It screams "Who's Your Daddy?"
Written: Sep 05 '00 (Updated Dec 14 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: FAST, HUGE PIXEL RATE, TONS OF MEMORY, GPU
Cons: Expensive
|
|
|
| esse's Full Review: Leadtek WinFast GeForce 2 GTS |
I had recently built myself a new computer. A high end gaming, frame smashing, monster capable of handling anything I could possibly throw at it. I had gone all out and my system was ALMOST done. Done except for one thing…a video card.
UT and Battlezone II are the two most recent games I have been playing with the most. But even with my 800 MHZ Pentium 3 and 16 MB TNT could only get 800x600 with 16 bit color and all details turned off and still find it playable. So I was in need of something that would allow me to use my computer to its maximum capability.
So I was looking at 3 cards: GeForce 256 DDR, GeForce 2 GTS, or the Voodoo5 5500. As the title implies I went with the Asus 7700 GeForce 2 GTS. If you are one of those 3dfx die hard fans and you ask why would I not get the Voodoo 5 5500? Simple…the Voodoo 5 5500 is just not all that great with its huge size, bad drivers, and power consumption problems it is just not the way to go.
If you are still stuck on the 3dfx card then by all means go ahead and purchase it. I wont lie it is a good card. But pales in comparison to the GeForce 2 GTS. Heck…even the GeForce 256 whoops the Voodoo 5 5500 in almost all tests. The only thing the Voodoo 5 5500 has going for it is FSAA (Full Screen Anti Aliasing). FSAA is a joke and is already dead before it is released. Sure some of you may beg to differ…but deep down you must see it too? With that said lets move on to the real champion of the 3d gaming world.
Highlights:
Powered by the first per-pixel shading Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
Built in 32/64 MB DDR video memory with 5.3 GB of bandwidth fulll texture pixel fill capacities with four new hypertexel pipelines 1.6 Gtexel fill rate, 25 Mtriangles/sec through T&L settings Asus Smart Doctor (only on Asus cards :OP) 4X AGP with Fast Writes Now you have to ask "That’s really great but what exactly does all that mean?" Well I don’t have time to teach EVERYONE…but just know that this means you will have one killer video card and all your buddies will be jealous :O) There are of course other features but I wont get into them.
Likes:
I was able to run UT now with 1028x768 resolution and 32-bit color and all options to the max, which gives you a feeling of being IN the game. The beauty of 32-bit color is unreal. It took a lot of the gaming load of my CPU. Normally running UT my CPU would hit peeks of 55 C maybe even 60 C in an intense rocket fight. Now with my GeForce I NEVER spike above 50 C. You ask "who cares about your CPU temp while playing?" Well overclockers silly that’s who :O)
Asus Smart Doctor is an awesome program, which allows you to monitor the health and temperature of your GeForce 2 GTS. "Why is that good?" You just don’t give up do you? Hehe. Well if you are like me, you like squeeze everything you can out of what you own. So go ahead…overclock your video card too! Why not? You know you wanna :O)
Asus Tweak. A simple program that allows you to overclock your GPU and RAM to allow for better performance and that’s always good. This program will not let you do too much however but still handy for not so experienced hardware buyers.
Asus DVD software comes with the card also. Nice software for all you DVD junkies out there. Came with 2 full games. Rollcage and Drakan. Both are decent games that will keep you happy for a while but nothing to go crazy over. If you have a girlfriend (or you are a girl :O)) then you will probably like Drakan. My girlfriend loves that game…I wont lie I enjoyed it as well hehe
Dislikes:
Price! The cheapest GeForce 2 GTS you can buy at the moment is $300 in the Creative Labs Annihilator 2. I could not get the new GeForce 2 GTS Detonator 2 5.22 drivers to work for the life of me! I am still looking into this problem and if I resolve it I will revise this review.
Over all I would have to say the GeForce 2 GTS scores an 8. If not for the steep price and driver problems I would have to say it would be a 9 or 10. If a GeForce 2 is to rich for your blood then maybe you should take a look at the GeForce 256 DDR cards which are a steal of a deal at around $200. In my opinion the GeForce 2 GTS is the king of the hill when it comes to 3d accelerators. Voodoo and 3dfx can hype up their products and FSAA all they want but it wont save them in the end. On a ending note some of you may have seen 64 MB GeForce 2 GTS versions and think "Wow 64! Man that’s 2X as much as 32! I have to have it! It must kick the 32 MB version all over!" Well that is a common misconception. People like to think BIGGER IS BETTER. When we all know WIDER IS BETTER. Sorry I just love that Japanese guy and his dog. Anyways…the 64 MB version IS NOT…I repeat…IS NOT any better than the 32 MB version. BUT…there is always a BUT….BUT there is one thing that the 64 MB version slaughters the 32 MB version. It’s at high resolutions such as 1600x1200. So if you are playing on a 19" or 21" monitor maybe you should splurge the extra cash for the 64 MB version. But if you are on a 17" like I am don’t waste your money.
Overall:
It was an expensive piece of hardware but one graphics processing monster.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
esse
|
|
Member: Evan DeCorte
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 8 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.