by FastSite
12/07/1999 | 12:00 AM
Not so long ago we reviewed a newcomer of the graphics cards market -Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator graphics card based on NVIDIA GeForce256 GPU.Today there have already appeared afew other cards on this chip. Yes, time simply rushes forward! And to tell the truth, thegraphics cards equipped with a twice as fast DDR (Double Data Rate) memory are not so faroff already.<%BANNER[article]%>
NVIDIA GeForce 256 promises to be a really bright star among the 3D-accelerators, however,there is a very tangible drawback, which spoils the whole picture. This is a rather slow memory.And although 5 and 5.5ns SDRAM was quite enough for NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra it appears reallyinsufficient for GeForce 256. We have already described an analogy with a bottle, which has avery narrow neck, and no matter how large the bottle itself is, with the neck of the same sizeyou will never manage to fill or to empty it quicker. That is why the manufacturers, who providetheir cards on NVIDIA GeForce 256 with this type of memory, simply drive this chipset into a corner.You can take a look at our review to make sure that when the memory bandwidth is really overloadedwith work (in the first place in 32-bit color) NVIDIA GeForce 256 based graphics card with SDR-memoryappears hardly faster than the cards on NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra. Nevertheless, NVIDIA GeForce 256chipset can boast so many remarkable advantages that the cards made on it manage to occupy theleading position in the computer market. That's why we believe it would be very interesting ifwe considered some of these graphics cards.
At present there are three cards available in the market, so in our comparison we willlook at:
And to begin with we will describe the pieces we had for testing in our lab. Before we startwe would like to point out that all the three cards we managed to find were as like as two peas.The only difference between them was the PCB textolite color and the marking. All of them couldboast special TV-out locations and a digital out for LCD monitors connection. And as for the 5nsSDRAM memory modules, they were all from one and the same manufacturer:
These memory microchips make altogether 32MB and are located on both sides of the cards.The cards have AGP 4x/2x interface.
This graphics card is the same Annihilator as the one we have already reviewed in our firstarticle devoted to graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce 256 (the difference is in the memory modules).We have to mention that the cards of this family, which are supplied to the Asian market, are knownas GeForce while all the rest - as Annihilator.
The card's PCB is of light green color (typical of Creative), the chipset is provided with anactive cooler (again typical of Creative), we saw the same cooler by Creative 3D Blaster NVIDIARiva TNT2 Ultra. As for us, we don't think that this cooler is the best match for such greatlyheating chipset as NVIDIA GeForce 256. You will probably agree with us: the air streams arousedby the fan cool an absolutely flat heatsink surface (without any ribs). 
Besides, you can noticethat the cooler is also made in a bit non-standard way: it doesn't direct the air stream down tothe heatsink but disperses the warm air along the cooler sides (through the special slits). Ofcourse, we can't judge this cooling method as unacceptable, however, during the tests thisgraphics card - Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator - heated most of all. We have every proof ofthis fact: subjective (when we checked the card's temperature by touch after 2 hours work) andobjective (when we checked the card's temperature with the help of an external thermal sensorfastened to the chipset edge).
Besides, it should be also noted that Creative Company made another experiment with the coolerfastening: they stuck it to the chipset with a very viscous paste. We had the chance to take alook at the card where the cooler could be slightly moved but in order to totally remove it wehad to make a significant physical effort.
And now a few words about the supply. This card is supplied in a very unusual for a graphicscard dark and gloomy box.
However, you can feel a certain specific style even in these black colors. And in the boxthere is not just the card but also three CD-disks:
Besides, the supply also includes a traditional Creative monitor sticker serving to calibrateits color palette with the help of Colorific and a brief list of installation instructions.
The drivers supplied with the graphics card are based on NVIDIA reference 3.34 that is whythey are somewhat outdated. Later on we will take a look at the peculiarities of NVIDIA driverssettings. And in the meanwhile we would like just to say that Creative drivers can't boast anysignificant distinguishing peculiarities except the location and design of the properties pagesmade in Blaster Control style, which has been typical of Creative for the last one and a halfyears.
