GeForce 3 - 7 way shootout (3/42) |
Since the manufacturers can no longer set their cards apart from their rivals’ with increased clockspeeds (NVIDIA is said to be putting pressure on the cardmakers), they are instead developing a trademark look. Hercules’ board is - as usual – light blue (hmmm, light?!), Gainward’s color of choice is bloody red, ASUS has opted for brown/black and Leadtek is going for the classic look with a tech-y green PCB and some classy memory heatsinks. ELSA, Visiontek and MSI offer only the standard fare of plain-jane green. As nice a change as this may be, in the end the card will just sit inside you case...right? Here’s a more detailed look at the cards:
The drivers that the companies ship differ not only in version number, but also in functionality, i.e. additional tweaks and tools. The Asian companies (ASUS, Gainward, Leadtek and MSI) have modified NVIDIA’s reference driver to include their own driver menus and personalized tools. ELSA and Hercules on the other hand have only taken the reference drivers and exchanged NVIDIA’s logo for their own. Visiontek once again takes the purist approach and simply uses the reference driver as is. The standard features will in effect be sufficient for everyday use, of course, but you’ll need to unlock V-Sync and the overclocking settings by hand in the registry when using the reference drivers. To be frank, I expect a company to put more effort into a product when I’m supposed to shell out almost $400 for a something that is considered high-end. Luckily there are enough free-ware tweak tools around the web with which these "oversights" can be corrected.
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Copyright: 12.06.2001 - RIVA Station 2001 - Lars Weinand - Translation by Benjamin Kraft! URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/7gf3cards_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
For this shootout I have assembled
an assortment of cards that, while sharing an almost identical board design, nonetheless
differ in functionality, not to mention price. Each manufacturer creates their own bundle
depending on what each company wishes to emphasize about their card and what their target
audience is. All of these cards come with TV-Out, but only three of them also offer TV-In
as a bonus. The ASUS V8200 Deluxe has the most generous bundle, featuring not only
hardware monitoring, but 3D shutter glasses as well. Visiontek, on the other hand, has
chosen to go the purist way. TV-Out, driver CD – done. A real no-frills offer. Now,
let me give you a quick overview of the cards and their respective features and extras: