[an error occurred while processing this directive] February 2002 3Digest - Trident Blade XP 32 MBytes [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]

February 2002 3Digest
Trident Blade XP 32 MBytes

By Andrew Worobyew

This chip is presented by HIS Trident Blade XP 32 MBytes, AGP videocard. [an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive]

Features:

Overclocking is impossible.

The oldest Trident company after many unsuccessful tries has entered the market with a competitive 3D-accelerator solution that may become an opponent of NVIDIA GeForce2 MX200. I.e. 3D perfomance of Blade XP is on the level of NVIDIA Riva TNT2Pro. Of course, Trident isn't aimed at pressing anybody from the 3D-accelerator market. New cards are designed for business sector of computer market. Well, and of course for playing good 3D games. The most attractive feature of a new card is it's price, that's less than the price of NVIDIA GeForce2 MX200 cards. But now Blade XP are almost out of demand, so it's our last review of this card.

For the 15th of February 2002 the only drivers version from Trident is 1.22.78. There are no comparatives as it's the only version available.

Bad news: the software is so incompleted that there are many problems with this card.

First of all, there's no 32-bit color in Serious Sam (strange, but Quake3 doesn't have this problem). Then there are lock-ups in Giants on Pentium4 and Athlon platforms. And 3DMark2001 also crashes on KT133A platform.

There are quality problems as well. E.g. 3DMark2001 (Game2) shows this: [an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive]

And below you can look at Comanche4 quality and compare screenshots taken on this card with reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.

Games / Cards 1 2 3 4 5 6
Trident Blade XP
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 7 8 9 10 11 12
Trident Blade XP
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 13 14 15 16 17 18
Trident Blade XP -
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 19 20 21 22 23 24
Trident Blade XP - -
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards 25 26 27 28
Trident Blade XP
NVIDIA GeForce3

Game list:

2D quality is poor, on the level of S3 Savage4. Clear pictures may be obtained up to 1024x768x100 Hz only. But there are no problems with the speed of 2D. [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]