The installation ran without any problems, the graphics card started working properly as soonas the drivers were installed. Just in case you forgot we would like to remind you that all thegraphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce 256 work at 120/166MHz as default (the first value denotesthe graphics core and the second - the memory frequency). The piece we had at our disposaloverclocked up to 140/200MHz and allowed us to get the peak fillrate of 560Mpixels per secondin Normal regime and 280Mpixels - in multitexturing. The texturing rate made 560Mtexels persecond. However, we would like to stress once again that here we imply the peak performance,i.e. the theoretical performance. But there are several obstacles, which can prevent us fromgetting these high values in reality. They are the memory bus bandwidth and the imperfectionof the software (drivers, low gaming software optimization).
The PCB of this graphics card is yellow-green and the chipset is equipped with an activecooler of absolutely the same type as that of the previous card.
However, this time the heatsink is not stuck, but fastened to the card with a specificmechanism, which reliability strikes as quite doubtful, actually. Besides, there is a layerof relatively thin heat conductive paste between the cooler and the chipset. Despite the samecooler as in the previous case the chipset of this card cools down much better, which wasactually proven by the temperatures taken at the chipset edge. It is probably due to the pastebetween the chipset and the heatsink instead of the glue used in Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator.
We have to point out that there are different versions of this card available in retail butthey are already equipped with a TV-out. At first sight this seems to be a rather pleasant thing,however, there is a very unfavorable circumstance, which spoils the whole picture: there is onlyS-Video TV-out interface and there are simply no Composite (RCA) converters.
The graphics card box is designed in Leadtek's usual manner with a giant reptile on it.
The package includes not only the graphics card but also an installation manual and a wholebunch of CD-disks with the required software. This time there are no games included. And besidesthe drivers and the utilities there are the following packages:
The disk with the drivers also includes the mentioned above Colorific program for monitorsetting.
The drivers supplied with the graphics card are based on NVIDIA reference 3.48, which havetheir own settings page for resolutions and refresh rates:
Besides, there is a special overclocking utility:
The drivers got installed without any problems and everything began working impeccably. Thecard's working default frequencies were 120/166MHz, however we were greatly surprised to findout that with the additional cooling the card proved beautifully stable even at the topfrequencies equal to 150/210MHz due to NVIDIA 3.62 drivers (and these were exactly thedrivers used for testing). When this fact cropped up we got so intrigued about it that wedecided to try overclocking the card even more. Having chosen the corresponding keys in theRegistry we managed to overclock Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 up to 160/210MHz. Of course, wetried to make the card work at much higher frequencies as well, in particular at 164/215MHz.However, we failed to avoid problems at these frequencies that is why we made up our mind tostop at 160/210MHz, which provided the peak fillrate of 640Mpixels per second in Normal regimeand 320Mpixels in multitexturing.
The PCB of this graphics card is of very rich yellow color, which is characteristic of allASUSTeK Computer products.
The chipset is equipped with a black active cooler with a ribbed heatsink typical of thesegraphics cards. The heatsink is a bit unusual though: it is larger than those on the previouslydescribed cards and is fastened to the card with two pins, and the space between the heatsink andthe chip is filled with the thermopaste. All in all, this is a very efficient cooling system if wedisregard the users' reproaches caused by the quality of the fans used for ASUSTeK Computer graphicscards.
And what else caught our eye? It was the fact that in this case ASUSTek Computer gave up the oldtradition of designing their own graphics cards very different from the reference cards. ASUSAGP-V6600/Pure PCB fully corresponds to the design suggested by NVIDIA for SDR-cards. So, itis for the first time during the last two years that ASUS managed to launch a mass graphicscard on SWDRAM memory.
The card is supplied in a traditional ASUS box.
The card from ASUS is accompanied by three CD-disks: one with the required software and aset of NVIDIA demo-programs, and the other two are... Turok-2 and XG-2, which are provided withall ASUS graphics cards for over half a year already and which have set our teeth on edge bythis time. We were rather puzzled with the supply like that. Everybody keeps discussing a newrevolutionary solution from NVIDIA, namely the GPU, and ASUS is still supplying outdated andabsolutely uninteresting gaming applications instead of new games (after all, let it be at leasta demo version using modern 3D solutions).
The drivers provided with the card are based on NVIDIA reference 3.48 and in fact hardly differfrom them (except the logo). The installation hardly caused any difficulties and ran very fast, andas usual finished up with the appearance of the display properties icon in the tray. Taking intoaccount that NVIDIA drivers already include their own overclocker, ASUS considered it unnecessaryto provide any additional overclocking utilities as they had done before.
