AcceleratorX
Newcomer
Hello everyone,
This thread is more about nostalgia than about actually asking for help. I felt Beyond3D would be the best place for this kind of thread. However, if any moderator feels this thread was in the wrong section of the forum, then please feel free to move it to the correct section.
Now, coming to my subject, I am sure many of you have owned (or maybe still do) a 6800 GT AGP edition at some point of time. Now, I do have many questions regarding the production of these cards. I have heard that all NVIDIA cards from the GeForce FX family onwards are manufactured by Flextronics and are simply rebranded and distributed to the board partners as their own card? If this is true, then why do many NVIDIA cards still differ in terms of parts used (i.e. for example different type/brand of capacitors used on different vendor's cards, some lower-tier vendors may choose to use electrolytic capacitors instead of polymer ones, etc.)? Also, many times we also see some designs which deviate from NVIDIA's reference designs. So, can I assume that NVIDIA, for all cards using its chips, only provides a "Minimum level of quality of components" specification to all its board partners, and from there vendors decide whether to stick to NVIDIA's "minimum level" or choose to go for higher quality components?
The second question I had is regarding my 6800 GT AGP. I purchased this card in 2006, despite the fact that both 7800 GS and 7600 GT were available on the AGP format by that time. The reason was that the 7800 GS cards were too costly at the time, and the 7600GT cards, though cheaper than the 6800 GT, was from "Jaton", or so the shop owner said, a brand which I didn't know well. There was also two 6800 GS AGP, from BIG ("Best in Graphics") and Zebronics, both local brands presumably manufacturing from "binned" parts at Palit or Sparkle. The Zebronics one was 512MB and resembled the Palit 6800 GS Super 512MB for AGP, but the cooler sucked compared to palit, with no ramsinks whatsoever. Anyway, scratch that. My 6800 GT is from XFX, and well, I saw that it had a few slight differences from the regular 6800 GT PCBs, as well as XFX's own 6800 GT PCB I saw in a review.
Firstly, the XFX PCB is dark blue colored and not green as initial reviews of the XFX card showed. Secondly, there is a metal plate on top of the card (I assume its for prevention against card warping). Thirdly, the capacitor placement is different. See the picture below (it shows another blue PCB of the XFX 6800 GT). The places I've circled are the exact places where the capacitors on MY card are (there are only two "big" capacitors and one "small" capacitor on the front side of all 6800 GT cards I've seen), but as you can see there is no capacitor in the picture in the second place I've circled (i.e. no capacitor near the bottom edge of the card). But there is a capacitor just above the place I circled at the bottom edge of the card, and in MY card this capacitor is not there. For some reason the placement of that particular capacitor was changed, and I do not know why.
[URL=http://img340.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xfxgeforce6800gt256fa6.jpg]
[/URL]
The second thing of interest is that I never really bothered to read the stickers on the back of the card when I first installed it. I read it now and I see a few things. It says stuff like "PV-T40A-UDF7" (model name), "GF6800GT" (obvious), "14/06/06" (A date of manufacture, or a code of some sort?),"ver. 1.4" (???)
The questions here are, if the 14/06/06 thing was really a date, then a question rises to my head that 6800 GTs were supposed to be discontinued by this time. The Ver.1.4 probably refers to a BIOS or PCB revision. However, if I remember correctly, the 6800 GS AGP contained only "reject" NV40 cores, right? And many 6800GT and 6800U in 2005 and 2006 actually had the NV48 core. So how the hell did I get a 6800GT manufactured in 2006 with an NV40 core, when the last NV40s were supposed to be low yield, defective and the lowest "quality" edition of all the NV40s, and the NV48 was in the market to replace it?
Some other nostalgia is that the board contains several NVIDIA markings as well as some NVIDIA logos, It is made in China. Made by Flextronics?
This thread is more about nostalgia than about actually asking for help. I felt Beyond3D would be the best place for this kind of thread. However, if any moderator feels this thread was in the wrong section of the forum, then please feel free to move it to the correct section.
Now, coming to my subject, I am sure many of you have owned (or maybe still do) a 6800 GT AGP edition at some point of time. Now, I do have many questions regarding the production of these cards. I have heard that all NVIDIA cards from the GeForce FX family onwards are manufactured by Flextronics and are simply rebranded and distributed to the board partners as their own card? If this is true, then why do many NVIDIA cards still differ in terms of parts used (i.e. for example different type/brand of capacitors used on different vendor's cards, some lower-tier vendors may choose to use electrolytic capacitors instead of polymer ones, etc.)? Also, many times we also see some designs which deviate from NVIDIA's reference designs. So, can I assume that NVIDIA, for all cards using its chips, only provides a "Minimum level of quality of components" specification to all its board partners, and from there vendors decide whether to stick to NVIDIA's "minimum level" or choose to go for higher quality components?
The second question I had is regarding my 6800 GT AGP. I purchased this card in 2006, despite the fact that both 7800 GS and 7600 GT were available on the AGP format by that time. The reason was that the 7800 GS cards were too costly at the time, and the 7600GT cards, though cheaper than the 6800 GT, was from "Jaton", or so the shop owner said, a brand which I didn't know well. There was also two 6800 GS AGP, from BIG ("Best in Graphics") and Zebronics, both local brands presumably manufacturing from "binned" parts at Palit or Sparkle. The Zebronics one was 512MB and resembled the Palit 6800 GS Super 512MB for AGP, but the cooler sucked compared to palit, with no ramsinks whatsoever. Anyway, scratch that. My 6800 GT is from XFX, and well, I saw that it had a few slight differences from the regular 6800 GT PCBs, as well as XFX's own 6800 GT PCB I saw in a review.
Firstly, the XFX PCB is dark blue colored and not green as initial reviews of the XFX card showed. Secondly, there is a metal plate on top of the card (I assume its for prevention against card warping). Thirdly, the capacitor placement is different. See the picture below (it shows another blue PCB of the XFX 6800 GT). The places I've circled are the exact places where the capacitors on MY card are (there are only two "big" capacitors and one "small" capacitor on the front side of all 6800 GT cards I've seen), but as you can see there is no capacitor in the picture in the second place I've circled (i.e. no capacitor near the bottom edge of the card). But there is a capacitor just above the place I circled at the bottom edge of the card, and in MY card this capacitor is not there. For some reason the placement of that particular capacitor was changed, and I do not know why.
[URL=http://img340.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xfxgeforce6800gt256fa6.jpg]
[/URL]The second thing of interest is that I never really bothered to read the stickers on the back of the card when I first installed it. I read it now and I see a few things. It says stuff like "PV-T40A-UDF7" (model name), "GF6800GT" (obvious), "14/06/06" (A date of manufacture, or a code of some sort?),"ver. 1.4" (???)
The questions here are, if the 14/06/06 thing was really a date, then a question rises to my head that 6800 GTs were supposed to be discontinued by this time. The Ver.1.4 probably refers to a BIOS or PCB revision. However, if I remember correctly, the 6800 GS AGP contained only "reject" NV40 cores, right? And many 6800GT and 6800U in 2005 and 2006 actually had the NV48 core. So how the hell did I get a 6800GT manufactured in 2006 with an NV40 core, when the last NV40s were supposed to be low yield, defective and the lowest "quality" edition of all the NV40s, and the NV48 was in the market to replace it?
Some other nostalgia is that the board contains several NVIDIA markings as well as some NVIDIA logos, It is made in China. Made by Flextronics?
