VisionTek Geforce 3 Review

Geforce3 by Visiontek

Some of us have been wondering lately how the Geforce3 will perform on the VP6, and if the combination would cause any problems. I decided to put together this review to let you know what you can expect should you decide to put down the money to get one. After looking at the models available and not seeing much difference, I chose the Visiontek Geforce3. Since I'm not too far from Gurnee, IL, where they're made, I saw it as a way to support the local economy. I was a bit worried when I saw some people were having problems with 2D image quality, saying that Visiontek used bad RMI filters, causing problems like color bleeding and picture shaking. Fortunately, when I got mine up and running, the picture was nice and crisp at 1280x1024 at 100 Hz. I didn't see any of the problems that had been rumored to affect Visiontek cards. Last month, Visiontek began putting their cards in retail packages, so I got a nice flashy box that says simply "geforce3" on the front.

What's in the box? There's the video card itself, of course, in an anti-static bag securely tucked away under a fold of cardboard, a manual with basic installation instructions and a breif description of some of the NVIDIA driver controls, and a CD with drivers and those neat Geforce3 demos on it. The card itself looks pretty impressive. It's got large green heatsinks solidly mounted on the chip and RAM. They should allow for a good margin of overclocking in the future, but for now, I'm interested on how it performs on its own. So, on with the benchmarking.

On to the benchmarking