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Overclocking
NVIDIA's
GeForce3 now specifies that ramsinks be used on
the video memory of the card and the heatsink
used on the core seems pretty good for cooling
already. By default, the GeForce3 comes clocked
at 200/460 (core/memory). The core clock is lower
than the GeForce2 Ultra but the memory speed is
the same. I only managed to overclock the video
card up to 230/510 for full stability. Raising
the memory to 515 would make me run a few benchmarks
but later on would start producing artifacts.
While the overclock may not be spectacular, I
wasn't really expecting much since generally speaking,
the first few yields of a new manufacturing process
aren't really as good as the later batches. As
time moves on, we'll have higher yielding GeForce3
chips.
VisionTek
GeForce3 and Elsa
Gladiac Ultra Limited Edition on top of a
RatPadz Mousepad
Test
System
Athlon
1.33GHz
Iwill KK266
256MB Mushkin Rev3+ PC133 SDRAM
VisionTek GeForce3 200/460 64MB (core/memory)
Elsa Gladiac Ultra Limited Edition 250/460 64MB
(core/memory)
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value
D-Link DFE-538TX 10/100Mbps Ethernet Adapter Card
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 7200RPM ATA100 HDD
Windows
98 SE
VIA 4.32 Final
DirectX8a
Detonator 12.90
Benchmarks
Quake
III Arena v1.17
Fastest 640X480, 800X600, 1024X768, 1280X1024
High Quality 640X480, 800X600, 1024X768, 1280X1024
MDK2
Trilinear Filtering, Max Texture Detail, Hardware
T&L
640X480X32, 800X600X32, 1024X768X32, 1280X1024X32
3DMark2001
1024X768X16, 16-bit Z-buffer, Triple Buffer, Hardware
T&L/Pure Hardware T&L (GeForce2 Ultra/GeForce3)
1024X768X32, 24-bit Z-buffer, Double Buffer, Hardware
T&L/Pure Hardware T&L (GeForce2 Ultra/GeForce3)
Aside
from the usual Quake III and MDK2 and 3DMark2001,
I also decided to include the fill rate test of
3DMark2001 so we can see the difference in the
memory architecture of the video cards. The GeForce3
runs at a lower core clock speed and thus has
a lower peak fill rate compared to the GeForce2
Ultra but both cards run at the same memory speed
and have the same memory bandwidth. The difference
lies in the memory architecture.
With
that said, let's start off with the benchmarks.
Quake
III and MDK2 |
