Talk:Nvidia/Archive 2

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1 Archive 2

3Dfx

Under the section "Market Leadership: GeForce", the article claims that nVidia purchased 3Dfx. This is patently untrue. Only the IP rights and the rights to make offers to the employees nVidia wanted to hire were purchased. I believe the stock still exists in some form (though no longer listed). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.21.109.85 (talkcontribs) 07:45, 5 March 2007‎

Shortcomings of the GeForce FX section

Some person had rewritten this section some time back, incorporating content from subsequent sections chronicling the later GeForces. The protion of this section towards the end feels like POV'd. I've removed some obvious POV, but I guess the section can be rewritten from an objective and factual point of view. rohith 18:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Build by NVIDIA (BBN) and others

I can't seem to find it in the article.

The BBN was widely used for nForce 680i and nForce 680i LT and some nForce 590, why it's not mentioned anywhere in the article, and where is the market history of desktop chipset sections?

BTW, RSX in PS3 and Xbox GPU are not PC chipsets!! --202.71.240.18 12:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Key People, Company info, etc

Anyone have info to contribute. Obviously Jensen isn't the ONLY key person...

SLI and GeForce 6

SLI came along with the Geforce 6 series, not the 7. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 170.148.198.158 (talk) 13:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC).

Old Drivers?

What is the point of the "old drivers" link in the infobox? It's quite handy, but that is not what wikipedia is for. All that is required is the official homepage. vLaDsINgEr 15:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Consoles with ATI chips

Is the part about Microsoft and Nintendo using ATI chips instead of NVIDIA chips in their consoles really necessary? 195.23.216.233 15:08, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The part about Microsoft and Nintendo using ATI chip instead of NVIDIA chips in the consoles really necessary 195.23.216.233 No, nVidia is the best chip ever opinion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


 Done Neıl 13:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Requested move 2

