|
Creative Labs Annihilator2 Review - Conclusion: Part 1
I know what you are thinking, but Quake 3 and 3DMark2000 are the two best benchmarks going. If you guys will allow it, I am going to editorialize for a while.
When I first saw the specs for the GeForce2, I was stunned. Although the rumors of a 200MHz core clock floated around the web, there was still an ounce of doubt that the GeForce2 would actually be released at the 200MHz level. This chip has gobs of fillrate. Unfortunately, it is hampered by the memory's bandwidth limitations.
Limited or not, it is still the fastest thing going, especially if you play Quake or Quake engine based games. The GeForce2 GTS chip is the Swiss Army Knife of gaming with transform and lighting, pixel shaders, texture compression, anti-aliasing, cube environment bump mapping, and more...
FSAA, though? It works and works well. Sure there is the performance hit but is it worth it.
With the gobs of fillrate the GeForce2 posseses, you can select from at least 5 different Quake3 settings that all look amazing and run around 50-60 fps average and a minimum of 17-20 fps in the gib-bath of demo001. What I decided to do was get screenshots of each and let you guys flip through them. I added rocket smoke in the 10x7x16 2X FSAA shot and the 8x6x16 4X FSAA shot to show how 16bpp dithering nearly disappears when more samples are taken per pixel.
Click to Launch Screenshot Window
Each shot has strengths and weaknesses so you have to choose what is most important. All other settings CRANKED!
No FSAA
2X FSAA
4X FSAA
Unfortunately, the 800x600x32bpp with 2X FSAA screenshot doesn't do the setting justice. That setting, more than any other, is best when in motion and is my current gaming resolution.
Here is one more shot, this time of 3D Mark 2000, thrown in for good measure.
2X FSAA - HQ Mip Map
To sum this card up in one word, I would have to use capable, by the best possible definition of the word. It takes abuse. It dumps out the frames. It sports all the features.
With the outstanding driver support from Creative Labs backing it up, the card is capable of high sustained framerates at varied resolutions, color depths and FSAA settings. Most important, this card is capable of improving your game through its performance level.
Isn't that what it's all about?
Back to nV News
| 
