GeForce2: Duo Deluxe (2/12)

AOpen PA256 Deluxe

Although their products range from mainboards, servers, modems, and cases to CD-ROM drives and even memory, AOpen is still a new kid on the block in Germany as far as 3D cards are concerned. Visit AOpen.com to get an overview about that manufacturer if you have not imagination yet.

Their 32MB GeForce 2 GTS board is based on NVIDIA’s reference design and features the usual 6ns DDR SGRAM chips. The chip is cooled by a powerful fan which is connected to the board through three cables. The third one is a fan speed sensor, letting you read the fan’s speed via the driver . ASUS uses a similar solution, by the way.

The TV-Out sits on a daughterboard of AOpen’s design. It uses a Chrontel CH7007A-T chip for the video output. NTSC is pre-selected, so if you live in Europe, it would be a good idea to change the mode to PAL using the jumper before you add the card into your system. Otherwise you’re going to get only a black/white image. (some kind of retro style! ;o] )

Drivers

The drivers were something of a light disappointment. Like many other NV manufacturers, all AOpen has done in the way of "personalizing" NVIDIA’s reference drivers is to replace the NVIDIA logo with their own. Of course, all the important functions and 3D settings are there, but that’s about it. No extra tools for the refreshrate, no taskbar menus, nothing. This can be done better!

A very practical feature is AOpen’s Live Update Wizard. When your computer is connected to the internet, it can look for new drivers for your videocard and install them for you automatically.
Unfortunately, it looks like the driver team left out the settings for FSAA under OpenGL. The only solution to this is to use a registry hack. But beware – this could ruin your Windows installation as well as your day. I only recommend this to very advanced users. You can get the hacks here (ThanX to big daddy Kyle who released those hacks first if i remember correct).

The game bundle that comes with the card is a bit dated. Rollcage and Drakan, two titles by Psygnosis, are aging (though fun) DirectX 6 games that come nowhere near to exploiting the GF2’s full potential. Fortunately, AOpen is including a CD with NVIDIA tech demos ("NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Experience") that show off what the chip would be capable of, if there were games around that used it to its full potential. To round off this bundle, a copy of the software DVD player WinDVD 2000 is also included.

Copyright: 04.10.2000 -   RIVA Station 2000 - Lars Weinand
No Copy without Permission!

Translation by Benjamin Kraft

URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/gf2-deluxe_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-)