Want to try a new graphics card from GeForce 256 family? Then you are on the right way, man! Today we will speakabout another gaming piece on NVIDIA GeForce 256. You have probably noticed from our reviews that the times ofunique and interesting designs seem to have gone already. The last remarkable products were based on NVIDIA RivaTNT2. Unfortunately, most graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce 256 are as like as two peas, and very rarely we cancome across such pieces as ELSA Erazor X or some cards from ASUS, which make a lasting impression. All the othercards manufacturers simply copy the reference design. On the one hand it is not that bad, because it ensuresreliable operation of the chipset. However, judging by the reviews of the graphics cards on NVIDIA Riva TNT2,we can say that the manufacturers' changes made to the design of the graphics cards do not do any harm, but onthe contrary, improve a lot of features. That's why we are trying to find at least something remarkable in thecards on GeForce 256, which could distinguish them from all the rest.

Leadtek Company has long been well known as a manufacturer of professional High-End graphics cards costing over$1500. About two years ago they undertook the first attempts to enter the gaming graphics market. Unfortunately,these attempts were so weak and shy, and the supplies so few and small that this company remained unknown almost tillthe very autumn of 1999. Leadtek started attacking the gaming graphics market only after the launching of the cards onNVIDIA Riva TNT2-A and NVIDIA GeForce 256 (with SDR-memory). Leadtek turned out one of the first companies to launchthese graphics cards, and hence they turned out in a really favorable situation. Their graphics cards cost relativelylittle (it was especially typical of NVIDIA Riva TNT2-A based ones) and besides, the Retail-supplies were very rich invarious additional stuff, such as useful software and utilities, for instance.

However, Leadtek graphics cards on GeForce 256 were also made very close to the reference design and the onlydifference was the textolite color (the cards from Leadtek feature a bright lemony yellow color) and the stickers.We have already reviewed this kind of cards. But not so long ago Leadtek announced its WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B with DDR SGRAM. This particular card is going to be our topic for today.

Closer Look

The main features of Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B look as follows:

• NVIDIA GeForce 256, 256-bit GPU
• Full implementation of NVIDIA QuadEngine
  • Transform Engine
  • Lighting Engine
  • Setup Engine
  • Rendering Engine
• 15 Million Polygons/sec, 480 Million Pixels/sec
• 350 MHz RAMDAC resolution up to 2048x1536
• 32-bit Z-buffer/stencil
• Display Modes:
  
  

  Resolution	Colors	Vertical Refresh Rate
  640x480	8/16/32 bits	60Hz to 240Hz
  800x600	8/16/32 bits	60Hz to 240Hz
  1024x768	8/16 bits	60Hz to 240Hz
  1024x768	32 bits	60Hz to 200Hz
  1152x864	8/16 bits	60Hz to 200Hz
  1152x864	32 bits	60Hz to 170Hz
  1280x960	8/16 bits	60Hz to 170Hz
  1280x960	32 bits	60Hz to 150Hz
  1280x1024	8/16 bits	60Hz to 170Hz
  1280x1024	32 bits	60Hz to 150Hz
  1600x900	8/16 bits	60Hz to 150Hz
  1600x900	32 bits	60Hz to 120Hz
  1600x1200	8/16 bits	60Hz to 120Hz
  1600x1200	32 bits	60Hz to 100Hz
  1920x1080	8/16 bits	60Hz to 100Hz
  1920x1080	32 bits	60Hz to 85Hz
  1920x1200	8/16 bits	60Hz to 100Hz
  1920x1200	32 bits	60Hz to 85Hz
  1920x1440	8/16 bits	60Hz to 85Hz
  1920x1440	32 bits	60Hz to 75Hz
  2048x1536	8/16 bits	60Hz to 75Hz
  2048x1536	32 bits	60Hz

Now let's take the card:

The graphics card is based on AGP 2x/4x interface, features 32MB 6ns DDR SGRAM located in 8 chips on bothsides of the PCB.

