Nvidia took the gaming community by storm when they originally released the first GPU, the original GeForce. Here was a chipset that ran at a measly 120 MHz...
We tested our LeadTek GF2 unit utilizing an Athlon @ 733 MHz on a VIA KX-133 chipset.
Due to problems we mentioned earlier with AGP 4X on the VIA chipset, all our tests
were confined within the AGP 2X mode. It's not really a big problem, since there's
virtually no performance difference between AGP 2X and AGP 4X. We used NVidia's
version 5.30 reference drivers.
The first test we ran was MadOnion's
3D Mark 2000 benchmark to get some type of synthetic scores with our video card.
Next, we used the good old Quake III timedemo to get some real world performance
numbers. We are going to show you two sets of numbers for each test. One is going
to be a score at default core and memory clock and the other at overclocked core
and memory clock.
Test System Configuration
Processors Athlon @ 733 MHz Memory 128 Megs PC-133 SDRAM Hard Disk Drive Western Digital Expert 18.1 Gig Video Card LeadTek WinFast GeForce 2 GTS Motherboards ABIT KA7 (KX-133) Operating System Windows 98 Second Edition
3D Mark 2000 16-Bit
3D Mark 2000 32-Bit
Quake III Fastest 16-Bit
Quake III High Quality 32-Bit
It's obvious, the LeadTek GeForce 2 GTS is really fast at any resolution and especially
at high resolutions and high color depth modes. Overclocking the video card does
make for some better results, but you don't really see big differences until you
start going up on the resolution. It's interesting to note, that in both the 16-bit
and 32-bit Quake III test, the default clock test yielded somewhat higher performance
than the overclocked test in 640x480 resolution. I don't really have an explanation
for that. Although, you can clearly see, the performance pick ups as you up the
resolution. At 1024x768 resolution is where you see the most pronounced difference.
GeForce
vs. GeForce 2 GTS Comparison
The graph above is a comparison between our MSI GeForce SDR vs. the LeadTek GeForce
2 GTS. You can see how both video cards are pretty close in the 16-Bit color,
but in 32-Bit color, the GeForce 2 GTS pulls ahead by quite a few frames. We can
pretty easily conclude that the GeForce 2 GTS chipset really shows its muscles
in high resolutions and high color depth modes. That's definitely a step in the
right direction.
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