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8
February 2001
Revised:
17 February 2001
GeForce2
Pro = GeForce2 Pro? (cont)
I contacted
Derek Perez, from NVIDIA, and asked him about the Pro. He
acknowledged that the Pro chipset was faster than the GTS;
it wasn't just the memory [ed note: see page 3 for
explanation of speed differences]. He also indicated that
vendors were free to choose their own memory configurations.
They could make a 16MB Pro if they wanted to. I got to thinking
about that on my way home from work and I couldn't get the
fact that the drivers said "GTS" instead of Pro
out of my head.
So what does
makes a PRO different? In reality, it's only the memory because
it carries the same ID number as a GTS. I've been told that
the 0x0151 ID shown below was originally going to be used
for the PRO cards, but compatability problems required them
to use the standard GeForce2 GTS ID of 0x0150 instead.
dwVendorID
0x150 - GeForce2 GTS
0x151
- GeForce2 GTS
0x152
- GeForce2 Ultra
Since I have
one of these cards, I decided to check the registry settings
to see what ID they were using. It was in fact identified
as ID 0x150, a basic GeForce2 GTS. This is confirmed by the
200/333 settings for the core/memory that my card is set for.
Everything I saw indicated that the card is really a GeForce2
GTS and not a GeForce2 Pro.
So what's the
bottom line? Assuming I wasn't sold a GTS in Pro clothing
(and that is still a possibility), then there is a problem
here. Board manufacturers should reconsider using the "Pro"
name. Until then, be careful of the 32MB Pro cards. If you
were planning to purchase a GTS anyway, then go for it - you
are probably getting a bit more for your money. However, if
you are expecting 64MB speed in a 32MB board, you will be
disappointed.
UPDATE:
This one sent in by one our readers. It may explain some of
what happened.
Just a
few comments on the eVGA GeForce2 Pro story: From what I've
read the device ID for the board is set using resistors
on the card's PCB, not in the chip itself (this being why
it's possible to modify these resistors to hack cards from
being a GeForce into being a Quadro for example). Since
the card has a sticker on it with the "Pro" written on it,
it seems likely that eVGA didn't modify the PCB for the
new chip, so they likely would have left the ID the same.
As for the core and memory speeds, that's set by the video
card's BIOS, not by the driver or the chip itself. The card
manufacturer can set the speeds in the BIOS to be whatever
they want, it doesn't depend on the device ID. (This is
presumably why when you enable the overclocking feature
in the drivers it has to reboot, probably so it can detect
what speed the video BIOS set the core/memory to without
any interference from anything else).
If the above
is true, then why didn't eVGA modify the PCB for the faster
Pro chip?
UPDATE -
Take 2: An engineer from eVGA emailed me with an explanation.
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