R I V A Station - Review: TNT2 Ultra Karten

Guillemot 3D Prophet compared to TNT2 Ultra

!! Update 18.10.99 - Results of GeForce 256 with DDR Ram added !!

Now it´s finaly here, the NVIDIA GeForce 256. Many people discuss wether or not a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit - a shortcut made by NVIDIA) and its Transformation & Lightning unit (T&L) can give the user a major advantage. The GPU shall unburden the system CPU and do the same job much better, faster and with up to 10 times more polygons than before. The discussion about fillrate and limitations of SDRAM will become silent after benchmarks are posted. Sure, DDR RAM cards are faster but SDRAM is not slow! The D3D drivers need some more work but OpenGL works pretty fine. An example: A TNT2 Ultra card has a max. fillrate of about 300M pixel/sec. The GeForce can do 480M pixel/sec... so this ain´t no slow card!

The bad story here is that there are no games today that are optimized for T&L or which own a higk polygon mode (besides of Quake3). But in OpenGL GeForce allready works pretty fine and can also take some advantages of the T&L functions in the OpenGL API. So here are some results of Quake 1-3.

The testsystem is a Pentium III 500MHz on a Tekram P6BX-A mainboard with 128MB PC-100 SDRAM. The used GeForce card is a prototype of the Guillemot 3D Prophet with 32MB SDRAM (120/166MHz). Drivers are NVIDIA referencedrivers v3.48.

To see where the CPU is the limit and where the graphic card is the bottleneck I´ve posted TNT2 Ultra values of a Pentium III 500 and a Athlon 600 for this comparsion.

Generations - Quake Benchmarks

GL-Quake1 - Demo1

Here you can see that GeForce plays its own league. The SDRAM
bottleneck is much more less than expected!
Update: The DDR Version jumps to unbelievable 208FPS!!! in
800x600. BTW: The DDR gets 60,3FPS in 1600x1200 here!

GL-Quake 1 - Bigass

The results of the Athlon show that CPU power is a factor here,
mainly at 800x600. With T&L power the GeForce can outperform it
easily.
Update: The DDR plays in another league again.

Quake1 shows the power of the SDRAM version of GeForce.
Although very powerfull the Athlon with TNT2U has no chance against
a PIII 500 with GeForce!

Quake2 - Demo1

This difference is way larger than in Q1. In 1024x768 the GeForce is
almost double as fast than a TNT2 Ultra.
Update: Only few differences between SDRAM and DDR.

Quake2 - Massive

Massive shows that it needs a bit more CPU power than Demo1. But
GeForce can outperform Athlon/TNT2U again.
Update: The GeForce DDR is little bit faster in 1024x768.

Quake2 - Crusher

Crusher needs a lot CPU power. You can see that the GPU of
GeForce gives a performance push - it outperforms Athlon in 1024.
In 800x600 Athlon with TNT2U is a bit faster.
Update: Only few differences in Crusher. The CPU should be faster
here.

T&L Power. This shows that a GeForce makes sense in a PIII 500
system. In Q2 the GeForce gives you more FPS than a faster CPU.

Q3 Test v1.08 - Demo1

GeForce performs well in Q3. Athlon can compete in Fast and Normal settings but
at higher resolutions you have the advantage of the higher GeForce fillrate.
Update: The Performance of the DDR in 32Bit does´nt fall a lot compared to the
SDRAM version of the GeForce.

Q3 Test v1.08 - Demo2

Same story as Demo1
Update: The DDR shows its 32Bit power again.

The distance to TNT2U is not as large in Q3 as in Q2. But Q3 wants
a lot more hardware power than Q2. So the relation is almost the
same. The GeForce also has power in upper regions. It does 32,8
FPS in Normal 1600x1200.

Settings: Fast, Normal and High Quality are standard graphic settings
in Q3Test. In Normal 800 and High 1024 I only changed the resolution
of these settings.

WOW! - But where´s the snag? Well, it´s D3D. The D3D drivers still need some work. The v3.48 driver is faster in DirectX7 games but in DX6 games v2.08 is faster. But this is only an matter of time until we´ll see better performance here. The OpenGL benches show the potential of the Guillemot 3D Prophet and NVIDIA GeForce - even in SDRAM version. You can also see it this way: Don´t upgrade you main system with a faster CPU. Just buy a GeForce.... for OpenGL games this already has come true.

(For AMD fans: I don´t want to blame Athlon - I just want to show the unburden of the CPU by GeForce and its T&L)

Update: The Power of the GeForce DDR is once more a class higher than the SDRAM version. You can see that I must use higher resolutions and color depth to get GeForce DDR into stress. 1024x768-16 are a piece of cake for GeForce. You must run 32Bit to see differences between SDRAM and DDR RAM version.... or I should use a faster CPU. I think Quake 1/2 were not optimized for T&L so we should see more improvements of T&L in future. But the results of T&L are already very impressive today! The GeForce unburdens the CPU a lot. Quake 1 shows the potential of the DDR Version compared to the SDRAM version... You should own a gun license for 208FPS in Quake1...

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