OK then, enough drooling.
The folks at Leadtek decided to go with the 27.50 version of
NVIDIA's reference drivers for their base driver set.
They have the exact same basic functionality as the refernce
drivers but Leadtek also adds a few bells and whistles to
their setup.
So, as you can
see, you get your standard issue reference driver interface,
complete with FSAA and now Anisotropic Filtering settings,
along with Leadtek's display adjustment and "Speed Runner"
overclocking slider. We'll cover more on the
overclocking side of things later. Finally, you'll
also notice that Leadtek also has an option for hardware
monitoring, in their advanced properties control panel.
We certainly would have liked to see this feature activated
but unfortunately it was not highlighted and unavailable.
We did run into
one small snag with these drivers. We like to use pure
NVIDIA reference drivers, when testing. When we went
to uninstall the Leadtek version of the 27.50 drivers and
reinstall NVIDIA's version, the Leadtek drivers caused the
OS to not accept the new NVIDIA driver install and the only
way we could work around this problem was a complete
reinstall of the OS. Since this is standard procedure
for us in the HH Lab and reinstalling WindowsXP for us, is a
short 15 minute ordeal, it was only small speed bump in our
testing. However, novice users could run into this
snag and may be forced into a reinstall or complete format
of their system. Leadtek most likely will have this
rectified shortly but we felt compelled to let you know the
details regardless.
|
|
|
Screenshots |
|
NVIDIA's Chameleon
Tech Demo |
|
We always like
to give you a little "eye candy" with a review of each new
graphics card to hit the market. After all, we are
taking about 3D Graphics here, right?
We fired up
NVIDIA's "Chameleon" Tech Demo and ChameleonMark (benchmark
numbers later) to grab some screens of this impressive 3D
reptilian rendering. Here's what NVIDIA has to say
about their Chameleon Demo.
"The changing skin of a chameleon
is no match for the number of effects possible with the
GeForce4 nfiniteFX II engine. See the wide range of skin
treatments on the chameleon as it makes it's way up a vine
of shading effects. The walking motion of the chameleon is
accomplished with nfiniteFX Vertex Shaders. The skinned
model is manipulated through a 25-bone skeleton. The skin
surface of the chameleon obtains a new level of realism
through nfiniteFX Pixel Shaders. Combining color maps,
specular maps, and reflection maps,
Pixel Shaders give a multitude of possible skin treatments -
enough to make a real chameleon green with envy."
Shots taken on Leadtek's A250
Ultra TD GeForce 4 Ti 4600 Card
Click for full viewing
Needless to say,
these screens look great but really don't do this NVIDIA
tech demo justice. To see the Chameleon in motion is
like night and day compared to these still captures.
On the GeForce4, the skin textures, lighting and reflections
are simply jaw dropping. What the world needs now is a
game developer to implement a new title with this level of
detail. Can you say
Unreal II?
We knew you could.
2D Desktop Image Quality:
We also felt
compelled to let you know what to expect from a desktop
image quality standpoint, with the Leadtek Winfast A250
Ultra TD. At resolutions all the way up to 1600X1200,
the card exhibited crisp bright images at very high refresh
rates of 85Hz. We would venture to say that 2D image
quality was at least on par with previous GeForce3 based
products and even ATi's Radeon line. However, this is
a subjective area, so ultimately you'll have to be the
judge.
Test
Setup, Quake 3 With and Without AA and Anisotropic Filtering
| 
