GeForce buyers guide

Most of the PC users even gamers doesn't have much knowledge about graphics cards. We have seen people buying graphics cards by looking at their price or picture above the package box. It is all wrong. Graphics card itself is like a small computer having motherboard, processor and memory. Main things we can note about graphics card are chipset, manufacturer and memory.

Judging a card's performance by memory is also wrong.. For eg: Geforce 6100LE with 512MB RAM will be like using 1GB RAM on Pentium 300Mhz CPU.
Before you buy a graphics card, you should do a detailed study about that card. Search in Google for comparison and benchmark with other cards of that range is a must.

Introduction to GeForce
GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by Nvidia. Top two brands in graphics card are Nvidia GeForce & ATI Radeon(current owned by AMD).
Budget wise Radeon cards are cheaper than Geforce considering similar performance. But in reliability and quality GeForce is better than Radeon.


Generations of GeForce
Every year Nvidia release new generations of GeForce cards with better performance and advanced technologies.

• GeForce 256 (1991)
• GeForce2 (2000)
• GeForce3 (2001)
• GeForce4 (2002)
• GeForce FX (2003)
• GeForce 6 (2004)
• GeForce 7 (2005 - 2006)
• GeForce 8 (2007) *
  
• GeForce 9 (2008) *
  

* series support DirectX 10

Chipset Number

Every GeForce chipset have a number. for eg: 8600. First digit i.e. 8 is the series/generation and the rest digits are models of that series (bigger number will have higher performance and price.. see Product Naming Scheme)

If we look at GeForce 7 series chipsets. There are several models like 7100, 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950..

• 7100 is the cheapest and lowest in performance. Normally used in inbuilt motherboard graphics and all. Can run games only at low resolution and details.
• 7200, 7300 is for gamers who cannot afford much. They can run games at low resolution and medium details.
• 7600 for budget gamers. They can run games at medium resolution and medium/high details.
• 7800 is for high end gamers. They can run games at high resolution and high details.
• 7900, 7950 are for hardcore gamers who want best. They can run games at max resolution and details.
  

* Note that the all cards will age. Growth of graphics & gaming industry is in exponential rate. Newer games will have more requirements. So we will need to buy new cards every years or 2..

New series cards are more powerful than older series and have lots of supports for current and future games..
For eg: benchmarks proves that GeForce 9400 card = GeForce 8600 = GeForce 7800 in performance..

Product Naming Scheme (source: wikipedia)
This scheme is only applicable to the GeForce FX and above series video cards, however GeForce4 and earlier cards follow a similar pattern.

* Shader amount compares the number of shaders pipelines or units in that particular model range to the highest model possible in the generation.

Card Suffixes
There are suffixes like LE, GS, GT, GTS and GTX/Ultra besides these numbers which are performance factor.

• GTX/Ultra is for mad gamers who can spend lots of money for gaming equipments.. This monster is designed to run future games(after a year) in max quality.
• GTS is for for hardcore gamers.. This one is designed to run current and upcoming games in max quality.
• GS, GT are for normal gamers who cant afford too mch high pricy cards.. This can run current games in max/high quality.. Best choice if u upgrade ur pc regulary. GT is faster than GS.
• LE is stripped down version. It is cheapest and weakest..
  

Gaming Performance vs. Integrated Graphics
Just an example to show the performance difference between some of latest cards. This give more idea about performance variation by chipsets. (Source: nvida website)
GeForce 9800 - 22x
GeForce 8800 - 18x
GeForce 9600 - 15x
GeForce 7900 - 14x
GeForce 8600 - 13x
GeForce 8500 - 5x
GeForce 8400 - 3.8x

Memory
Don't be fooled into thinking the more the memory more performance. Benchmarks proves that high memory doesn't benefit anything in gaming performance unless u run games at very high resolution.

Memory bandwidth is more important than the amount of memory on the card. 3D performance is defined by the speed at which information can get to the GPU , and the memory bandwidth determines just how quickly the graphics processor can get data to and from the memory built onto the graphics card. The greater the bandwidth, the better. There are several memory types like GDDR, GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4,etc. Current generation cards uses GDD3 memory. In future it will be GDDR4.