Fast Food! 5 more GeForce 3s

The GeForce 3. Like any NVIDIA card in its time, it is a great performer and a gamer’s dream. If you're considering getting one of these cards, you are at least one of the following: an "early adopter" (read: must-have hardware enthusiast/junkie that always needs the newest hardware or you are in physical pain from withdrawal symptoms); lucky enough to have a birthday coming up and be a member of a very understanding family; or too wealthy for your own good, considering you can get an entire computer for the same price!

It’s just a fact: If you’re in the market for a GF3 card, you’re a hardware addict and have "a bit" of cash to spare.

Now, if you’re catching yourself about to protest, then you most likely fit into one of the categories above (or wish you did). The point is, there are about as many good reasons to buy a GF3 as there are arguments against it. In the end, your decision is most likely going to be dictated by your wallet because – let’s face it – these cards just aren’t exactly what you’d call bargain-priced. Besides, you do need to have made a prior investment in the form of at least a GHz CPU, since anything less is going to be a poor partner for this card and simply won’t do it justice.

So far, there are only a handful of games around that can take advantage of this chip’s new features. On the other hand, the GeForce 3’s superior 32Bit performance in combination with anisotropic filtering and FSAA is among the strongest arguments in favor of such a card, offering outstanding image quality at very playable framerates. Finally, playing at 1024x768-32 with FSAA at more than 60fps has become a reality and not just a far-off goal! No other currently available 3D card is capable of similar performance. So, how much is that worth to you?! And that brings us right back to square one...

I’ve covered the technical details of NVIDIA’s flagship card in previous articles, so I won’t repeat myself here. Recently, I had the chance to take a good look at 7 GeForce 3 boards (click here to jump to that article) and took the chance to cover such features as texture filtering and FSAA in detail. Now, as a follow-up, this review adds another 5 boards to the list of cards that have proven themselves in the RS lab. This means that you can find reviews of 12 different GeForce 3 cards here!

Participating in this review are (from left to right):

Die Kandidaten (von links nach rechts):

Leadtek WinFast GeForce 3 TDH
Gigabyte GV-GF3000D
PowerColor ChameLeon
Chaintech G300
3D Power Morpheus

The 3D chip and memory are virtually identical on all boards and run at the speed specified by NVIDIA, namely 200MHz core and 460MHz (DDR) memory frequency. As is usually the case with cards of the same class by different companies, the only differences in hardware relate to their color, preferred method of cooling and additional features like TV-Out and hardware monitoring. The software bundle, on the other hand, ranges from "almost non-existent" to "quite generous". Then again, depending on your needs, this may not factor into your decision at all...

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