CAUTION: May cause adrenaline surge.
Written: Dec 18 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast performance, future support for games.
Cons: Cost, not knowing when it will be obsolete.
The Bottom Line: Best graphics card for the price, but still expensive. Recommended if absolutely time to upgrade.
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| jumperless's Full Review: VisionTek GeForce3, (64 MB) AGP Video Card |
Most PC gamers have to work just to support the costly habit, PC gaming is the most demanding uses for a PC that requires the latest and greatest sound and video hardware. Lately, video card prices have been pretty steep, but here is a nice performing option that is priced well, the VisionTek/NVIDIA GeForce 3 with 64MB of memory.
First, the much needed specs and features of this card:
Specs:
Graphics Core: 256-bit
Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Fill Rate: 3.2 Billion AA Samples/s
Operations Per Second: 800 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 7.36 GB/s
AGP 2X/4X
RAMDAC 200 MHz
Core Clock 460 MHz
Memory Clock 64MB DDR SDRAM
Supports Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Linux
Connectors:
This only has the standard female 15-pin VGA and an S-Video out.
Drivers:
The GeForce 3 uses Unified Driver Architecture, basically guaranteeing compatibility with past, present and future software drivers. Upgrading drivers is simple because all NVIDIA products use the same driver.
Features:
NVIDIA NfiniteFX Engine - Adds 3D realism and new effects to gaming experience. This is one of the cards strong points because it’s new technology that adds fantastic realism to graphics.
MS DirectX – The GeForce 3 supports Microsoft DirectX.
OpenGL – Ensures compatibility with old and new OpenGL supported games.
Pixel Shader – Adds lighting and shading effects and support for organic surfaces to add realism.
Vertex Shader – Allows textures and materials to stretch, giving characters more facial expressions and more detailed movement.
S-Video Out – Gives the option off connecting to a TV or projection device for a larger screen.
Performance:
All those features listed above sound nice, but how do they perform compared to other cards on the market? There are many hardware sites out there that have full benchmarks of the card compared to others. Based on what I have seen, the GeForce 3 performs about 44% faster that the GeForce 2 with 32MB, using test applications such as 3DMark 2001. In higher resolutions, 1024x768+, the GeForce 3 seems to have about a 40% higher FPS rate than the GeForce 2 32MB.
Overall:
Cost of the card is about $270.00 now and it’s the best card you’ll find in that price range. If you need to upgrade soon, I recommend this card. But if the current card works, maybe consider waiting for the generation.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 270
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jumperless
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