Geforce - The best video accelerator available, for now.....
Written: Mar 18 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast card with excellent visual quality, best available video card today
Cons: Price, about to be obsolete
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| stevelarrison's Full Review: Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 |
Nvidia has a winner here. The Geforce is the revolutionary graphics chip introduced last fall. When deciding on which brand of Geforce based video card you should buy, concentrate on price, then cross compare features. In general, other than price, the following factors should be considered.
Memory Type: There are 2 types of memory available for the Geforce video cards. DDR and SDR. DDR is Double Date Rate transfer. SDR is Single Data Rate (or SGRAM). If you are running games in 32 bit color at high resolution, the DDR will preform significantly better than the SGRAM based video card. Owners of 19" or larger monitors should not consider the SGRAM based Geforce over the DDR Geforce. The higher resolutions used on these monitors necessitate the faster memory.
Additional features: TV Out. If you intend to use TV out options, you want to steer clear of certain cards such as the Creative Labs Anhililator. The Ledtek Winfast Geforce 256 reviewed here does include TV out at 800x600 resolution.
That is all you really have to consider. To understand why, you have to look at the nature of the graphics card industry today. Every 6 months, a new generation of graphics chip comes out the VASTLY outperforms it's predecessors. Instead of taking a basic graphics chip like the Geforce and designing their own card around it, most manufacturers are using what is called a "reference board" design. This is basically the design used by the manufacturer of the chip. Therefore,for the most part, all Geforces are identical with the exception of Memory Type and inclusion of TV Out. About the only noteworthy exception to this rule is Asus with their 6600 and 6800 Pure and Delux series cards. Asus actually engineered their own PCB around the Geforce chip and includes such innovative features as TV INPUT as well as output and other interesting features such as 3d glasses. This allows for a very affordable Video Editing machine.
The only real problem with the Geforce is timing. As I said earlier, there is a new generation of graphics chips released every 6 months that radically outperforms its predecessors. The next generation of chips will hit the stores in April (2000). The current price of a DDR ranges from $260 (no TV out, SGRAM) to $330 ( TV in and out, 3d goggles, DDR RAM). The Ledtek reviewed here includes TV out, and DDR and can be had for around $279. In one month, the same card will be going for about half that price. Therefore, it is hard to recommend for someone to spend that type of money on this card today. Wait a month and either get an NV-15 (Geforce is NV-10) based card, or a Voodoo 5 for the same money you will spend on this card. Or else, you can always wait a month and get this card for half price.
Recommended:
No
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stevelarrison
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Member: Steve Larrison
Location: Scottsdale, Az. USA
Reviews written: 171
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