Beta Test: MSI StarForce 822 GeForce 3 (7/7)

Haaaaaaa Haaaaaaaa!

Conclusion

Here are my first impressions after the MSI StarForce 822 GeForce 3 beta testing:

  • GeForce 3 falls behind GeForce 2 Ultra in 16Bit color depth with the current drivers
  • The GeForce 3 card is a lot faster when running with 32Bit color depth
  • GF3 rules in Dot3 Bump Mapping Evolva benchmarks in 32Bit resolutions.
  • GLMark v1.1 shows GF3 op top even with GF3 features enabled.
  • The detail view of 3DMark 2000 shows some wound points of the GF3 with current drivers.
  • FSAA is now usable at normal 32Bit resolutions.
  • GeForce 3 can do Environmental Bump Mapping like several Matrox cards and RADEON
  • I missed the "4x" and "7x faster than...." results in reality. ;-)

Card and drivers are still beta and - if we can believe the NVIDIA Marketing guys - far away from final performance. So I won´t give you a final conclusion about GeForce 3 at this time. Overall, the card ran rockstable with the 10.6 drivers - without any crashed or artifacts. But the 16Bit performance drop compared to GeForce 2 Ultra shows that NVIDIA has still some work to do because nobody will pay more than 500 bucks for a card which is slower in childish 16Bit benchmarks - even with the potential which was already shown by the prerelease card.

Lars "Borsti" Weinand - Editor In Chief - RIVA Station

Additional links:

Beta Test: MSI StarForce 822 GeForce 3

GeForce 3

Benchmarks

Summary

  • Conclusion

Language

Copyright: 04.03.2001 -   RIVA Station 2001 - Lars Weinand
No Copy without Permission!

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