Premium gas in my Yugo car
Written: Oct 20 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: VERY fast, lots of memory
Cons: pricey comapred to the MX/32 models
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| seether166's Full Review: Leadtek WinFast GeForce 2 GTS |
Okay, so I don’t own a Yugo. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one. It was just the crappiest car I could think of.
I bought the Leadtek 64 MB GeForce2 GTS a few weeks ago. I do a lot of buying off of www.pricewatch.com so I end up getting a lot of OEM style stuff. As a result, when I got the card, it merely came in a non-descript brown box with a static bag wrapped card inside. Thrown in almost as an after thought was the nVidia reference driver CD.
Well, basically this card was replacing my older Matrox G400 card. If I wasn’t building a new system for my dad I would have been satisfied with the G400 32 MB beast. It did fine. Let’s just level though, the only thing I judge a 3d card on is its Quake3 performance.
Basically, here is my system… Celeron 466/128MB RAM on an Abit BP6 MB. I USED to run quake at 800x600 with all the details turned on and would average about 50-60 FPS. Now, with that monster of a 64MB GeForce2 card I get 80-90 in 1024x768. Not too shabby an increase.
And this is where we go back to my title, the premium and the yugo. A decent review on www.firingsquad.com pointed out that running a GeForce2 GTS with a Celeron was a big waste. Well, I’m sure they are right. I can’t imagine what this card would do if I had a real processor in my computer. I guess I could use this as a comparision: my roommate’s computer with an oc’d 900 Mhz Duron w/256 RAM but he runs the downgraded model of a GeForce…the GeForce2 MX 32MB (I think the brand is WinFast…not sure, as everyone knows, that is mostly irrelvent) and he gets the same FPS I do.
I guess the fact that this video card can bring my FPS to near his is a pretty good grade for the card. I should mention the other stuff, right? The card installed fine…plug it into an AGP slot, Windows detects, “Have Disk” your on your way. As I mentioned earlier, I got the OEM model so I really can’t comment on software package, manual, etc. I would only say this, if you are not comfortable installing hardware and drivers, don’t buy an OEM model. Make sure it is “white box”
Here is what I think you should base your decision on…the GeForce2 GTS 64 MB version is better than the GeForce2 MX 32 MB versions in all benchmarks. But the difference is not incredibly significant until you get up to the 1024x768 resolutions on games, in other words, high fill rates, etc. So, if you are up in the higher resolutions, go with this card….if you stick with 800x600..don’t bother. And, if you don’t play Q3 or UT…why do you even NEED this card? Get a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000…ah yeah, don’t knock the S3 Virge, baby! ;-)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 289
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Epinions.com ID:
seether166
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Member: Wes
Location: Syracuse, NY
Reviews written: 69
Trusted by: 12 members
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