We should point out that this
review was written prior to the release of NVIDIA long
awaited Detonator 4 Reference Drivers. As such, the
performance we'll note here is representative of the 12.41
driver release. You can safely assume that whatever
boost the Det. 4 release will generate, it will translate to
the same level of performance increase on this GeForce3 as
well.
Let's have a
quick look at what Gainward's, EXPERTool looks like.
The nicety here is that you can use it with NVIDIA drivers
and still have the tool's full functionality.
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Installation / Setup Of The
Gainward GeForce3 Power Pack !!! Golden Sample |
Chomping at the bit |
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Gainward's
EXPERTool has an array of very customizable settings and
tweaks. In top left shot, you'll note we have the
clock speeds set to "Enhanced Performance". This is a
modest 220/480 setting for GPU/Memory clocks. We had a
hunch it would handle a little better than that and we were
right on.
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Overclocking
with
the Gainward GeForce3 Golden Sample |
A new land speed
record! |
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A picture says it
all...
It is important to
note that yes, we could run totally stable at this speed and
without even so much as a single pixel popping or texture
flashing. There were no graphical anomalies that we
could see and the board was stable under constant testing.
This performance should be representative of what most
Gainward GeForce3 "Golden Sample" cards can produce.
However, as with anything else in overclocking, not all
products are created exactly equal. There are no
guarantees in life or in graphics boards. Our board
however, was amazing.
By far this is the
most overclockable GeForce3 we have seen here in the
HotHardware Labs.
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Quincunx AA and DirectX 8
Screenshots - Madden 2002 |
The Gridiron in 3D |
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We typically like
to include a few screenshots from a leading edge game title,
just to have a little fun. We chose EA Sports' Madden
2002 and we dialed up things in smooth Quincunx Anti-Ailiasing.
The Madden 2002
graphics engine is pretty darn impressive and it looks that
way when driven with a GeForce3. We are inching closer
and closer to photo-realism folks.
Let's fire up some
benchmarks!
3DMark2001 and Vulpine GL Benchmarks
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