Article Type: Video Hardware
Article Date: December 07, 2001
Progress Marches Onward
The release of DirectX 8 means that the last generation of video hardware is obsolete. Many simulation pilots are considering their next upgrade.
The choices for full DX8 compatibility are few: ATI’s Radeon 8500, or Nvidia’s GeForce3. The latter product is available through a huge variety of board vendors: Hercules, Visiontek, Gainward, Leadtek, ELSA, PNY and a few others. Are all these boards created equal, or do any stand out from the pack?
The bulk of GeForce3 boards run at a clock speed of 200 MHz, much lower than the GeForce2 Ultra clock speed of 250. A few hardware builders take the basic board design and turn it into a screaming graphics demon. The OCZ Titan 3 is capable of speeds approaching GeForce2 Ultra. Furthermore, the memory can be clocked as high as 550MHz (vs the standard 500) with the high-tech cooling features added by OCZ.
GeForce 3
Where GeForce2 contained about 27 million transistors, the GeForce3 possesses roughly 57 million. Most of these additional transistors are devoted to programmable features, the most powerful additions to the DirectX feature set. GeForce3 also uses a more efficient memory architecture than GeForce2.
GeForce3 also strengthens the integrated transform and lighting (T&L) engine of GeForce2 and adds a programmable vertex processor and programmable texture operations. These fancy words translate into new effects previously seen only in the movies. Motion blur, real time shadows with fuzzy edges, texture animation and more all spring into being on GeForce3.
In fact, the programmability of GeForce3 means that a game developer can turn the unit into a custom graphics board for his product. Furthermore, a new anti-aliasing method is introduced that produces 4x FSAA quality with a smaller performance penalty.
Remember the Titan 3
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| Titan 3 video board |
Every board maker has a way of adding value to their product. Some include a nice software bundle. Others include TV and DVI output. Titan 3 adds DVI for flat panel display and TV output, as well as the Thermaltake Blue Orb GPU cooler and huge copper heatsinks on the memory chips. The retail box also includes software: OCZMax, an overclocking application, PowerDVD, and the Titan3 Drivers.
Standard on all GeForce3 boards is 64 MB of DDR memory. The chips on the OCZ board are 3.8ns, a shade faster than the 4ns standard for GeForce3. The RAMDAC is rated at 350MHz.
Installation with modern video boards is generally painless and the Titan 3 was typical. I downloaded the latest drivers from the Nvidia website, shut down my test machine, removed the current board and installed the Titan 3. When I rebooted WIN ME the card was detected immediately and prompted me to insert the driver CD. I hit ESCAPE and when I arrived at the desktop I selected the driver file and executed it. The drivers installed and I was prompted to reboot the machine. Fini!
Benchmarks and Overclocking
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| Gainward Mem at 500MHz, Titan 3 at 550MHzhart |
The Blue Orb heatsink is very effective, as are the oversized copper heatsinks on the memory, allowing higher clock speeds. The Blue Orb requires a separate power source and must be plugged directly to your power supply using the standard 4 pin power connector and included cable.
The results of overclocking were excellent. The Titan 3 was stable at 240 MHz, but the memory went all the way to 550MHz, 10 percent over the default. Most GeForce3 boards can’t run the memory this fast, since heat is an issue.
While increasing the chip clock to 240MHz gives a small benefit, the real benefit comes with increasing the memory speed. Frame rate gains are as high as 8 percent with a 10 percent increase in memory speed.
At this substantially higher speed than Gainward’s offering I had no glitches at all, even in my 75 F. office. It was time to run in game benchmarks and test image quality with the new Quincunx method.
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Image from IL-2  |
Application Testing
GeForce3 adds anisotropic filtering to 4x anti-aliasing, increasing image quality with little loss of speed. It isn’t possible to use the higher precision of anisotropic filtering on GeForce2 without a huge loss in frame rate.
For anti-aliased image samples we set resolution to 1024x768 at 32-bit depth with 16-tap Anisotropic filtering. After running a GeForce2 for four months, I saw an improvement in image quality in Eurofighter Typhoon and in IL-2 Sturmovik under GeForce3. Colors appear richer, terrain is clearer and the clouds are more pleasing to the eye.
While IL-2 Sturmovik offers bilinear, trilinear and anisotropic filtering, the latter isn’t really necessary unless you use anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing tends to blur textures, and trilinear filtering doesn’t recover texture quality much. Anisotropic filtering does clarify textures, but the power cost can exceed 10 percent of your frame rate.
The new particle engine in GeForce3 shows its stuff with improved effects in-game. The image improvement is most noticeable under recent games like Eurofighter Typhoon, Comanche 4 and IL-2 Sturmovik.
| TITLE | Gainward GF3 | Titan 3 GF3 |
| CFS 2 | 38 | 41 |
| Typhoon | 72 | 78 |
| Flanker | 2.5 | 33-36 |
Who runs 16-bit color anymore? 32-bit color removes odd banding in the sky, and makes for deeper, richer colors on objects and terrain. Moving to 32-bit color at 1024x768 brings the power of the Titan 3 to light. Even higher resolutions, like 1280x1024, make little difference. I was able to run IL-2 at 1280x1024 with no apparent difference in frame rate, but a nice improvement in image quality, with jagged edges along aircraft wings almost disappearing.
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| Eurofighter Typhoon framerate chart |
CONCLUSION
The Titan 3 is fully DX8 compatible. As a result, you are guaranteed to be able to run tomorrow’s games with all the fancy new features ON.
There are two reasons to go with GeForce3: future proofing and running the latest sims like Eurofighter Typhoon, Comanche 4, Flight Simulator 2002 and IL-2 Sturmovik most effectively. The introduction of the latest ATI boards has been forcing GeForce3 prices downward.
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| Screenshot from Eurofighter Typhoon |
But is the price premium for OCZ’s board worth the cost? GeForce3 boards like the Gainward Cardexpert can be found online for as little as $239, while the Titan 3 retails for $309. The VisionTek GeForce3 Titanium200, while about 20 percent slower than the regular GeForce3, can be found for $179. Note that any GeForce3 will give you the same image quality, but you may have to turn down the details to run the Titanium200 at a good frame rate in simulations like IL-2 Sturmovik.
If you must have the fastest GeForce3 on the market, the Titan 3 will fit the bill. If you prefer to invest the $80 you can save into extra memory, go for Gainwards’ offering. For users on a budget, VisionTek’s Titanium200 is a bargain. Which ever option you choose, you are ensured full DX8 compatibility and some great simulation experiences.
Test System- CPU: AMD Athlon at 1 GHz
- Motherboard: Abit KT-7 Motherboard
- RAM: 512MB PCI 133 SDRAM
- Vid Drivers: Detonator 4 Driver 21.85
- Hard Drive: Twin Quantum 20GB 7200 ATA-100
- Sound Card: Creative Audigy
- CD-ROM: Kenwood 72X TrueX CDROM
- Controllers: Thrustmaster F22/TQS Digital
- Display: 19" Optiquest monitor
- OS: WIN ME
