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VisionTek GeForce 3


Date
: 10/9/01 – 07:46:24 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: VisionTek
Price: $290

Introduction

VisionTek is one of the largest manufacturers of video cards, as they produce many cards for other brands as well. VisionTek was also the first manufacturer to release a GeForce 3 card to the public. In no time the company gained popularity and more people were buying there cards then ever before! Overclockers Online was one of the lucky ones to receive a sample of the VisionTek Geforce 3 videocard as soon as it was available, which is quite some time now. Over the past few months we have been using this video card as our reference board, which means this beauty was used in all our motherboard and processor reviews. Up to now, the card did not produce one single error, crash, lockup, … and let me reassure you, we ‘tortured’ it a LOT! We ran it on all sorts of motherboards: socket A boards based on the KT133, KT133A, KT266, AMD761, … chipset but also on the Intel boards featuring the VIA chipsets and the Intel chipsets: i845, i850, 815, 815EP, … you name it, we used it!!

This tells us that VisionTek did a very fine job when they designed this sweet piece of silicon, and today O takes a closer look at one of the most interesting video cards out there, namely the VisionTek GeForce 3. How did it perform? How high could we overclock it? What do you get when you buy this card? All these questions and more are answered in our review. Let’s get ready to rumble !!!

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

Who can better describe the specifications of a product than the manufacturer himself? Indeed … so here is a copy/paste if the specs taken directly from the VisionTek website! We’ll go into detail about the specs in a sec …

? NVIDIA GeForce3 GPU
? AGP
? 64MB
? 200MHz Core Clock
? 460MHz Memory Clock
? 350MHz RAMDAC
? API Support for OpenGL 1.2 and lower, DirectX Version 8.0 and lower
? VGA Connector , TV/S-Video Out

Features
? nfinteFX? engine for full programmability
? Lightspeed Memory Architecture for unmatched performance
? Surface engine for high-order surface and patches
? Programmable Vertex Shader
? Programmable Pixel Shader
? HRAA – high-resolution antialiasing
? Integrated hardware transform engine
? Integrated hardware lighting engine
? DirectX and S3TC texture compression
? Dual cube environment mapping capability
? Hardware accelerated real-time shadows

Product Specs
? Order Code Number:72404.0
? Item UPC Code:7-84090-72404-5
? Case Pack:4
? Approximate Case Weight (lbs.):7.0
? Pallet Ti x Hi:9 x 4
? Case Cube:1.136
? Unit Dimensions (L x W x H):
14.250 x 2.875 x 9.688
? Case Dimensions (L x W x H):
15.125 x 12.438 x 10.438

System Requirements
? IBM PC or 100% Compatible
? 266 MHz or higher CPU (AMD K6-2 or Intel Pentium II or higher)
? AGP 2.0 Compliant Socket
? CD ROM drive
? Windows 95OSR2, 98, ME, NT 4.0, or Windows 2000
? 32MB of RAM

If you want to get all the details about the specific power and engines of the GeForce 3 cards, please look at our review of the Elsa GeForce 3. All GeForce 3 cards use the same core so the specs are equal too.



VisionTek did a fine job designing their GeForce 3 card. It comes with all the standard features you need, but it doesn’t come with all those ‘eye-candy’ features that tend to increase the price to extreme levels. With those ‘eye-candy’ features I am refering to 3D glasses, several video and audio input and outputs, and more! I’m sure that there are people out there who will be using those features, but I ain’t one of them so I prefer a cheaper card that comes with the bare essentials. VisionTek equiped the card with a TV-out feature,  a core speed of 200MHz and a memory speed of 460MHz. Nothing out of the ordinary here, as all GF3 cards are clocked at these speeds.



Of course the board has support for AGP 4x, which has become a standard over the past year. It doesn’t offer a lot of speed improvement over the previous AGP 2x standard, but I guess all the little pieces match up in one big piece.

Like I said, the memory of all the GeForce 3 cards is clocked at 460MHz (230MHz DDR) by default. In order to achieve these speeds, some very fast memory is needed. The VisionTek comes with 3.8ns memory, that can take a lot more than 460MHz as you will see later on. The preinstalled heatsinks are doing a good job in keeping the chips cool, and you can bet your ass off that they will get hot when running through several loops of 3D Mark 2001. The heatsink that sits on the core, is pretty big as well although a Blue Orb would outsize it I think.

If you compare the e.g. Elsa card to the VisionTek card, you will notice that both cards are as good as equal. That’s because both manufacturers are using the nVidia reference design. Why? It is a lot cheaper than designing your own GF3 card!! As a matter of fact, VisionTek is known to design the nVidia reference design and deliver it to many OEM’s and retailers. This was also the deal with the TNT cards and previous GeForce cards … So it is safe to say that VisionTek has the expertise to deliver a good video card.