NVIDIANvidia — Pretty clear cut in my opinion. The current name violates MOS:TM as there is no reason to have the name in all capitals just because the company wants people to write it that way. There is precedence (like Time instead of TIME, PlayStation 3 instead of PLAYSTATION 3. We are not supposed to use odd capitalizations just because the trademark owner encourages it. —TJ Spyke 03:43, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
  • Support. I might have allowed nVidia, a variation on the accepted eBay/iPod capitalisation trick, but reading the previous move request, the company no longer follows this style. So "Nvidia" is now the correct page. I bet there are many wikilinks to NVIDIA, and they should be corrected also. Llamasharmafarmerdrama (talk) 10:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. Evidence is that outside the company "Nvidia" is preferred [1]. The company's own preference should be ignored, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - The MoS serves to provide consistency within Wikipedia, and an all-caps non-abbreviated article title is against the consistency and the MoS. Neier (talk) 12:12, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support as above. Tigeron (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think we need to settle this as part of a much broader issue with WP:NC: there are many, many other articles on companies that do not follow the current MOS: WESCO International, NOVA Chemicals, DISH Network Corporation, PACCAR, CIGNA, ENSCO International are only a few of the many examples. I think the company articles are a different animal than the product articles of TIME and PLAYSTATION (where I agree all caps is ridiculous). It comes down to this: in the company naming issue, in modifying WP:NC to allow caps in this specific case we would be following the practice of others who write about the companies, like cnn, the New York Times, etc., etc. I have opened a thread here; can all interested parties weigh in there before we move this page? Thanks. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
    • See WP:WAX. Hell, I started this move request after someone was complaining about this article being wrong (the person was trying to move Galaxy Technologies to GALAXY Technologies). TJ Spyke 05:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, per nom. Though I would not be opposed to "nVidia" per the eBay/iPod passage of WP:MOSTM, pronunciation, semantic distinction and consistency with the nForce brand. - Cyrus XIII (talk) 20:51, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose The MoS may say editors should decap regardless of trademark holder preference, but I feel it's elitist for editors to impose their personal preferences instead of the trademark holders preferences. ++Lar: t/c 23:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
    How are the preferences personal? Would you support using the star in Macy*s? The exclamation point in P!nk? Should we refrain from capitalizing adidas and thirtysomething and craigslist? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
    Yes to all of those, if that is how the trademark holders want them done. When evaluating one preference against another (which is really what this is... some editors who happened to put together our MoS and their collective preferences, versus the owners of the marks in question), I give far greater weight to the owner than to random editors, even if you could muster 10000 of them all unanimously speaking. That's just me and my preference for how things ought to be done regarding commercial things, of course, but I feel the MoS is deeply flawed in this area and has been from the get go. Hence, since we're surveying, what the MoS says matters not a whit to me since it's, in my personal view, wrong. :) I expect that my view won't carry the day but I do want it on record. You'll of course get my willing consensus to go along with whatever we come out with, but you won't have my personal agreement that the correct answer was arrived at. ++Lar: t/c 01:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
    Oh don't worry. I've got no dog in this race, and I'm not going to whack you with a "rule" or something. I wonder whether you're familiar with the justification behind WP:MOSTM, which isn't, as far as I understand it, based on preferences at all, but on WP:NOT and WP:NPOV. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
    I've read it and I think the attempted application of NPOV in that instance is flawed... because it inherently IS a preference matter. Taking the line of "we're going to do it as we like, regardless of the trademark holder's view or wish" is inherently non neutral, it's "anti trademark owner", and no amount of tortured reasoning can convince me differently. I rather think the analogy is more along the lines of BLP's and marginal notability cases w.r.t. deletes, actually... in marginal cases, we honor the living person's wishes, absent a compelling reason not to. Well here, every single case of how to capitalise or punctuate a trademark really *is* marginal if you think about it (in the grand scheme of things it is not going to stylistically kill us one way or the other to capitalize things one way or the other), and our default position is "screw the property owner, (because, remember... a trademark is a kind of property, it has economic value and can be bought and sold) we're going to do as we like, they can go hang, nasty dirty money grubbers, who cares about them, we have a Free Project to do here, who cares about property rights or diluting someone else's valuable property by misuing it... screw them.". If I controlled a big corporation, I guess that would make me more/less (pick one) likely to be kindly disposed to WMF's projects? And that would be in general a: good/bad (pick one) thing? So no, I'm indeed very familiar with the (in my view) exceedingly flawed justification behind WP:MOSTM... ++Lar: t/c 02:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
    Yeah, I really don't think NPOV is a very good fit there either. I think it's more a case of WP:NOT, in particular Wikipedia is not a soapbox for advertising, and certain aspects of formatting essentially constitute advertising. To take an extreme case, would you support the rendering FedEx? I think if we were to use such a formatting, it would make it look as if we were advertising for them, which is what I see as being at stake. I mean, when the New York Times refers to LEGOS as "Legos", do they care whether they're diluting someone's brand name, and not disposing a company well towards them? Should they? Should we? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The guideline is very clear that we choose from among the various formats that already exist in the language. We don't somehow decide in an arbitrary way. In fact, your apparent concession that the guideline calls for this move seems to indicate that the rule is straightforward and you recognize that it applies in this case. No major publication recognizes that trademark owners have some "right" to compel others to use their wacky formats. It would not serve our readers to allow, as GTBacchus says, advertising principles to invade our encyclopedia. Croctotheface (talk) 03:48, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Er, no, we're not choosing arbitrary ways... don't fool yourself there, please. We're deliberately choosing the way the owner of the property does not want, as a snub to them, and as a way to devalue their property. (and potentially, if taken far enough, as a way to get lawsuits... I believe LEGO, for example, has sued organizations over the use of the term "LEGOS" rather than LEGO elements if their warnings were unheeded. I may be mistaken about that but it is not unheard of for a trademark owner to sue, in fact trademark law requires a vigorous defense of trademarks by the holders). The MOS/TM guideline is wrong in this, but it will prevail anyway... not because it's a good idea to thumb one's nose this way, but because there are people that give the appearance that they like thumbing their noses at property owners for no good reason at all, that's about all I'm conceding in this. ++Lar: t/c 04:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The notion that we seek to "devalue their property" is just incorrect as a matter of fact. We do not have a policy of doing the opposite of what a trademark owner wishes. Our guideline says that we do not accord a formatting more weight because it is preferred by the trademark owner. We format nearly all trademarks the way the owner wants because nearly all trademarks are formatted in ways that accord with standard English. The trademark infringement/dilution claim is also without merit; if we are somehow guilty, then basically every major publication is likewise guilty. A large number of them use Lego and Nvidia. Croctotheface (talk) 06:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, in actual practice we tend to follow such publications as the New York Times. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Which, I beleive, is better equipped to defend against lawsuits than we are. ++Lar: t/c 11:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Do you genuinely think that decapitalizing trademarks leaves us open to legal challenges? If so, that sounds like an important thing to bring up at WP:MOSTM. If that's not the case, then we should find that out for sure. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I think there is some small chance of it, yes. Not a big chance. Probably marginal to nil for most trademark holders. The chance is larger for nouning adjectives though than for miscapitalization. Most trademark holders will be more likely to be upset about usages like "Legos are cool" (vs. "Lego blocks are cool" which retains LEGO as an adjective) as that is much more dilutive of the trademark and therefore more strongly needs to be defended, than they are about LEGO vs Lego. But if you can avoid a small chance easily, does it matter exactly how small the chance is? No. Prudent risk management says if a particular risk is costless to avoid, avoid it. This avoidance is essentially costless. ++Lar: t/c 16:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Trademark dilution generally applies to cases where someone uses a trademarked word or phrase to refer to something other than what it is designed to represent. If we started calling our encyclopedia "Legopedia" just because we thought it sounded cool, then we would likely be liable for diluting the trademark. Using the brand name Lego or Tivo or Xerox to refer to generic equivalents is the same idea: it dilutes the power of the mark because it is being used to refer to other products unrelated to Lego's or Tivo's products. Choosing to use different typography does not at all dilute the mark; it's the same word, just formatted in standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, Lar, I'm not seeing it. I don't see that we gain anything by using special formatting, and it's not true that there is no cost. The cost is that we make Wikipedia a vehicle for other people's advertising, and that we cross the line from description to promotion. I'd prefer to get a clear answer from legal than to assume that there's any risk that we're avoiding, because the avoidance is not costless. -GTBacchus(talk) 22:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. Nvidia is not an invention and it is in fact prevalent in sources. Our guidelines call for the move. Croctotheface (talk) 03:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per UnitedStatesian. And NVIDIA is the name used by the company, just check their website. Gsingh (talk) 13:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, we shouldn't be held hostage to companies' random typographical whims. Chris Cunningham (talk) 13:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Well that's certainly neutral all right... your personal preferences aren't whims of course, only the property owners. :) ++Lar: t/c 17:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Again, we are not hostile to the trademark owner; in the vast majority of cases, we use their formatting because it is standard. I could flip your question: why are you hostile to the language? Croctotheface (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 3

