3DForce2. It’s cheap, but is it good?
Written: Aug 31 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, Good Compatibility
Cons: 32 MB RAM, No Extras
The Bottom Line: A good no-frills entry into the Geforce market which won't hit you too hard in the wallet.
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| Programmer2k's Full Review: Jaton 3DForce 2 MX, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
When I ordered my PC from my local mom and pop PC store, I requested an nVIDIA GeForce2 video card. At first I was disappointed to see they had placed a cheap knockoff card in it’s place. Who ever heard of Jaton anyway? But after running it through it's paces I've been quite pleased with this card.
Let me start with a little 3D card history. 3dfx was one of the first companies to produce mainstream video hardware dedicated to processing 3D video information. They would produce the chipset and other hardware manufacturers, like Diamond and Creative would design a video card and slap the chips on. This meant that you could buy a Voodoo or Voodoo 2 video card from just about any company and get consistent performance and stable video drivers. In fact, just about any of the Voodoo 2 cards would work with the generic 'reference' drivers. Unfortunately, 3dfx did a better job making chips than running a company and are now out of business. But their legacy still lives on. nVIDIA purchased their old patents and has come out with an excellent chipset of their own based on 3dfx's technology.
So that brings us to the nVIDIA Geforce2 and Geforce3 video cards. These are the next generation of video card. Like the Voodoo 1 and 2 chipsets, the Geforce chipsets can be found on a whole host of different video cards made by different companies such as Hercules, Creative, Esla, VisionTek and, of course, Jaton. The basic chipset is the same. The only real differences are the quality of the components such as the RAM and the addition of extra features such as support for TV or multiple monitors.
This Jaton card is an MX which is the low end of the Geforce line and has 32 MB of RAM which is also the least amount. While you can get MX cards with 64 MB they don't tend to perform much better. The higher end Geforce cards are the GTS and the Ultra which can deliver performance up to double the MX, but generally cost more than double since they use higher quality components.
This particular card is a stripped down GeForce with only the standard components to make it compatible with it’s other competitors. It has a single connector for an analog monitor and that’s it. No twin-view or television support. If you are thinking of upgrading to an LCD monitor in the near future this may be a problem since you may need a digital connection. If this is the case, Jaton also offers a card (3Dforce2-MX-LCD) with an analog and a digital connection.
This Jaton card works with the new 'Detonator' drivers which are available for free on the nVIDIA web site. I would suggest the first thing you do before using this card is download and install the latest Detonator drivers from the site. According to their literature, these drivers provide a significant speed improvement over the standard drivers which come with your card. I have Windows ME and I have had no problems with compatibility. Game support so far has been 100% with games designed to work with Geforce. So far, every game designed for Direct3d has worked. Older games designed to work only with Glide will not work, however.
Graphics quality is excellent, particularly with games designed for the newer systems. Most new games are designed specifically to take advantage of the Geforce cards and it really shows. Colored light shines down from beautiful sunsets. Numerous objects cast realistic shadows, and creatures wade into translucent pools of water. Its beauty almost brings a tear to the eyes of this seasoned gamer. I also noted overall improvements in video quality even in 2D applications. This is most likely due to the feature called Digital Vibrance Control, which is really a fancy high tech version of color contrast supported by the Detonator drivers.
Speed is a different issue, however. Most newer games perform quite well at resolutions up to 800X600. You may, however, occasionally see a hiccup, even at that resolution. Creatures, for example, performs flawlessly, but I experienced very minor slowdowns with the demo for Startopia. My system is a 900 MHz Pentium III with 256 MG of RAM. I have also found that some of the older 3D games may not receive as much of a benefit from this chipset. Deus Ex, for example was a little slow, and I actually had to turn down some of the effects. And Flight Simulator 2000 often gives me framerates of less than 6 frames per second. While this isn’t really the fault of this card, since these games perform poorly on almost every system you could currently buy, it’s worth noting that this card won’t completely take you into gaming nirvana.
The Detonator drivers also support a whole host of options for the advanced user. Everything from multiple settings for antialiasing to color correction, different buffering options and mipmap levels. If you don’t know what all this means, no problem. You probably won’t need to adjust these settings. If you do, you’ll be free to tweak to your heart’s content.
Overall this is a good low end version of a high end 3D chipset. If you don’t care for all the extra bells and whistles such as twin-view or television support, and you don’t have an LCD monitor, you can easily save 50 to 75% purchasing this card in place of it’s ‘Name Brand’ competitors. And when you’re ready to step up to the next generation of video card, you’ll have a little more money in your pocket when you walk into the computer show or click into E-Bay.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
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Epinions.com ID:
Programmer2k
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Member: Marc
Location: PA
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 5 members
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