3D graphics cards group test review
3D graphics card (AGP)
Review date: 08 January, 2001. Review by: Darren Allan
The Geforce 2 is the second generation of Nvidia's famous GPU, logically enough, and the GTS stands for Giga-Texel Shading, which basically means the card can render over a billion texels (texture cells) per second. That's fast, very fast.
And Creative is one of many companies to produce a card based on the GTS engine. It's impressively spec'd, boasting 32MB of DDR RAM and four dual texture pipelines which produce the high performance figures.
Transform & Lighting along with Full Screen Anti-Aliasing are incorporated. The T&L engine has been improved from the original GeForce, so it's even faster, and the smooth images that the GeForce 2's FSAA provides are quite remarkable, particularly at higher resolutions.
Unfortunately that's also where the frame rate falls due to FSAA. Without it, the 3D Blaster ran Quake III very nippily, as you would expect. At 1024 x 768 and above FSAA rendered the frame rate untenable, but on the lower resolutions it's not a problem. Sadly it's the higher resolutions where it really shines.
The Creative drivers that come bundled with the card gave us no problems, produced these impressive frame rates, and included a control panel called BlasterControl. This can be used to easily overclock the card (though caution is the order of the day here) and easily adjust Direct 3D and OpenGL graphics settings, like the quality of Mip-mapping you want to use, for example.
Also included by way of a software bundle is a game, Rage Rally. And that's your lot - this is a serious gaming card for serious gamers. It provides excellent frame rates and good FSAA at lower resolutions, and was predictably the fastest card in the roundup. But you do pay a price for this performance.
Company: Creative
Contact: 0118 9344744
Company: Guillemot
Contact: 020 8686 5600
Company: ATI
Contact: 01628 533115
Company: Pine
Contact: 01908 218812
Company: 3Dfx
Contact: 01753 502800