Memory microchips are made by Infineon and provide 6ns access time, which means that this memory can work at166MHz. NVIDIA recommends using 150-166MHz memory in graphics cards with DDR-memory, however, the nominal memoryfrequency of this graphics card (as well as of other cards of the same type) equals to 150MHz (300MHz iftranslated into SDR-memory speed parameters). Sometimes DDR-memory working frequency is represented in anequivalent form of SDR-memory (the values double). In other words, if it stands that DDR-memory workingfrequency equals 300MHz, then you should read it as 150MHz. As for the chipset, it works at a standardfrequency for all GeForce 256 based graphics cards - 120MHz.

The main distinguishing feature of this graphics card is a huge chipset heatsink of golden color with anoriginally constructed fan, which differs greatly from the fans we saw on all other cards tested in our lab.The fan is designed in such a way that the air flow goes directly under it cooling the heatsink. The three wiresgoing from the fan to the fan connector gave us to understand that the fan was equipped with a tachometer, andhence we had every reason to believe that there should be at least some graphics card monitoring. But despitethis fact, we failed to find any hardware monitoring controller. The only pleasing thing we found was a layerof thermal paste between the chipset and the heatsink.

Nevertheless, we examined the PCB and arrived at the conclusion that this graphics card didn't have any moredifferences from the reference design. In fact, it was the cooler (and the sticker "Rev. B" on the front side ofthe card) that distinguished Rev. B graphics card from the previous rev. A. The card is lemony yellow, is equippedwith a TV-out (BrookTree 869 controller microchip). Although there is only S-Video out on the card, the packagealso includes an S-Video-to-Composite converter, which is very often disregarded by a lot of other manufacturers.Besides, you can also see a few empty spots on the graphics card intended for LCD-Out (we found neither thecontroller microchip nor the output port on the piece we had). Leadtek mentioned in the specs that TV-Out andLCD-Out were optional that is why you have to pay special attention to the box, where the presence of either ofthem (or of both of them) should be mentioned separately.

The graphics card is supplied in a typical Leadtek box without any special marks saying that there is Rev. B graphicscard inside. At first we were a bit puzzled: and how can a user guess what he buys? However, Leadtek explained it asfollows: the cost of both revisions will be the same, because the old revision of this graphics card will be simplyreplaced by a new one and won't be manufactured any more - today only revision B is already supplied to customers.

The package includes several CD-dicks with the following software:

• a CD with the drivers and utilities plus ver. 1.3 of the software DVD player - WinDVD;
• Asymetrix packages for designing 3D scenes and objects and their further utilization for WEB-designing;
• Platinum packages for VRML-worlds;
• VDOLive Video Player;
• Chillisoft VideoMail Pro Trial package for data exchange via videomail.

Besides, you also get a user's manual, S-Video cable and the already mentioned above S-Video-to-Composite converter.

Overclocking

As you can easily guess, a large heatsink like that covering the chipset allows very efficient overclocking. Wemanaged to overclock the chipset on this card to 170-172MHz and the memory - to 350MHz. We would like to stress thatthis is today's overclocking top record. This is the first graphics card on NVIDIA GeForce 256 chipset, which showedsuch impressive results. As we expect, this card will perform much cooler when overclocked. Well, we'll see...

The performance of Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B at higher AGP frequency is also worth mentioning. As we havealready said in our reviews, setting the FSB frequency of our i440BX mainboard equal to 133MHz, will provide 89MHz AGP,which may turn out fatal for a lot of AGP graphics cards. Taking into account that a lot of BX-mainboards owners are prettyinterested in increasing their FSB frequency to 133MHz, we decided devote a bit of attention to the performance of graphicscards tested in our lab at higher AGP frequencies. We can point out that Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B coped with thistask just perfectly. We don't have any remarks concerning its operation at 89MHz AGP frequency.

Installation and Drivers

Well, we are finally through with the peculiarities of Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 Rev.B graphics card. Now let's pass overto the tests. To begin with, take look at the configuration of our test system:

• Intel Pentium III 600MHz CPU;
• ASUS P3B-F (i440BX) mainboard;
• 128MB PC100 system memory;
• Quantum FB CR 6.4GB HDD;
• ViewSonic P810 (21") monitor;
• Windows 98.

