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Now that
the GeForce 3 has been widely available for a few
weeks, we find ourselves in the same situation we
we've been in numerous times before, since the days
of the Voodoo2.
Manufacturers follow a standard
reference design, mass produce it and market it
under their recognized brand name. The advantage of
this process is knowing you are getting a product
based on a proven, tested design. The disadvantage
is that differentiating one product from another
becomes very difficult. Many times potential
customers are forced to make their buying decisions
based on the included software bundle, or solely on
price.
Occasionally though, a company will modify this
reference design to better cater their product to a
particular market. This is the case with the
Leadtek
Winfast GeForce 3 TD we'll be taking a look at
today. Although this card is not a complete
departure from the standard nVidia reference design,
a few slight, but significant changes, have been
made that should please many hardcore gamers. If
you're at all familiar with the current crop of
GeForce 3s, just looking at the Winfast GeForce 3 TD
reveals that this card is different than most others
in its class. With over 15 years of experience in
the design and manufacture of a wide range of high
performance graphics and video solutions, you'd be
inclined to think that the engineers at Leadtek
posses the "know how" to produce a top-notch
product. We were impressed with a few of Leadtek's
GeForce 2 based offerings, specifically the
Winfast
GF2 MX DH Pro and their
Enhanced GTS), but we won't
know how we feel about the Winfast GeForce 3 TD
until we see how it performs in our usual suite of
benchmarks?lets get started and see what we find
out?
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| Specifications
and Features Of The Leadtek WinFast GeForce3
TD |
|
This ain't
your momma's reference design |
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Specifications:
- Nvidia
GeForce3
- 350MHz RAMDAC
- 3.2 billion AA
samples per sec fill rate
- 7.36GB/sec
memory bandwidth
- Lightspeed
Memory Architecture amplifies memory bandwidth
- AGP 2X/4X with
Fast Writes Support
- 32-bit
Z/stencil buffer
- DirectX 8.0
- OpenGL 1.2 ICD
support
Cooling solution:
- On-board
heat-sink cooling fan (Special Designed Active
Cooling Module for GPU and Memory)
Memory:
- 64MB On-board
4ns DDR memory
AGP Standard:
TV-out / DVI:
- TV-out up to
1024x768 resolution
- Onboard DVI
connector up to 1280x1024 resolution
Driver support:
Hardware Features:
-
High-Performance Hardware Anti-Aliasing
- DVD software
included
- AGP 4X/2X, AGP
texturing
- Programmable
Vertex Shader
- Second
Generation Integrated Transform and Lighting
(T&L) Engines
- Leadtek WinFox
system utility
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Leadtek WinFox Utility:
-
Leadtek unique WinFox Utility is specially
design for users to tuning/monitoring the
hardware condition of their system.
-
Speed Runner for overclocking the graphics
core/memory speed.
-
Information (PCI-Watch) for system information
report.
Product Bundle:
-
S-video to RCA Cable, RCA cable, S-video cable
-
WinFox, WinDVD, Speed Runner, Cult3D,
Colorific
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DVI-I Display resolutions support
DVI Resolutions
VGA Resolutions
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The specification and
feature list of the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 TD
reads like virtually all other GeForce 3s, with a few
notable exceptions regarding the maximum TV-Out
resolution and the cooling solution. The
specifications also state that there is 4ns memory
on board, when in fact it is 3.8ns. We suspect
Leadtek has done this because the default clockspeed
(460MHz DDR) is equivalent to a 4ns part (460 / 2 =
230, 1000 / 230 = 4.3).
The card ships with a
decent bundle. Included in the box you will find a
CD with all of the necessary drivers and utilities,
an S-Video to RCA adaptor, a short S-Video cable and
another CD containing the rest of the software
bundle. WinDVD, Colorific and Cycore's Cult3D are
included as well as Leadtek's own Speed Runner
overclocking utility and their WinFox hardware
monitoring software.
Drivers,
Features, Screenshots and Demos
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