Leadtek's WinFast GeForce256


Leadtek's WinFast GeForce256 - Page 2

     

Bundles, Installation and Drivers

Leadtek packs in a few goodies with the WinFast GeForce256. They include several useful tools and utilities including their own DVD Software Player called "DVD Magic". Here's the full list....

  • MPEG-2 (DVD) Player (WinDVD)
  • Colorific® (for fine-tuning color calibration)
  • 3Deep? (for accurate adjustment of color matching between monitor and pritner)
  • WEB 3D from Asymetrix
  • WIRL from Platinum
  • VRCreator from Platinum
  • 3D/FX from Asymetrix
  • RealiMation STE (Demo) from Datapath
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Digital Video Producer from Asymetrix
  • VDOLive Video Player from VDOnet
We would have liked to have seen the inclusion of a game or two that demonstrates Hardware T&L in action. On the other hand, Leadtek does an excellent job of customizing drivers for NVidia based products.

Here are a couple of shots showing the drivers and control panels in Win98SE.
     

Click images for a larger view.

See that little button called "Speed Runner"? You guessed it, built in overclocking folks!

 
By the way, the card installed with no effort on a standard Intel BX chipset based board. We also tried installing the WinFast GeForce256 on both an Athlon based board, MSI's MS6167 and a VIA PC133 based board, the Soyo SY-6VBA+. For some reason, we were not able to complete benchmarks on either of these two motherboards. The applications continually locked up during testing. I am not sure why these problems occurred but they precluded us from testing the product on anything but an Intel based motherboard. I have heard rumors that NVidia has a possible issue with the AGP Mini-Port driver for the GeForce but I can't substantiate that. In any event, I can't see this being a long term issue. If the issue is real, NVidia will rectify it with a VGart patch of some sort.
 

Eye Candy

For this Online Reviewer/Editor, "Eye Candy" is usually of the female persuasion. However, this is a family show so we'll just have to settle for some in-game shots! ;-) With each new Graphics Accelerator release we always like to feature game screen-shots. After all, that is why you would buy one of these products. On with the show then. These are all JPEG images but quality was set to 100% so that there was very little compression and loss. They are also all 32bit color in game shots. Click all images for a larger view.

Quake 3 Arena

 


And of course my new favorite, soon to be released, game of all time, Unreal Tournament! Here's a side note. There were a lot of bugs in the first release of Unreal. It was cutting edge technology for its time but the problems were just too numerous to stand, so I just put it down. Unreal Tournament is what the original Unreal should have been. This game rocks! Id Software, like Intel with the AMD Athlon, should be nervous. :-)

Unreal Tournament

Heya dude, are those "Maui Jim" shades you are wearing there? Mind if I blow 'em off your face?!

:-)
 
Image quality for the GeForce is spectacular. 2D desktop image quality with the WinFast GeForce256 was also excellent. I can't wait to see what the new T&L and Cube Environment Mapping enhancements will add!
 
So, I know what you're thinking.... How much ya bench?! Plenty!
 

WinFast GeForce256 Benchmarks this way! 


Tags:  GeForce, Win, GeForce2, force, leadtek, fast, DT, EA, K

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