X-bit labs

Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS Review

Category: Video

by FastSite

[ 05/21/2000 | 12:00 AM ]

We tested one of the first graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS. The graphics card follows accurately the reference design.However, it features a really huge cooler, which belongs to its distinguishing features and is very useful for overclocking.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• Overclocking
  
• Installation and Drivers
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusions
  

Well, today we would like to begin with the first graphics card on NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS we managed to get. GeForce2 GTS chip was announced only two weeks ago but managed to make a great stir in the web mass media. We have recently posted NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Reference Graphics Card Review and today we are offering you a review of a mass graphics card just like the pieces you will be able to buy in a shop.

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Leadtek Company is pretty well-known as a manufacturer of mainboards, controllers as well professional graphics cards classified as High-End and sold for the average of $1500. Besides, Leadtek manufactures and sells graphics accelerators aimed at the mass market and intended for the needs of ordinary users. In fact, in summer of 1999 not so many people knew anything about Leadtek's gaming products. However, as soon as they started supplying graphics cards on NVIDIA Riva TNT-A and NVIDIA GeForce256 (with SDR memory), Leadtek trademark gained the deserved popularity and public acknowledgement. No doubt, having turned one of the first companies to start selling these graphics cards, Leadtek got into a very favorable situation. Graphics cards from Leadtek cost relatively small money (it concerns NVIDIA Riva TNT2-A based cards in the first place) and all of them are supplied only in Retail versions (there are simply no Leadtek graphics cards in OEM package). Leadtek will undoubtedly strengthen its positions in the graphics market today with a new graphics card on NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS. Its mass sales should begin very soon - nearly any minute. So, let's take a closer look at Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS.

Closer Look

The main features of Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS are:

• NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS, 256-bit GPU
• 25 Million Polygons/sec, 800 Million Pixels/sec
• 350MHz 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

We won't discuss the peculiarities of GeForce2 GTS GPU in detail, because we have already devoted enough time and effort to it here.

Now here is the today's hero:

The card possesses AGP 2x/4x interface, 32MB 6ns DDR SGRAM located in 8 chips on both sides of the PCB. The memory chips are made by Infineon and should work at 166MHz, which they actually do. Note that sometimes the end clock frequency of DDR memory is given twice as high as it actually is, because these numbers look more impressive. However, it hardly matters for practice. In other words, if you see that DDR memory working frequency is 333MHz, then you should read it as 166MHz.

The most interesting thing about this card's exterior is a huge black heatsink fastened to the chipset with a fan pressed to it. We have never seen any graphics cards with a cooling system like that. Only 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 could boast a massive heatsink (a bit smaller, though), and also Leadtek WinFast GeForce256 DDR Rev.B, which was equipped with a large gold heatsink.

Further examination of the PCB showed that the graphics card hardly differs from the reference card. It is of bright yellow color (unlike a lemony yellow color of all previous Leadtek cards). The PCB is already equipped with a daughter card with a TV-Out based on Chrontel CH7007 controller. We have to point out that there is only an S-Video connector and the package does not contain any S-Video-to-RCA converter. And one more unpleasant discovery: this graphics card supports only NTSC signal. That is why if your video equipment doesn't recognize this format, you won't be able to get a TV image. Besides, the graphics card has a special empty spot for digital monitors connector.

The graphics card is supplied in Leadtek's typical box with a picture of another reptile. The package also includes a user's manual and 2 CD disks with software: one disk with the drivers and utilities and one disk with a software WinDVD player version 1.3.5. Besides, the package also includes an S-Video cable.

Overclocking

Actually, the presence of such a cool heatsink should imply rich overclocking potential. Unfortunately, all our expectations and hopes immediately vanished as soon as we undertook the first attempts. We managed to overclock the chip only to 225-227MHz, while the memory proved a bit more overclockable and showed stable functioning at the frequencies up to 400MHz. We would like to stress that this frequency is the today's absolute record: none of the graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce256 DDR we tried in our testlab managed to show something at least close to that. However, despite relatively poor chip overclockability, we have every reason to expect a significant performance increase when working at higher frequencies, because memory performance (and not the chip) is the major bottleneck of all GeForce2 GTS based graphics cards. We have already mentioned in the previous article that the cards with a highly efficient graphics processor suffer a lot from the slow memory with the end frequency of 333MHz (yes, believe us, 333MHz is already too little to be happy with it). It makes the graphics subsystem very ill-balanced on the whole. If you remember, the same situation took place with the cards on NVIDIA GeForce256, which were equipped with SDR SDRAM.

Installation and Drivers

Now let's pass over to the most interesting practical part of our research. At first take a look at the configuration of our test system:

• Intel Pentium III 733MHz CPU;
• Chaintech 6ATA4 (VIA Apollo Pro 133A) mainboard;
• 256MB PC133 system memory;
• IBM DPTA 20GB HDD;
• ViewSonic P810 (21'') and NOKIA 447Xav (17'') monitors;
• Windows 98 SE.