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved.

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was - retain at Nvidia as per WP:MOSTM - WP:NC (companies) applies to legal status for dab purposes. Keith D (talk) 22:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

NvidiaNVIDIA — This article is about the company, not the trademark. So, it should conform to not MOS:TM, but WP:NC (companies), according to which an article is to be named after the official name of the company. The offical name of the company is NVIDIA Corporation. Hence, the article should be titled simply NVIDIA —, so speaks rohith. 22:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
  • Oppose per the reasons the article was just moved a month ago. Speedy close since the very recent discussion showed the consensus is not to violate MOS just because a company wants us too. TJ Spyke 00:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:MOSTM: "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting 'official'." WP:NC (companies) doesn't say anything about using all caps or official names. — AjaxSmack 00:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
    This article comes under the purview of NC (companies) and not MOS:TM. This fact seems to have been forgotten in the previous RM. As you can see in the first RM, we came to the conclusion that it is indeed WP:NC (companies) that has to be followed here. Please read the argument for this RM before Supporting or Opposing the motion.
    According to NC (companies), the article is to be named after the official name of the company. However, the legal status of the company (in English: Corp., plc, Inc. or LLC; similar statuses in other languages that can come either after or before the company name), is not normally included. --, so speaks rohith. 00:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
    You say, "According to NC (companies), the article is to be named after the official name of the company." Could you please cite the part you are referring to because I don't see it. — AjaxSmack 04:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • NC (companies) talks about including the legal status of the company ("Inc.", "Co.", etc.), and does not mention letting articles violate MOS. The only way NC (C) would apply here would be if the debate was over "Nvidia" or "Nivida, Inc.". Odd capitalizations still fall under MOS and MOSTM. TJ Spyke 17:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose and close as per User:TJ Spyke. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies) does not support this and even has a ==see also== link to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) which is very clear -- unless it is "N.V.I.D.I.A." there is no reason to use all capitals. Llamasharmafarmerdrama (talk) 20:07, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - nowhere does it say that other sections of the MoS are superceded by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies), or that the fact that the company name is shortened should give free rein for anyone to ignore the other well-established naming conventions. Neier (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • oppose. previous move in January 2008 seems very sensible. Mcmullen writes (talk) 22:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per clear guidelines in WP:MOSTM since this is not an acronym. --DAJF (talk) 06:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Within the English-language Wikipedia we use English-language conventions. The Commercial Jargon Wikipedia can do things differently if desired. -- Pedant17 (talk) 07:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The commonest way to write it is nVidia - but we couldn't do that even if we wanted to - so no matter what, we get it wrong. Nvidia is as good as any compromise. SteveBaker (talk) 02:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

-- The company's official name as seen in the California Secretary of State's Business Portal, the company's NASDAQ scrip quote, its filing with the SEC and its very own Press Releases, so speaks rohith. 22:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment I thought they were styled nVidia 70.55.84.89 (talk) 04:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    They are - (at least in some of their publicity material) but due to technical restrictions, Wikipedia forces the first letter of an article title to uppercase no matter what. So even if it were desired to do this - we cannot. SteveBaker (talk) 02:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The way it's meant to be pronounced?

