTS250's. Faced with this, the driver programmers decided that less people would probably complain if they just called all the cards by the latter name. Fun fact -- differently harvested versions of the G92 chip have been sold as: - GeForce 8800 GT $2 - GeForce 8800 GS $1 - GeForce 8800 GTS - GeForce 9600 GSO $1 - GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 $$ - GeForce 9800 GT $2 - GeForce 9800 GTX - GeForce 9800 GTX+ $3 - GeForce 9800 GX2 - GeForce GTS 150 - GeForce GTS 240 - GeForce GTS 250 $3 - GeForce GT 330 Groups marked with $n are all exactly the same card, with no differences whatsoever. Many other sets have only very minor differences. $$ denotes the biggest ripoff award -- halved memory bus width and cheap memory make this card only half the speed of the normal 9600 GSO. So, if you wonder why NVidia is swimming in cash, it's because G80, and it's slightly modified shrink G92, are insanely good designs. G80 debuted in late 2006 and G92 in late 2007, and it's still selling.
- dirtbox 17y ago
  Wow. I really used to like Nvidia, but I'm leaning heavily towards an ATi on my next upgrade.
  - Tuna-Fish 17y ago
    Not really a reason. Just stop using their marketing names, and refer to their chips by their chip names/harvest percentage/clockspeed/bus speeds. So, 9800GTX+ is a full G92 running at 738MHz with a 70.4 GB/s bus. See, easy! ;) Just to update -- if you are buying a card now, ATi is quite probably the better choice, at least until NVidia gets GF100 and it's derivatives out.
    - dirtbox 17y ago
      Agreed, although my reason is more to do with losing the better part of a days work trying to fix it.
    - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
      Just to update -- if you are buying a card now, ATi is quite probably the better choice, at least until NVidia gets GF100 and it's derivatives out. Unless you're planning to run Linux, in which case the Nvidia drivers are still far and away better than any of the multiple offerings for ATi chips. Even though the Nvidia drivers are closed, they're extremely reliable and feature just about everything but Kernel Mode Setting, which is honestly not that big of a deal.
      - i80and 17y ago
        Really? I specifically chose an ATI card for its Linux support, and so far I've been extremely satisfied with both the open source and the binary blob drivers. The nv driver used by default in most distros is quite sluggish, and is plagued by all manner of quality issues. The radeonhd driver in comparison is quite stable, implements working VT switching, and full EXA acceleration with a start on 3D. (EDIT: nouveau will provide a very good replacement for nv, but so far its deployment is limited) As for the closed drivers, is stability really a problem? While I haven't had an NVIDIA card for a year or so, I seem to recall a fair number of kernel panics in graphically-intensive programs, while I have yet to experience one using fglrx (although the comparison is a big flawed, since my needs have changed quite a bit). Speed is also quite acceptable and does what I need. I'm willing to grant that nvidia is better than fglrx. Honestly I don't do all that much 3D work on Linux. But in my experience, calling nvidia "far and away better" does ATI a bit of a disservice.
- zyb09 17y ago
  Well I can't complain, I bought a 8800 GTX (G80) 2,5 years ago and still play all new games on high settings and 1920x1080 resolution. No other piece of hardware I ever bought had such longevity - this chip is pure gold.
  - Tuna-Fish 17y ago
    True. If the guy who led the G80 project isn't worth a 100M, NVidia is not paying him properly.

by dirtbox 17y ago

Tuna-Fish 17y ago

> 9800GTX+ (for some reason the drivers identify it as a 250GTS) It's because it's the exact same card. On most rebrands, at least they bother to change the relevant identifiers, but 9800GTX+ differs from a GTS250 only by the number on the box. As such, the drivers have no way of knowing which of them you have -- they cannot even make a solid guess from batch numbers because unsold 9800GTX+ were repackaged as GTS250's. Faced with this, the driver programmers decided that less people would probably complain if they just called all the cards by the latter name. Fun fact -- differently harvested versions of the G92 chip have been sold as: - GeForce 8800 GT $2 - GeForce 8800 GS $1 - GeForce 8800 GTS - GeForce 9600 GSO $1 - GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 $$ - GeForce 9800 GT $2 - GeForce 9800 GTX - GeForce 9800 GTX+ $3 - GeForce 9800 GX2 - GeForce GTS 150 - GeForce GTS 240 - GeForce GTS 250 $3 - GeForce GT 330 Groups marked with $n are all exactly the same card, with no differences whatsoever. Many other sets have only very minor differences. $$ denotes the biggest ripoff award -- halved memory bus width and cheap memory make this card only half the speed of the normal 9600 GSO. So, if you wonder why NVidia is swimming in cash, it's because G80, and it's slightly modified shrink G92, are insanely good designs. G80 debuted in late 2006 and G92 in late 2007, and it's still selling.

dirtbox 17y ago
Wow. I really used to like Nvidia, but I'm leaning heavily towards an ATi on my next upgrade.
- Tuna-Fish 17y ago
  Not really a reason. Just stop using their marketing names, and refer to their chips by their chip names/harvest percentage/clockspeed/bus speeds. So, 9800GTX+ is a full G92 running at 738MHz with a 70.4 GB/s bus. See, easy! ;) Just to update -- if you are buying a card now, ATi is quite probably the better choice, at least until NVidia gets GF100 and it's derivatives out.
  - dirtbox 17y ago
    Agreed, although my reason is more to do with losing the better part of a days work trying to fix it.
  - nuclear_eclipse 17y ago
    Just to update -- if you are buying a card now, ATi is quite probably the better choice, at least until NVidia gets GF100 and it's derivatives out. Unless you're planning to run Linux, in which case the Nvidia drivers are still far and away better than any of the multiple offerings for ATi chips. Even though the Nvidia drivers are closed, they're extremely reliable and feature just about everything but Kernel Mode Setting, which is honestly not that big of a deal.
    - i80and 17y ago
      Really? I specifically chose an ATI card for its Linux support, and so far I've been extremely satisfied with both the open source and the binary blob drivers. The nv driver used by default in most distros is quite sluggish, and is plagued by all manner of quality issues. The radeonhd driver in comparison is quite stable, implements working VT switching, and full EXA acceleration with a start on 3D. (EDIT: nouveau will provide a very good replacement for nv, but so far its deployment is limited) As for the closed drivers, is stability really a problem? While I haven't had an NVIDIA card for a year or so, I seem to recall a fair number of kernel panics in graphically-intensive programs, while I have yet to experience one using fglrx (although the comparison is a big flawed, since my needs have changed quite a bit). Speed is also quite acceptable and does what I need. I'm willing to grant that nvidia is better than fglrx. Honestly I don't do all that much 3D work on Linux. But in my experience, calling nvidia "far and away better" does ATI a bit of a disservice.
zyb09 17y ago
Well I can't complain, I bought a 8800 GTX (G80) 2,5 years ago and still play all new games on high settings and 1920x1080 resolution. No other piece of hardware I ever bought had such longevity - this chip is pure gold.
- Tuna-Fish 17y ago
  True. If the guy who led the G80 project isn't worth a 100M, NVidia is not paying him properly.