Video card companies come and go but NVIDIA is still kicking ass taking notes and making tons of money. Most of the companies from the start of the 3D revolution, including: Diamond Multimedia, Matrox, PowerVR, Visiontek, S3, 3DFX, etc. are either totally gone from business, focusing on other markets, or back in another form conrolled by another company.

NVIDIA was founded in 1993, a short time in the computer industry. To give a sense of historical perspective, Microsoft introduced their trademark Windows 95 Operating System in 1994, and Intel first introduced the Pentium CPU (Central Processing Unit) in 1993. Today, NVIDIA is one of the largest fables semiconductor companies in the United States, with 2005 revenue exceeding $2 Billion USD and over 2000 employees.

EVGA is one of my favorite video card Add-In Board manufacturers. They are the only company to offer a real trade-in program (Step-Up) on older cards. They also have a Lifetime Warranty on all of their retail video cards and motherboards (a first in the industry). Their cards tend to be overclocked right out of the box and they also tend to offer great bundles with their cards or motherboards.

NVIDIA has had a long and involved history of video card chips and motherboard chipsets. The first NVIDIA based video card I ever owned was a Diamond Viper 550 based upon the TNT series of chips from 1998. I’ve owned many a video card based upon NVIDIA chips including the TNT2, the GeForce DDR, the GeForce 2 GTS, the GeForce3, the GeForce 4 Ti4600, the GeForce 5900 Ultra, the 6800GT, the 7800 GTX and more. Today, I’m reviewing the EVGA 6800GS C/O SuperClocked card in single and SLI mode.