The work with any graphics card starts with the drivers. That's why we suggest considering the drivers, which accompany the graphics card. For our tests we installed Leadtek 1.03 drivers based on NVIDIA reference drivers version 5.16:

This driver set includes almost the whole lot of 3D graphics settings from NVIDIA reference drivers, that is why we will mention only those properties pages, which differ from the reference and can be of interest to you.

This properties page allows changing resolutions as well as the refresh rate.

This page is an overclocking utility, where you can increase the chip frequency to 280MHz and memory frequency - to 470MHz.

You can select a mode, which will create an icon in the lower right corner of the system tray. Clicking it will open all the settings.

Then come the 3D settings, which copy the reference drivers:

Performance

Well, we will start with 2D graphics. In the previous review we mentioned that we were impressed with the quality and performance in 2D shown by the reference card on GeForce2 GTS. We are happy to state that Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS made a good showing and didn't yield to the reference card (it seems to be the similarity to NVIDIA reference design that tells). We have always stressed that the parameters of NVIDIA GeForce256 based graphics cards can satisfy almost all the users, who need a graphics card for their home PC, i.e. for gaming or office work. The image quality provided by the graphics cards of this type meets all the requirements of the absolute majority. And now that the 2D graphics quality of NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS based cards has been significantly improved, even the owners of good 21" monitors should be pleased. Note that we said "good" monitors! The same thing is true for smaller monitors as well. We get a lot of messages from our readers about the 2D quality provided by the graphics cards on GeForce256. We can only sympathize with those who use their cool graphics cards with really old monitors, which are unable to ensure acceptable image quality especially at high refresh rates. And you shouldn't blame the graphics cards manufacturers for that.

So, Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS shows very good image quality in 2D graphics and wins a really high rank, being extremely close to the veterans of this rating - Matrox cards.

We will use the following two games to consider the performance of Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS in 3D-graphics:

• Rage Expendable (Direct3D, multitexturing;)
• id Software Quake3 v.1.16h (demo002, OpenGL, multitexturing).

These tools should be quite enough to give us a good idea of the graphics card performance when working via two main API. For a more illustrative picture we added the results shown by two more graphics cards to our diagrams: Creative 3D Blaster GeForce256 Annihilator Pro (based on NVIDIA GeForce256 and equipped with DDR memory) and NVIDIA reference card based on GeForce2 GTS. We will also show the performance of the overclocked Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS.

You can easily notice that Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS runs neck and neck with NVIDIA reference card. However, the performance shown by the overclocked card immediately catches your eye. The performance gain is quite great. It appears evident at first sight what a faster memory means for a graphics card. We would like to point out that when we tested the overclocked Leadtek graphics card the additional external cooling was minimal (the system block was equipped with only one extra cooler for a better air flow). Of course, we can't generalize the results shown by this graphics card and refer them to all Leadtek cards based on GeForce2 GTS, however, we have every reason to hope that overclocking lovers will easily find a nice piece for their extreme needs.

As for the DVD-Video playback, everything is in order. WinDVD software player version 1.3.5, which goes with this card, installed without any problems and the image quality didn't arouse any negative reaction. The CPU utilization didn't exceed 32%. Having installed WinDVD 2000 we managed to reduce the CPU utilization down to 18-22% while the quality remained just perfect, which mirrors the situation with the reference card from NVIDIA. We find it useful to note that the utility used to set the player was DVD Genie v.3.40.

Conclusions

So, Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS is a mass piece, which never yielded to the reference card from NVIDIA and proved its worthy successor. Although Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS is a full copy of the reference design, it turned out more overclockable. We are sure that low chip overclockability is typical of this particular graphics card (of this particular piece). And if there is any larger choice than we had, you should undoubtedly be able to find a card, which will allow fine graphics processor overclocking as well.

We have every right to recommend this graphics card, Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS, for all of you who like to buy new, fast and modern gaming equipment.

If your computer has one of NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra based cards or NVIDIA GeForce256 based cards with SDR memory, then Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS will be a good upgrading solution.

If you have a graphics card based on NVIDIA GeForce256 with DDR memory, we wouldn't hurry with the final decision. The benchmarks showed that the performance difference is not too huge to pay extra money for a new graphics accelerator. Besides, the largest part of the GPU GeForce2 GTS's potential remains undemanded (there are not enough games making use of all new chip's cool features).

Highs:

• Super high performance, which ranks this card as one of the most powerful
• Good memory overclockability
• High quality card design

Lows:

• No LCD monitors connector
• Low graphics chip overclockability even with very well designed cooling system
• High price (about $350)