The graphics card default working frequency is also 120/166MHz. Without any special effort wemanaged to get the maximum of 150/210MHz. And after a short trying of different Registry keys wemanaged to obtain a super frequency of 162/210MHz. No doubt, it is the overclocking leader amongall the other graphics cards tested. The results achieved today, namely almost 650Mpixels/Mtexelsat the top fillrate and texturing rate, can be regarded as an attempt to compete with the future3dfx products such as Voodoo5. But of course, you shouldn't be very enthusiastic about it becauseof the memory bus bandwidth, which won't let the chipset to show its full power.
Before passing over to the test results we would like to give you our testing systemconfiguration:
The tests were run with NVIDIA reference drivers ver. 3.62 (taken as providing thehighest performance). A bit later we will list the major 3D settings, which refer tothe whole 3.* series of these drivers.
This page simply lists the components of the drivers set.
This is the main page of Direct3D settings. It contains two major fields:
In the first field we can enable/disable:
The second field is devoted to MIP mapping settings. What's this? As is known, a3D-accelerator can draw objects, which are moving away from the observer and gettingmore washed out. Human eye usually sees closely located objects very distinctly and thegreater turns the distance between the object and the person the more washed out get thecontours. In order to model the same realistic thing in 3D, the whole scene is divided into severalMIP-levels (MIP - Multum In Parvam - many in one (latin)). Each MIP-level uses textures with someparticular resolution, which helps to make the object more washed out with the growth of thedistance. Here we can enable, disable or set the following:
You can save the current settings as a scheme under a certain name. The button"More Direct3D" below opens the following page:
Here we would like to draw your particular attention to the lower field devoted to Vsyncenabling/disabling (monitor refresh rate synchronization with RAMDAC). If you install new driversthis field disappears! And in this case you will have to make some changes to the Registry if youwant to have it back again and besides, you will get a couple of other settings as well:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]"CoolBits"=dword:00000003
And now let's take a closer look at all this. The upper field - Texel Alignment, whichallows you to position the texel origin between the upper left corner and center of the texel.As default, the slider is set just in the middle... To tell the truth the change of this parameterhas absolutely no effect that's why we don't consider it worth discussing in detail.
Then if the AGP-texturing is disabled, you can set the allowed texture memory size manually.It appears possible to occupy practically the whole memory as default, in other words the memory,which remains free after the frame-buffer and Z-buffer finish their work, is dynamically defined.
And this page is dedicated to OpenGL settings. There are also two main fields. The first is againperformance and compatibility options. Here we can:
Then we can also set:
This page appears only if you make the mentioned above changes to the Registry. Here you canoverclock the graphics card by means of chipset and memory frequency increase (up to +25% of thenominal frequency). However, you should bear in mind that if you set the frequencies so high thateven Windows crashes while starting, then you can hold Ctrl key during GUI Windows loading, whichwill allow you to return to nominal frequency values during drivers initialization.
Well, we have finally come to the testing results.
As usual we will begin with 2D. As we have already mentioned, NVIDIA GeForce 256 chipset hasone of the highest RAMDAC frequencies - 350MHz (only Matrox G400MAX has a bit higher one - 360MHz).That's why we can expect a really excellent quality. And in fact, our expectations came true:everything could be clearly seen even at 1600x1200. As we had expected, the same reference designfor all graphics cards told and there were no significant differences between them. And what about2D performance? We thought that there shouldn't be any serious differences as well. Nevertheless,we checked the performance in 2D at the resolution of 1600x1200x32bpp using Winbench 99 and got thefollowing results:
| Business Graphics Winmark | High-End Graphics Winmark | |
|---|---|---|
| Creative 3DBlaster Annihilator | 187 | 651 |
| ASUS V6600 | 194 | 659 |
| Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 | 194 | 661 |
As we see, ASUS AGP-V6600/Pure and Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 showed the same results, whileCreative 3D Blaster Annihilator fell slightly behind. However, in general, the cards' performancein 2D proved on a very high level and caught up with Matrox Millennium G400 MAX.
And now let's pass over to 3D. We would like to note that the tests were run with the Vsyncenabled.
Among the testing tools used were:
You can easily notice that the picture is absolutely identical in all resolutions: ASUS AGP-V6600is the leader, then very close to it comes Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256, and Creative 3D BlasterAnnihilator is slightly behind.
