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GeForce 3... sounds nice dunnit... wow, THREE. That must be better than my geforce 2, cos that's only a TWO, and this is THREE... oooh... Yeah yeah, whatever, stop drooling. Sure it's better, but at £300 to a geforce 2 GTS's £100, its gotta be, ooh, look at that... 3 times better. Hmm... well, is it? Let's see! :D
 
You know, testing geforce cards is much like making love to a beautiful woman... you, errr... nah wtf it's not like that at all. And I sure as hell know what I'd prefer to be doing! Bring on the geforces baby!
First up is my Creative Labs 3D Blaster GeForce 2 GTS. Whew, what a mouthful, from now on I'll be calling it the GTS (that stands for Giga Texel Shader, dontchaknow).
And up against my baby is my man Cyanide's Creative Labs GeForce 3 blah blah something or other... I would have used the full name, but for some reason it's not listed on Creative's website... odd, huh.
Anyway, we'll be putting the two cards through their paces in MadOnion's 3dmark2001 and 3dMark2000, both available for download if you want to compare your own performance with ours.
3dMark2000 is, obviously, older than 3dMark2001. 2000 benchmarks DirectX7 performance, while 2001 is enhanced for use with DirectX8. We would expect, therefore, that the gf3 would really shine in 2001 as gf3 was made for DirectX8 (or is that the otherway round). In 2000, we expect the gf3 to win, but perhaps by not such a high margin...
In games I play daily - Operation Flashpoint, Tactical Ops (sorry, felt pimpage was neccessary, hehe) and Max Payne, among others - my gf2 GTS performs brilliantly. I get lovely high-res graphics, and bleeding-eyes-inducing high framerates (well ok, maybe not, but they're pretty high!). Cyanide is constantly going on about how amazing his gf3 is and how brilliant everything looks, so obviously he feels the same way about his card as I do mine, but what we want is figures - exactly how well the cards perform. So, without further ado, lets roll out the 3dMark scores shall we.
Testing was kept as similar as possible on each machine. We both clocked our processors down to 1Ghz (10x100fsb). We both have 512Mb of RAM running at 133Mhz (host clk + pci clk). And we both run Abit KT7 boards, although his is of the "A" variety, which might give him a slight boost in performance (like he needed another one...). Both of us used the same detanator drivers. Other details were matched as closely as possible.
We tested at the card's native clockspeed (memory and gpu), and then overclocked the cards as far as we could and tested again. Here are the results:
3dMark2000:
| Card: |
Score: |
Notes: |
Geforce 2 GTS
200Mhz/333Mhz (gpu/mem) |
6182 |
Default speeds. |
Geforce 2 GTS
219.07Mhz/365.90Mhz |
6387 |
No problems, extra 305 3dMarks :D |
Geforce 2 GTS
230.11Mhz/381.81Mhz |
6487 |
Some artefacts on screen, speed slightly too high... |
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|
Geforce 3
200Mhz/460Mhz |
6899 |
Default speeds. |
Geforce 3
225Mhz/515Mhz |
6933 |
Maximum before problems arise. |
3dMark2001:
| Card: |
Score: |
Notes: |
Geforce 2 GTS
200Mhz/333Mhz (gpu/mem) |
2840 |
Default speeds. |
Geforce 2 GTS
219.07Mhz/365.90Mhz |
3014 |
A fairly good improvement |
Geforce 2 GTS
230.11Mhz/381.81Mhz |
3018 |
Again some artefacts on screen, not as bad though. |
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|
Geforce 3
200Mhz/460Mhz |
4725 |
Default speeds. |
Geforce 3
225Mhz/515Mhz |
5034 |
Way higher than any GTS performance. |
Clearly, in 3dMark2001 the gf3 blows the GTS out of the water. In 3dMark2000 though, the scores are pretty close. Since most games around at the moment don't use all the "optimisations" in DirectX8, the GTS is a good option for the time being. However, as more DX9 optimised games come out the GTS is gonna start looking tired and dated, as it simply won't be able to keep up - the fully rendered cature scene in 3dMark2001 is a case in point... you can watch it in Demo Mode, and it looks gorgeous, but on my GTS it chugs like Max Payne on a P200. Cyanide (the git) assures me it is spectacular in full flow on his gf3 - once games start doing stuff like that, leaves blowing in the wind as you run through a forest in pursuit of your target (or something), we're gonna need nextgen cards like the gf3. For now, I'd say GTS still cuts the mustard. But this here shootout has proved the gf3 is the new sheriff around these parts, and pretty soon the GTS is gonna be just another old drunk at the saloon.
Crap, almost forgot. As tradition in these here articles, I'll rate the 2 cards with my ickle stars, in this case relative to the gf3. if the GeForce 3 is a 5 star card  then the GTS scores a worthy, but not amazing, 3 stars 
After the main testing, and after I wrote this (GRR!), cyanide got the detanatorXP (detanator4) drivers, and clocked up the following results (with his CPU back at its native 1100Mhz):
3dmark 2000 : 7749
3dmark 2001 : 5800
A fair improvement, and pushes it a little further away from the GTS. I still say that with today's games, the GTS holds its ground and teh gf3 isnt worth three times as much money!
Old boy stands fast.
mrplow & cyanide, 19-9-01.
Related:
nVidia.com - for drivers and news updates.
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