The big hook of this card has to be the extra 32MB of frame buffer memory. By doubling the available memory over the competition, Dell's 64MB DDR SGRAM GeForce 256 is, in some instances, capable of running at higher resolutions, with larger and more detailed textures than any competing card without having to resort to texture compression (which the GeForce 256 can actually do). These benefits are rather forward looking and will probably result in better looking, more realistic and more exciting graphics in games of the future rather than today's games.
Cutting-edge games such as Quake III: Arena already use large textures at their higher detail settings and when large textures are combined with high resolutions, 32MB cards run out of memory and either cannot run or have to use performance robbing AGP texturing. With 64MB of memory, Dell's high resolution performance ceiling was significantly higher as we found out in a few of our tests.
Dell supplied us with two test systems each equipped with their 64MB DDR SGRAM GeForce 256 and then we threw in a standard 32MB DDR SDRAM GeForce 256 for comparison. All scores are the average of three runs.
The Pentium III 1GHz and 800Mhz test beds:
- Dell Dimension XPS B800r
- 128MB RDRAM @ PC700 w/ECC
- IBM DPTA-372730 (27.3 gig) Hard Drive
- Creative SB Live (A06)
- 3C905C NIC
- NVIDIA GeForce256 v/3.72 Core
- Hitachi GD-5000 8xDVD-ROM
- Windows 98 Second Edition
- MusicMatch & Works Suite 2000