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In the Forums... |
Posted: April 5, 2000 Written by: David "Spunk" Grampa Estimated retail price: $2,399.99 + S&H Video Card (The GeForce 256 advantage!) The GeForce 256 from nVidia is the latest and greatest graphics processor to hit the computer market. Dubbed the world's first GPU (graphics processing unit), the GeForce lives up to its name in both speed and quality- the rare mix in performance among all graphics chips... Since most of us are already familiar with nVidia's baby, I won't need to convince you in the purchase of a video card supporting the GeForce. However, I will write a short synopsis so the GeForce is fresh in your minds (experts skip over this part): How do I say the GeForce is a megapixel monster? How about bombarding you with some technical jargon... Four independent rendering pipelines, hardware transformation and lighting, multi-texturing, bumpmapping, table fog, shadow stenciling, bilinear/trilinear/8-tap anistropic filtering, MIP mapping, and cube environment mapping make the GeForce 256 the number one graphics chip for the 3D games and applications of today and tomorrow. Not to mention the 256-bit Quad Pipeline, vertex blending, and over 15 million triangles/second (480 million pixels/second) fillrate. Making for amazingly realistic 3D scenes. Take a look at the Porsche Boxster below, fully mapped with over 100,000 polygons.
For the full scoop on nVidia's GeForce 256, check out Dan's write-up from September. Read all about it here! So what is the best GeForce board on the market, and what did Alienware put in their rig? Let's find out... Video Card (Elsa Erazor X2) Now that you are convinced to go with the GeForce 256, it is time to consider a board and manufacturer... There are two flavors of GeForce boards, those bearing SDR-RAM (Single Data Rate) and those bearing DDR-RAM (Double Data Rate). Obviously the faster memory type is DDR running at a virtual 300MHz (150MHz on both the rising and falling edges of the clock cycle). Implementing this type of memory into a GeForce enabled board shows a significant increase in speed. However, it all comes at a pretty hefty price of about $75-$100 extra. For the sake of frames, we chose to go with a DDR board. More specifically, Elsa's Erazor X2 GeForce 256...  
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