GeForce3 Review...WITH BENCHES...TONS OF 'EM!!

[NFS4]

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/gf3/index.html

 

[ApacheXMD]

sweet

-patchy

 

[bacillus]

whoa!

 

[Hanpan]

NICe find. A good read.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Nice but if nvidia did not send any cards to anyonw where the hell did they get their cards????

 

[jfall]

Woah.. that is a lot of benchmarks!!

 

[Bakwetu]

Ahh, the ace bloodhound does it again Although the article showed some relly interesting results, there is such a thing as too many benchmarks.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Nice but if nvidia did not send any cards to anyonw where the hell did they get their cards????

They have had their board for weeks now. The specs they posted a while back were not speculation, they already had a board in their hands.

 

[MrGrim]

WTF? Am I reading the graphs wrong or does the G2 Ultra perform the same as the G3 in Q3 without AA? Even with AA on the only difference is over 2x2.

 

[KarlHungus]

The GF2 performs the same as the GF3 in Q3 in low resolutions/16 bit color. At high resolutions and 32 bit color the GF3 kicks major arse.

 

[mylam]

nice

 

[JayPatel]

im sure drivers are causing those somewhat alarming low numbers. we all know what it can do...we've all seen the doom3 movie...Quake3 is a two year old benchmark...u cant measure todays hardware with yesterdays benchmark

 

[Orbius]

You can because tomorrows games never materialise. *still waiting for a decent T&L game*

 

[BenSkywalker]

"*still waiting for a decent T&L game*"

Giants and Sacrifice for two GOTY award winners off the top of my head

 

[MadRat]

It just doesn't hit me as impressive. FSAA is not the feature I'm looking for in videocards. Image quality and color contrast greatly affect my choice, something that I feel these cards are lacking. Sometime the passing of 3dfx seems like a bad joke when you compare image quality versus pure framerate. I have to kick back and think, WTF were OEMs thinking when they chose RageII+ and the M64 as their entry-level cards versus the Velocity!

 

[JayPatel]

my thoughts exactly ben

 

[WooDaddy]

PEOPLE!!!


Read the Anandtech article on the GeForce3.. These benchmarks don't really show what it can REALLY do. We have to wait for some games that fully utilize Dx8 to see why it's worth $500 smackers.

 

[Orbius]

I'd argue that without T&L those games were pretty good anyway, but 2 games a feature does not make.

Anyway, Unless you like to live on the bleeding edge there is no point to buy this card until X-Box ports start appearing. Also with the amount of technology 'borrowed' from Ati, I think Nvidia should stamp an 'Ati' logo on one of their chips.

 

[KarlHungus]

I honestly doubt the drivers are causing the "low" numbers. Remember that the GF2U has more quoted fillrate than the GF3 (1 Gpix/s vs. 800 MPix/s). In a fillrate intensive case with adequate amounts of memory bandwidth the GF2U should be faster. This case can be found at higher resolutions and 16 bit color. Where the GF3 shines is in high fillrate cases where memory bandwidth is a problem, see the high resolution 32 bit cases. There may be some improvement in the 16 bit numbers for the GF3, but I doubt they will ever equal the GF2U (at least with these older games).

In particular I'm looking at the following Quaver results:
Quaver1
Quaver2

 

[Pocatello]

It's sad that people still show FSAA in Quake 3, Quake 3 does not need FSAA as much as others games such as Mechwarrior 4 or Nascar 4. I want to see FSAA shots where it really shines.

 

[Eug]

This is the world's longest single page article.

Anyways, this just reaffirms my choice not to upgrade any time soon. It seems that the thing really only shines at 1280x1024x32 or better and currently, perhaps with games I don't want to play anyway. I wonder when Doom 3 will come out... Plus the $600 price tag doesn't help.

Maybe I'll upgrade in 2002.

P.S. I hope it supports the 1280x960 resolution in 2D, and I hope the 2D resolution is good quality.

 

[JellyBaby]

Eug,

Yep many of us will need monitor upgrades before even thinking about the GF3.

<< We have to wait for some games that fully utilize Dx8 to see why it's worth $500 smackers >>

WooDaddy,

And by then it better be more like $350 smackers.

 

[JayPatel]

2d quality on nvidia cards has nothing to do with the chipset itself..its got more to do with the crappy RAMDAC filters manufacturers use to keep their costs down.

 

[Eug]

JayPatel, you're right of course. Perhaps nVidia should have a &quot;nVidia Quality&quot; logo or something.

It makes no sense to me that even many Geforce 2 cards still can't display a decent 1600x1200 2D picture. Even my Voodoo 3 is better oftentimes, and I paid $70 for it 6 months ago for this aging piece of technology.

P.S. Even better than 1280x960, support for 1400x1050 would be ideal. 1600x1200 is kinda pushing it on my 19&quot; monitor.

 

[rickn]

Is it just me, or does anyone else just not get the same feeling anymore like we did when we got our first 3dfx Voodoo1?