Here we have also included the info obtained during the graphics cards extreme overclocking.You can see that at nominal frequencies the situation remained the same: ASUS AGP-V6600 leads,Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 is on the leader's neck and when overclocked these cards swap places.And as for Creative graphics card, it is the last in both cases. Besides, we would like to pointout that the effect made by overclocking is most tangible in 16-bit color at the resolution set to1024x768 and 1280x1024, and in High Quality regime (32-bit color) overclocking is more noticeableat 800x600 and 1024x768 and provides almost no effect at higher resolutions. Of course, the reasonfor that is again the same: the memory bus bandwidth and the restrictions it imposes.
No comments are needed here. ASUS AGP-V6600 is again the best.
Here we also took the results achieved at nominal frequencies and at overclocked ones. Theoutcome is quite predictable: ASUS AGP-V6600 is again the leader everywhere, Leadtek WinFastGeForce 256 is very close to it. There is actually a very interesting observation: the higheris the resolution, the larger is the gap between the graphics cards. The largest difference inperformance between the graphics cards working at nominal and overclocked frequencies gets toits maximum at the highest resolution equal to 1600x1200.
Unreal Tournament is a game, which greatly utilizes the graphics card as well as the CPU. Andthe geometric coprocessor of NVIDIA GeForce 256 remains uninvolved. That's why we can see onlyvery insignificant performance changes occurring with the shifts to different resolutions in16-bit color. As for the 32-bit color, it is the graphics memory bandwidth that is why theperformance drop, which takes place with the resolution increase appears more significant.The graphics cards retained their positions here: ASUS AGP-V6600 is again the coolest inalmost all the regimes. Only sometimes it lets Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 take the leadfrom it.
The current diagram shows the results provided by the graphics cards not only at nominal butalso at overclocked frequencies. In the nominal regimes it is ASUS AGP-V6600 that leads the showand when overclocked ASUS AGP-V6600 and Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 have nearly similar results.
Let's sum up the results obtained. The most important thing is that ASUS AGP-V6600 is theleader in terms of performance, Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 follows it. Unfortunately, Creative3D Blaster Annihilator fails to prove its superiority. And not so long ago we used to so greatlyadmire Creative 3D Blaster Riva TNT2 Ultra as one of the fastest cards in the group.
As for overclocking, a lot here depends on the particular piece you are overclocking,however. It is still possible to single out several things. Due to a better arranged chipsetcooling, ASUS V6600 allows achieving somewhat higher frequencies than its competitors. However,if this or that graphics card is well overclockable here, it doesn't necessarily mean that allthe cards of this family will be also very well overclockable.
We have already given you a very illustrative idea of the influence made by overclocking overthe card's performance. In fact, we really get a significant performance growth in 16-bit colorand a much lower growth in 32-bit color since the memory throughput can't be increased. We findit useful to mention that the chipset heats greatly during overclocking and hence the card heatstoo, which results into considerable overheating of the memory microchips. This is exactly thereason why we can't make the 5ns memory work perfectly at extremely high frequencies (most of youprobably remember that NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra cards were equipped with 5.5ns memory, which couldwork well at 225MHz and up, and the today's 5ns memory fails to work even at 210-215MHz).
Well, it looks as if we have already revealed practically everything about the architectureand features of the graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce 256, so let's sum up. The best graphicscard on this chipset today is ASUS AGP-V6600, which has shown not only brilliant performance butalso excellent overclockability. However, we shouldn't disregard Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 aswell. First of all we should do justice to its relatively low price and a rich set of the suppliedsoftware. Unfortunately, Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator proved a bit worse. Of course, you can argueabout these conclusions, because the difference in performance between these cards is quiteinsignificant, all of them are made following one and the same reference design that's why theretail price is very likely to become a determinative your choice will actually depend on.
All in all, the graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce 256 proved pretty promising despitethe narrow memory bus. If the coming cards based on the same chipset but equipped withDDR-memory cost just a bit higher than the available today cards with SDR-memory then itwill definitely make sense to wait for them to appear in retail. We think that pretty soonyou will be able to take a look at their performance and to decide if this piece is reallyworth the extra money you will have to pay. Then you can weigh all cons and pros of bothsolutions and choose something more suitable for your particular case. If the cost of DDR-versionof these graphics cards exceeds the today's ones by $70 and more then there will hardly be anychoice at all.