Aquanox Aquamark

This was the one of the only benchmarks that took full advantage of the GeForece3 in a real world game environment. We ran this benchmark a total of three times. This benchmark was run one time at the default setting, then once at both 2x and 4x FSAA. We were able to run this benchmark on both cards using the 24MB texture setting.

Image quality

Both the 3D (excluding new visual features) and 2D image quality remains nearly the same as the GeForce2 series. The good 2D quality can be attributed to the RAMDAC, which is clocked at 350MHz just like the GeForce2. Text was very sharp on my Sony 420GS 19" monitor, the way it is expected to be. The pictures below are REAL images rendered by the GeForce3 using X-Isle Dinosaur.

Verdict

At $350 this is one of the cheapest GeForce3 cards, and one of the first available. This card is Visiontek's first foray into the brutal retail market. Previously Visiontek only supplied cards to OEMs, and not directly to end-users.

Overall the performance in current games is great compared to the GeForce2 GTS 32MB, but we were all expecting that. The only real problem with this is accelerator is that its focus on the future more than the past. The GeForce3 offers a very little performance improvement over the GeForce2 Ultra. What it does offer is support for exciting new visual effects in games. This is all good and dandy for the future, albeit bad for the present considering there are virtually no games that support these features. As with all new technology of the likeness, you'll want to wait a few months for the prices to go down and the new games to be released before purchasing this card.

by Ryan Wissman

Price - 6.0 Performance - 10 Overall - 8.5/10

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