The first step to make when you get acquainted with a new graphics card is to install the drivers. Here is hat we get fromLeadtek. For our tests we used Leadtek drivers ver. 1.09:

These drivers feature practically the entire lot of 3D-graphics settings taken from NVIDIA's reference drivers that's why wewon't particularly dwell here. We would like to point out just a few pages, which differ from the reference.

This properties page allows changing the resolutions as well as the refresh rates:

This page represents an overclocking utility, where we can increase the chipset working frequency up to 180MHz and memoryworking frequency - up to 370MHz:

And finally comes the page devoted to the output image quality (transferred via TV-Out or to LCD-monitor):

Leadtek drivers are none other but an enhanced version of NVIDIA's reference drivers ver. 3.68. So, we decided to comparethe performance of the graphics card working with these drivers to that of the same card working with the reference driversfrom NVIDIA ver. 3.77 (this is the last completed (not beta) driver version).

The comparison will be based on the results achieved in Expendable:

You can clearly see that the drivers from Leadtek prove more efficient that's why we will use them for all further tests.

Performance

As usual, we will begin with 2D-graphics. When we said in our previous reviews that the cards on NVIDIA GeForce 256 chipsetperformed very well in 2D-graphics, we always stressed that they could meet the requirements of almost all users who looked foran office or gaming graphics card. Of course, there will be some people who won't like the provided quality. Although very oftenit maybe because of the old monitor used of because of the wrong refresh rate selected in the drivers. Only if you belong to verysophisticated users, own a professional monitor and need a card for high precision computer graphics, then you may probably expresssome claims and concerns about the quality provided.

We will use the following two games to consider the performance of Leadtek Winfast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B in 3D-graphics:

• Rage Expendable (Direct3D, multitexturing;)
• id Software Quake3 v.1.16h (OpenGL, multitexturing).

These tools should be quite enough to give us a good idea of the graphics card performance. For a more illustrativecomparison we added the results shown by two more graphics cards on GeForce 256 chipset to our diagrams: ASUS AGP-V6600with SDR SDRAM and ASUS AGP-V6800 with DDR SGRAM. We will also show the performance of overclocked Leadtek WiFast GeForce256DDR Rev.B.

As you can see, in general the graphics card from Leadtek proves up to the mark for the class it belongs to. And as forthe overclocking, the performance here immediately catches your eye. The performance gain is quite high and sometimes reacheseven 20%. Of course, we can't regard these results as typical of all graphics cards from this family. However, we can stillhope that a lot of overclockers will finally be able to put into practice their secret desires as soon as Leadtek WinFastGeForce 256 Rev.B appears.

As far as DVD-Video goes, here everything is also tiptop. WinDVD player supplied together with the graphics card gotinstalled perfectly and provided high image quality. The CPU utilization during DVD playback never rose over 42%.

This time we luckily managed to test the available TV-Out. Unfortunately, the image appeared only in NTSC format,because the card didn't support any other formats. The maximum resolution was 800x600 and the refresh rate was 60Hz.Besides, it was impossible to get the image displayed on the monitor and TV screen simultaneously. The image qualityseen on the TV screen was quite satisfactory (we used a video recorder supporting NTSC as an intermediary). All in all,the available TV-Out was practically the same as by other gaming graphics cards.

Conclusions

Summing up we would like to say that this product seems to be the best among all other ones of the same class. Wewould definitely recommend Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B to those who look for the today's most powerful graphicsaccelerator. Available for the lowest price compared to all other NVIDIA GeForce 256 based cards with DDR-memory, thisproduct features cool overclockability and incredibly high performance, which undoubtedly makes it the best choice.

Highs:

• High performance, corresponding to that of the cards class Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B belongs to;
• Superb overclockability;
• High quality mounting;
• Large set of the accompanying software.

Lows:

• No fan status monitoring, though there is a tachometer on it.