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VisionTek GeForce3 Video Card
Company: VisionTek
Products: GeForce3 Video Card
Street Price: ~$280
Date Reviewed: September 23, 2001
Reviewed By: Jason
VisionTek / GF3 Background:
VisionTek is an American company founded back in 1988, since then they
have been continuously producing high quality video cards among other products.
Recently VisionTek shifted from the OEM to Retail market, and since that shift
they have definitely been making a name for themselves in the PC community. Their most recent release, the VisionTek Geforce3
represents and evolutionary step in video cards, both for VisionTek & NVIDIA.
The GeForce3 represents a revolutionary breakthrough in GPU technology
offering such new features as the NVIDIA nfiniteFX™ engine and the Lightspeed
Memory Architecture™. I'm not going to bore you with 10 pages listing every last
detail that the GeForce3 has to offer, but I am including a quick rundown of the
most popular features which separates the GeForce3 from the GeForce2 and other
video cards.
General Specs:
- Graphics Core: 256-bit
- Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
- Fill Rate: 3.2 Billion AA Samples/s
- Operations Per Second: 800 Billion
- Memory Bandwidth: 7.36 GB/s
- AGP 2X/4X Support
- 350 MHz RAMDAC
- 200 MHz Core Clock
- 460 MHz Memory Clock
- 64MB DDR SDRAM
- Supports Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Linux
| GeForce3
Specifications |
| Features |
Benefits |
| NfiniteFX™ Engine |
Enables dynamic, breakthrough effects, which deliver the
next leap in realism to 3D graphics. Users will experience a virtually
infinite number of special effects via the Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader
engine components. |
| Vertex Shader |
Injects personality into characters and scenes by
allowing characters to move and show facial emotion, materials to stretch,
and scenes to come alive. |
| Pixel Shader |
Creates ambiance with materials and
surfaces that mimic reality. Pixel shaders alter lighting and surface
effects that replace artificial, computerized looks with high-impact
organic surfaces. |
| Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ |
Makes GeForce3 the fastest GPU ever produced, and
generates the power to deliver earth-shattering performance at all
resolutions. |
| High-Resolution Antialiasing (HRAA) |
Produces the best visual quality and
performance for all applications. HRAA delivers a high level of detail and
crisp, clean lines at high frame rates, featuring the Quincunx AA mode. |
| Microsoft® DirectX® 8.0 Compatibility |
Ensures compatibility with the next generation of 3D
applications to hit the market. The GeForce3 GPU supports DirectX 8.0
features and special effects for the ultimate 3D experience. |
| World's Fastest DDR Memory Interface |
7.36GB per second memory subsystem
ensures peak performance and the smoothest frame rates ever. |
| High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP) |
Turns your PC into a full-quality DVD and HDTV player. |
| AGP 4X/2X and AGP Texturing Support |
Takes advantage of new methods of
transferring information more efficiently, and allows content developers
to use high-quality, 32-bit color textures and high-polygon-count scenes. |
| Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL® Optimizations and Support |
Delivers the best performance and guarantees
compatibility with all current and future applications and games. |
| Unified Driver Architecture |
Guarantees forward and backward
compatibility with software drivers. Simplifies upgrading to a new NVIDIA
product because all NVIDIA products work with the same driver software. |
| TV-Out and Video Modules |
Gives end users the option of big-screen gaming, digital
timeshifting VCR, and video-editing applications. |
VisionTek Card Layout:
Many video card manufacturers choose to base their video card designs on the
NVIDIA reference board specs since they can get them to market faster since they
don't have to design their own video card from the ground up. The card itself is
very well laid out, while this particular model only has the standard VGA and
S-video out, there is room for a DVI connector for future models. There are heat
sinks covering the RAM chips which do get pretty warm when running video
intensive applications (games), and there is active cooling for the GPU itself.
The fan on the GPU is thin enough as to not block adjacent PCI slots, and it
uses a power connector on the video card itself.
(Click For Close-Up)
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