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In the Forums... |
Posted: May 6, 2001 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen Analysis and Conclusion Leadtek has a winner in its hands and we can’t wait to get it in our hands! GeForce3 introduces a lot of advance features and you’ll be more impressed with what it can do than how fast it is. What the developers are excited about is the GeForce3’s programmability. If there’s a feature that’s not in the GeForce3 itself and a game programmer wants to use it, he can just program the GeForce3 to do those special functions. This technique was previously impossible on any GPU whether they were from NVIDIA, ATI, Matrox or 3dfx. NVIDIA is now the first to deliver an equivalent of “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” to graphics on the PC. Besides being fully programmable, the GeForce3 also supports NVIDIA’s new Quincunx anti Aliasing scheme. Finally you can experience 4X FSAA quality with only a minor decrease in speed. Quincunx can be used effectively in many games and looks amazing in simulator games. Finally, if you were worried about memory bottlenecks holding back the GeForce3 from its peak, you can rest easy and know that NVIDIA has heard your cries and implemented one of the most unique and currently the most efficient memory controller architecture in the industry. Using four independent controllers that can fetch data from anywhere in memory, the GeForce3 is kept working at peak capability. So what has Leadtek to sweeten the value? They’ve added a large heatsink to the core for overclocking. They’ve used higher-grade memory modules than the competitors to let you overclock the RAM almost 90MHz beyond spec. They’ve built in hardware monitoring using the WinFast monitoring utility. Another good thing that Leadtek has done is go with a newer version of the Conexant video encoder. The new encoder will enable you to run at 1024x768 on a TV. This, was previously not possible so now you can feel free to game higher, faster and clearer on a big screen TV. Is there anything bad about the Leadtek WinFast GeForce3? Not really. The only gripe I have about the card is the heatsinks on the RAM modules. I received a beta card from Leadtek a few weeks ago and noticed that the memory heatsinks became extremely hot not too long after turning on the computer. I was told that the latest final board revision alleviates the heat but it didn’t, at least not by a noticeable amount. I think Leadtek seriously needs to consider having heatsinks with fins to effectively dissipate heat. I understand that having the Leadtek name engraved into the heatsinks looks really cool, but I’d rather not have it for the sake of stability at high speeds. Including 4ns RAM indicates that Leadtek is positioning its card as the card to get if you want to overclock so having good heatsinks should accompany good memory. We’ll be seeing more GeForce3 cards becoming available in stores in the next few weeks causing current pricing to drop, making the buying decision a little easier. Leadtek has created one of the best GeForce3 cards I’ve seen judging from all the added features that are in the WinFast. I can’t wait to see what’ll be next. |
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