Quote from gnome:
Not 100% on this, but I think your info about card makers is 180 degrees wrong. ATI and Nvidia make LOTS of consumer cards... under their own brand name.
I'm not sure about ATI, but nVidia does not make their own cards. You can go check it yourself at Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=nvidia&Ntk=all
Or start from the main page, choose nVida as a keyword, and select video cards as the category. Or check my screenshot.
Problem is, some places sell generic video cards from undeclared manufacturers (AKA white box), and they list those cards as "NVidia"s. NVidia even has a standard design for a card that they distribute with their chipsets - and many manufacturers follow that design, so many cards look the same.