Does anyone know a publicly available description, citable as a reliable source, of the correct way to pronounce this company's name? (That is, something in print — and preferably something from Nvidia itself — not simply people's impressions from listening to audio recordings of the name being spoken.)

I've listened to the audio part of the Nvidia animated logo distributed as part of the Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword game, and I am convinced that the female voice is saying "inn-VID-ee-uh" (i.e., the first two vowels are identical). However, other people listening to the same audio might possibly think they are hearing "en-VID-ee-uh" (especially listeners whose regional dialects exhibit the pin-pen merger — something which is not the case in my own speech). And some people may be sure that the first vowel must be /ɛ/, not /ɪ/, because their aural perception is biased by the fact that the name is written with an initial letter N.

If there's a FAQ section on Nvidia's web site where this question is answered in print, I haven't managed to find it. And if we simply can't find any reliable source other than our descriptions of what we hear, we might (unfortunately) need to simply omit any mention at all of the proper pronunciation in the article — though I would push for that only as a last resort. Richwales (talk) 14:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

This question has been answered many times in the discussion page before. It is pronounced "en-vi-dee-uh", from both commercials, and official podcasts. Shawn1cai (talk) 03:34, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Again, I'm trying to find something in print — preferably something official from Nvidia itself. People's impressions (yours, mine, anyone else's) of what an audio recording of the name sounds like are less valuable, because listeners' prior conditioning via their own regional dialects may cause different people to "hear" the same recording differently. I'm absolutely convinced, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that the recording I heard on the Civ4 game (see above) said /ɪn'vɪdiə/ — and I'm 100% confident in my own ability to correctly identify and describe what I heard — but saying that is obviously not going to sway someone else who is equally absolutely convinced beyond any doubt that it's pronounced /ɛn'vɪdiə/. And in any case, an editor's description of the sounds in an audio recording (including what others may have said in the past on this or any other talk page) is arguably original research and should be avoided — though an ultra-strict interpretation of this rule could easily result in the elimination of practically all phonetic transcriptions throughout Wikipedia, something which I'm not seriously proposing here. Richwales (talk) 06:35, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How about mentioning the open source issue?

The fact that NVidia drivers aren't open source annoys a lot of people. Perhaps it should be mentioned??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.182.91.94 (talk) 16:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the open source issue is worth mentioning. As is a companies change in policy. 71.228.50.48 (talk) 05:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Network Interface Chipsets

NVIDIA is an important manufacturer of network interface chipsets. Yet the word "network" doesn't even appear in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.18.43.225 (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but NVIDIA does not make network interface chipsets. Their network interface is controlled by their MCPs, which not only manages network, but also onboard communications such as Audio, RAID, PCI, PCI-E, and USB. Shawn1cai (talk) 03:34, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

Could someone clean up the Backwards Compatibility area?

Could someone make a new page (separate page) where people could list games that are now 'broken' by the new nVidia drivers?

71.228.50.48 (talk) 05:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Modified Images

The image of the riva128 has been photoshopped, the core chip has been smeared and replaced with an image of a 10 pin DIP IC that one would see in a 1970's calculator

Steven736 (talk) 05:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Forceware

HTF can Forceware redirect to this page, when there is NO MENTION OF Forceware on this page?! Are there maybe too many NVIDIA marketing folks editing this page? Stolsvik (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Shortcomings of the FX series

Can anyone put an accurate date on this section?--Hontogaichiban (talk) 11:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing around 2002?--Hontogaichiban (talk) 11:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Pulling it out of your ass?

The whole "The company's name" paragraph sounds like crap someone just made up. 72.181.253.68 (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Eutectic vs high-lead solder

On 9 December 2008, The Inquirer conducted another series of tests to check whether the new MacBook Pro notebook computers used eutectic solder or high-lead solder.[27] They found that the 9400M chipset used eutectic solder, while the 9600M used a high-lead solder which they associated with the "old process" responsible for the failures.

This is journalistic goop -- and not descriptive or correct. A eutectic solder can be ANY formulation of elements (including lead) -- as long as that specific % mix present the lowest state change (melting, boiling, etc.) point. Tin/Lead eutectic: 63/37
Why are massive MCP failures not mentioned at all in the article? Both desktop and mobile nVidia MCPs. HP also issued warranty extensions for laptops with nVidia MCPs and nVidia had to foot the bill. I guess nVidia's stockholders are closely watching this Wikinazipedia article.

06:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)24.14.244.109 (talk)