Test: Leadtek WinFast GeForce 2 PRO (3/15) Drivers
Leadtek is shipping the PRO with a current driver CD. The drivers are based on NVIDIA's reference driver v6.27 and come in Win9x/ME and Win2000 flavors. NVIDIA's latest driver release is v6.31, but the differences between the two versions are minimal. What's important is that Leadtek is shipping Detonator 3 based drivers. There are still some black sheep among the manufacturers that sell their boards with old Detonator 2 drivers. The shipping drivers are the most current Leadtek is offering. These are also the newest ones to be found on their website. Positive note: AGP sidebanding is enabled by default in the card's BIOS. Leadtek's driver concept is a mix of plain NVIDIA reference driver with Leadtek's custom tools, called WinFox. The settings and adjustments can be accessed through the task-bar icon. The most important options can also be found in the display properties dialogue. Besides various system information tools that bear a strong resemblance to Entech's PCI List tool, two hidden Minesweeper-type Windows games are also included...
All 3D and anti-aliasing settings must be changed through the standard NVIDIA driver interface. Even the TV-Out functionality is handled this way. Sadly, this also means that it inherits the NVIDIA-typical black frame around the image on the TV. If you're planning on using your PC as a DVD player, you'll need to use the shareware program TV-Tool to make that frame disappear, as it can tell the Brooktree TV-Out chip to overscan the output signal and thus fill the screen.. But there were some other technical difficulties with this board. The only way I could get a color picture on the TV was to use the NTSC settings. Looks like the BIOS of the test sample was programmed for NTSC use only. Since there are no jumpers on the card, you're stuck with NTSC. Consequently, if you don't have an NTSC-capable TV, watching DVDs on your TV is a no-go. DVD Software I was quite happy with the DVD software player, though. The WinFast DVD player is based on Cyberlink's PowerDVD, which supports the GeForce 2's Motion Compensation feature and therefore takes a bit load off the CPU. As a bonus, it also supports multi-channel sound output as found in the Soundblaster Live! family of cards.
Windows 2000 The Windows 2000 driver has the same look&feel as its Win9x/ME counterparts, although some of the WinFox features don't work. The performance is also not on the same level. The NVIDIA reference driver v6.27 is still markedly slower than Windows98 version. In my opinion this is only a secondary concern, though, since Windows 2000 is not going to be the gamer's platform of choice. It's simply too expensive for that. But if you're for some reason forced to use Win2000 and still want to play "full speed", I suggest a dual-boot installation, with Win98 as your secondary (gaming) OS. An 800MB partition should be sufficient for a Win98 installation. Just add a bootmanager like the freeware tool XOSL and you're set. Still, rather complicated though, IMHO. The good news is that NVIDIA claims that the new DirectX 8 based drivers will offer far better performance under Windows 2000. I'm looking forward to seeing these claims validated in a future test.... Driver screenshots
These screenshots should be pretty self-explanatory. You can get to these menus either via the extended display properties or the task menu icon. |
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Copyright: 09.12.2000 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand Translation by Benjamin Kraft! URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/leadtek_gf2pro_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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