With the above specs, you can be sure that this card will peform marvelous! And only a few weeks ago, nVidia released the new Detonator XP drivers, which improves the results even more and even adds features to your video card! We will compare the 12.90 drivers to the 21.81 drivers (the XP drivers) later on the review, and let me tell you that the results are pretty amazing!!



Enough blabbering about the specs, let’s see how well this baby can overclock shall we?

Page 3 : Overclocking

Overclocking

With a fast video card like the GeForce 3, overclocking is not as essential as it used to be since the card is able to run every single game out there perfectly without having to increase the core/memory speed. Nevertheless, O wouldn’t be a true hardware webiste if we wouldn’t test how high we can clock this baby. When you start overclocking a video card, cooling is the most important factor to take in account. When the memory gets too hot, artifacts will start to occur and maybe the card will lockup as well. Crashes, BSOD’s and other results of overheating are not welcome in our rigs … So how do you prevent it? Easy … make sure the memory is fitted with high end memory heatsinks and install an active cooled heatsink onto the GPU core. Guess what, VisionTek has done just that … Thanks to that, we managed to get our sample up to 220/510 for the core and the memory. Unfortunately this didn’t do all that good in games … don’t expect amazing speed increases as you won’t get them … the GF3 is so powerful that overclocking it is useless … whats the difference between running at 120FPS or 100FPS … get my drift? Still it is nice to see the card has some serieus overclocking potential, which might come in handy when the GF3 gets ‘old’ and needs overclocking to be able to keep up with the game industry …

As you read in the specifications section, all GeForce 3 cards are clocked at a sweet 200MHz/460MHz (core/memory) speed, but we believe more can be achieved. After thinkering with the card an entire day, running through several loops of Quake3, 3D Mark 2001 and other intensive video benchmarks, we reached a stable speed of 215MHz for the core and 510MHz for the memory. Not bad at all heh? If you replace the standard core heatsink with a more powerful one or even a watercooler, even higher results will become available!

Something that caught my attention is the fact that the GF3 is balanced a lot better than the GeForce 2 GTS cards … what do I mean by that? Well, if you overclock the memory and not the core or the other way round, you won’t be seeing big improvements. The older GTS cards were limited by the memory speed most of the time, but the GF3 cards are limited by a combination of both.

Page 4 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

This wouldn’t be a video card review if we wouldn’t benchmark the living daylights out of it would it … so get ready for a truckload of test, benches, and more torturing on today’s GeForce3 flavor, made by VisionTek.

First of all, lets look at the test setup:

- MSI KT266 Pro motherboard based upon the VIA KT266 chipset
- AMD Athlon 1.4GHz – 2x128MB Crucial PC2100 DDR memory
- VisionTek GF3 & Elsa GF3 video card
- Western Digital 20GB UDMA100 7200rpm hdd
- Accton NIC
- Windows 2000 + SP2 + VIA 4.33 drivers + Detonator 12.90 & 21.81 drivers

Not bad huh? Now lets see what this baby can pack up for us … lets get ready to rumble!

MadOnion 3D Mark 2001

Quake3: Arena

Q3 Demo1 at normal settings …



Q3 Demo1 at high settings …



Q3 Torture at normal settings …



Q3 Torture at high settings …

As the benchmarks are showing, the VisionTek is one heck of a GeForce3. Although the Elsa and the VisionTek are almost entirely identical, the VT still manages to get a few points on the Elsa. Be aware of the fact that you won’t notice this at all in games, so don’t decide to buy the VT because of this. The main reason to buy one of both cards would be the pricetag.

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

What did I think of the VisionTek GeForce 3 card? Well, I am very pleased with it to be honest. This video card performed very well in all our benchmarks, leaving the competition way behind! With the release of the new XP drivers, the performance took another boost and it didn’t cost us a thing! The only cards around that are able to beat the GeForce 3, are the newly released GeForce 3 Ti 500 models, which are souped up GF3 cards featuring a faster core and faster memory. Since the Ti cards are still very new, the price of those power cards will be quite high. The good part is that the release of these new Ti cards will cause a price drop in the ‘older’ normal GeForce 3 cards, which are still more than fast enough to run all current games at full detail at high resolutions.

Do you need to GeForce 3? That’s a questions only you can answer since it depends a lot on your specific needs: are you a games enthousiast, do you only work in Windows, … If you are a serious gamer, the GeForce 3 is a card to get, and the VisionTek is one of the better ones out there! With prices going down thanks to the arrival of the Ti cards, the time might be right to get a GF3!

Good

- Performs excellent
- Overclocks well
- Comes with good cooling
- Not too expensive
- TV-OUT

Bad

- No software bundle
- GF3 Ti 500 outperforms it (but do you have a use for that kind of power?)