Article Info Full Review NVIDIA's new GeForce256 'GPU' Created: October 11, 1999 Updated: October 13, 1999 By: Thomas Pabst Category: Graphics Guide Summary: The expectations are high, NVIDIA's new graphics processing unit does not only come with a respectable frame rate but also with a complete transform and lighting engine and several more nifty DirectX 7 features. Does it stand out far enough from the competition with its 'old fashioned' 3D-chips?

The Benchmark Results - Descent III 640x480

We ran Descent III under Direct3D as well as OpenGL. This game doesn't have very complex 3D-scenes, which results in high frame rates. Unfortunately there's no chance to run it at 32-bit color-depth.

At 640x480 GeForce can't really impress, it scores on par with ATI's Rage Fury Pro and its TNT2-brothers. However, 100+ fps should pretty much please everyone.

Except for the 'drop-out' of G400 and Voodoo3, the picture is pretty similar. Only the other cards don't perform as well as GeForce, which speaks against their and for GeForce's driver.

'Best API' means that we compare the best scores each card scored in either D3D, OpenGL or Glide. For the first 7 cards it's D3D and for Voodoo3 it's naturally Glide. You may want to hear me say that Voodoo3 scores 'better' than the rest, but I haven't found the advantage that 130 fps have over 100 fps quite yet.

The Benchmark Results - Descent III 1024x768