September'2001 3Digest -
NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro 64 MBytes 5.5ns
By Andrew
Worobyew
This chip is presented by SUMA Platinum GeForce2 Pro 64 MBytes 5.5 ns, AGP videocard.
Features:
- NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro chip, 200 MHz clock rate;
- 64 MBytes DDR SDRAM memory in eight Hyundai 5.5ns microchips, 183 (366)
MHz clock rate , 128-bit bus;
- Peak speed of scene drawing in multitexturing mode is 800 megapixels/sec
and 1600 megatexels/sec.
When GeForce2 GTS with relatively slow 166 MHz DDR memory appeared almost a
year ago, many reviewers said have marked that these unbalanced cards
are temporary phenomena and have began waiting for cards with faster
memory. This period has lasted for several months and the first examples
of these cards have appeared in the Fall'2000 only. According to expectations,
the faster 200 MHz DDR memory had greatly boosted the perfomance and
these cards have been named "Pro". Their price has been higher
than that of previous GeForce2 products. In spite of the "Pro"
suffix, actually it's the same GeForce2 GTS chip with the same 200 MHz
clock rate. Despite NVIDIA's recommendations about 64 MBytes memory for these
cards, some manufacturers try to release both 32 MBytes and 64 MBytes (with slightly
slow 5.5ns memory) variants. This made these cards popular until the
moment of mass production of "real" 64 MBytes 5ns Pro cards, thus
their 5.5ns analogues "waned", taking into account very slightly
decreasing price.
Wasn't tweaked.
For the 20th of September'2001 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 8.04,
8.05, 14.40 and 14.61. As the drivers differences are equal for all
GeForce2 GTS/Pro/Ultra cards, there's no sense in comparing drivers
separately for each of these cards. See NVIDIA
GeForce2 Pro 64 MBytes 5ns section for more information about drivers.
And now I want to attract your attention to another important 3D feature
- filtering. As many of you know, all chipsets support bilinear filtering
that is an important instrument in MIP-mapping, some chipsets support
trilinear filtering (true, not the approximation) and only few support
anisotropic filtering.
Due to the fact that GeForce2 and GeForce3 do support anisotropic filtering,
I recommend you to pay attention to the article concerning this feature.
I also advise you to read about S3TC influence on speed and perfomance,
because S3TC realization in OpenGL is important nowadays, and it shows
good results.
There's no criticism about 3D quality in all the games tested. I want
to mark perfect image quality and good speed in FSAA 2x2 and even 3x3:
You can compare screenshots taken on this card with reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.
| Games / Cards |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| NVIDIA GeForce3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Games / Cards |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
| NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| NVIDIA GeForce3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Games / Cards |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
| NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS |
|
|
|
|
|
-
|
| NVIDIA GeForce3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Games / Cards |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
| NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS |
|
|
|
-
|
|
|
| NVIDIA GeForce3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Game list:
- 1. Quake3
- 2. Unreal
- 3. Unreal Tournament
- 4. No One Lives Forever
- 5. Serious Sam
- 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
- 7. American McGee's Alice
- 8. Mercedes Benz Truck Racing
- 9. Sacrifice
- 10. F.A.K.K. 2
- 11. Need For Speed V (Porshe 2000)
- 12. Real MYST
- 13. Blade of Darkness
- 14. Giants
- 15. 3DMark2001: Game1
- 16. 3DMark2001: Game2
- 17. 3DMark2001: Game3
- 18. 3DMark2001: Game4
- 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
- 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
- 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
- 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
- 23. Black & White
- 24. Undying
- 25. Anachronox
- 26. Max Payne
2D quality is outstanding. There's no critisism up to 1600x1200x75 Hz. Soaping
effects can be seen only on some low-quality monitors in 1600x1200. But
there are some low-quality cards present that give soaping effect on good
monitors. And I shall mark that 6.* version drivers are not compatible
with the software for sound cards based on Yamaha processor, as well as
with SoftXG100 software synthesizer. Start or Close Window buttons can
be spoiled by some "garbage" in 2D mode.
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