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Introduction
On August 31st 1999 nVidia
launched the worlds first GPU (Graphics Processing
Unit) video processor known as the GeForce
256. The company has excelled in
setting new standards in graphics technology and the GeForce 256 certainly
underlined that point. It did take some time for the cards to become available but
the wait was well worth it. The long delay on the GeForce video cards was worth
it because it resulted in stable drivers and well "weathered" hardware.
Finally the GeForce 256 based video cards became available to the consumer and many
video card manufacturers have jumped on board such as Asus, Creative Labs, Elsa
and Guillemot.
GeForce 256 based video cards ship in two flavors: A DDR (Double Data
Rate)
and SDR (Synchronous Data Rate) version. From herein they will be simply referred to as DDR and SDR. Both cards have the same GeForce 256 video processor
but differ on the RAM types.
Both DDR and SDR offer significant performance gains over current video cards
but they are aimed at separate markets. The DDR is targeted towards the
high-performance user and the SDR for the average user who is looking for some
extra power. For the scope of this article I’m not going to delve into the
technical details between the RAM types. More information regarding the RAM
types can be found on nVidia’s GeForce 256 web site.
Background
The frustration of deciding if a GeForce would make any difference on my
TNT2-Ultra based PC was a difficult choice. I’d seen a handful of benchmarks
on several reliable web sites showing the performance gains between the GeForce
256 and the TNT2-Ultra but early results were not overly impressive. That was
until the DDR versions were released which allowed double the data bandwidth
over the SDR cousin. Benchmarks on the DDR version of the GeForce were
substantially faster than the TNT2-Ultra and at times was more than twice as
fast. The DDR version barely showed any major slowdowns when switching from 16
bit color to 32 bit which has always been a problem in the past. Now that was
impressive. Why didn’t I run out and purchase a DDR GeForce? Firstly, the
steep price at $299.00, secondly you couldn’t find one anywhere in stock and
last but not least 3dfx has a whole new series of video cards on the chalk
boards slated for late April. More on 3dfx later.
For days I went back and forth deciding whether or not to buy one or wait. The benchmarks are fine and show impressive
performance gains but
it is difficult to determine whether it would make a difference on my particular system. What this means is that I need to try and find
one, install it
and use it for a couple of days to determine if $299.00 is worth it. At this
point there were several software titles (Quake 3, Homeworld, BattleZone2) that
performed rather "sluggishly" at 1024x768x32 on my TNT2-Ultra so an
upgrade of some sort was inevitable if I were to keep up with current software titles.
Why not a new CPU? Currently I have a 350mhz Pentium II overclocked
(dare, I say?) at 434mhz
with a front-side bus at 124mhz. Surely this should provide more than ample
power on my TNT2-Ultra with today’s software titles? As stated, there were
several new titles starting to severely tax my system. If I can’t achieve
1024x768 with 32bit color and a reasonable frame rate then the whole experience
becomes less entertaining. To go out and purchase a new CPU at 500mhz or better
I would be looking at $250 and then we're talking about a miniscule 66mhz. The end result would be a
measly 2-5 frames/sec with a new CPU on my TNT2-Ultra since I was already "maxing"
the frame rate on the TNT2-Ultra. I needed to find a GeForce DDR and see how
much it helped.
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