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May 2002 3Digest - NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro 32 MBytes 5 ns



By Andrey Vorobiev

This chip is presented by Palit Daytona GeForce2 Pro 32 MBytes 5ns, AGP videocard.

Features:

  • NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro chip, 200 MHz clock rate;
  • 32 MBytes DDR SGRAM memory in eight Ascend 5ns microchips, 200 (400) MHz clock rate, 128-bit bus;
  • Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode is 800 megapixels/sec and 1600 megatexels/sec.

GeForce2 GTS was released in the spring of the year 2000, causing the squall of criticism due to relatively slow 166 MHz DDR memory already used in GeForce256. The GPU itself was considerably improved (one more texture module per pipeline, increased 200 MHz clock rate), but the memory bandwidth was insufficient. The fall of the same year brought the improved version of GeForce2 GTS called GeForce2 Pro. It differed from its brother with the faster 200 MHz memory. Certainly, the 32-bit color perfomance was significantly improved, but still 200 (400) MHz was not enough to show the full potential.

But the development of GeForce2 line was abruptly stopped after the release of GeForce3 with the strong memory optimization and without such a high RAM bandwidth requirement. GeForce2 Pro was finished with the release of GeForce2 Ti, putting the end of GeForce2 family. These cards currently get cheaper and cheaper, already costing less than $100. Moreover, the release of GeForce4 MX is called to finish the remnants of GeForce2 off. However there is still such a huge amount of these cards - both GeForce2 Pro, and GeForce2 Ti. So they'll remain in the market for a long time. They either replace GeForce2 MX400, if their price drops, or die. This especially applies to 32 MBytes variants.

Wasn't overclocked.

For the 10th of May 2002 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 28.90, 29.20 for Windows 9x/ME and 28.90, 29.11, 29.20 for Windows XP. As the drivers differences are equal for all GeForce2 GTS/Pro/Ultra/Ti cards, there's no sense in comparing drivers separately for each of these cards. See NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti 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.

You can compare screenshots with reference ones (NVIDIA GeForce3).

Games / Cards 1 2 3 4 5 6
NVIDIA GeForce2
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 7 8 9 10 11 12
NVIDIA GeForce2
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 13 14 15 16 17 18
NVIDIA GeForce2 -
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 19 20 21 22 23 24
NVIDIA GeForce2 - -
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 25 26 27 28 29 30
NVIDIA GeForce2
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 31 32
NVIDIA GeForce2
NVIDIA GeForce3

Game list:

  • 1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  • 2. Unreal2 - for GeForce cards, Unreal - for all other
  • 3. Comanche4
  • 4. No One Lives Forever
  • 5. Serious Sam
  • 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
  • 7. Red Faction
  • 8. Rally Trophy
  • 9. Sacrifice
  • 10. Venom
  • 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. Command and Conquer: Renegade
  • 26. Max Payne
  • 27. AquaNox
  • 28. Serious Sam II
  • 29. IL2: Shturmovik
  • 30. MoHAA
  • 31. Jedi Knight II Outcast
  • 32. Morrowind

And 6.* 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 might be spoiled by some "garbage" in 2D mode. One solution is in the iXBT Forum.

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