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Sharky Extreme :


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- Patriot Unveils its NVIDIA-Optimized Viper DDR3 Gaming Series
- PNY Introduces Two New GeForce 200 Series XLR8 Cards
- AMD's FireStream 9250 is the First to Break the 1 Teraflop Barrier
- Toshiba Hits a Capacity High with its 160GB 1.8-inch SATA Drive
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- SharkyExtreme.com: Interview with Microsoft's Dan Odell
- SharkyExtreme.com: Interview with ATI's Terry Makedon
- SharkyExtreme.com: Interview with Seagate's Joni Clark
- Half-Life 2 Review
- DOOM 3 Review

Buyer's Guides

- May Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide
- March Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide
- January High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide

HARDWARE

  • CPUs

    - AMD Phenom X3 8750 Review
    - Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Review
    - AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition Review

  • Motherboards

    - AMD 780G Chipset Review

  • Video Cards

    - PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Review
    - Gigabyte Radeon HD 3870 512MB Review
    - ASUS EN8800GT TOP 512MB Review




  • In-keeping with the Quake-centric tone here, we asked id Software's Graeme Devine about the T&L support in Quake 3.

    T&L is enabled by default since we go through the OpenGL pipeline for that. At 640x480 the card compares to a TNT2Ultra, try it in 1024x768 and you should see a dramatic difference (r_mode).

    So even though you can't really perceive (visually that is) a difference, you can still notice the frame rate increases you get with a GeForce at higher resolutions.

    At the end of the day, the DDR board is dead fast. Faster than a speeding bullet? Right now it is, yes. And remember, we do play the likes of Quake 3 and Unreal Tourney a lot. We'll take it and recommend any bloke/lassie with a sugar mummy (or daddy we don't discriminate here at SE) slots one into their gaming machine providing you live and die by frame rates. When using a DDR GeForce 256 on an Athlon 650MHz, you can easily sustain frame rates above 100fps in Quake 3 on the 'NORMAL' setting (impressive), which is of course so important for those multiplayer sessions. 1024x768 in Quake 3 is very playable. With a TNT2 Ultra (the previous best), Quake 3 could get jittery at 1024x768x32 when in the midst of a melee you move from an enclosed environment back to an outdoor one. With the GeForce 256 DDR, there was no 'jerkyvision' and just fluid, fast gameplay. If I were a Quake-champ (more like chimp) I wouldn't leave home without one (for want of a better pun).

    We do recognize that there are two kinds of gamers. Speed freaks that play online multiplayer 3D FPS games and of course those much more content with turning on all those visuals and resolutions to the max for a single player immersive experience. The nifty thing about this card is it's suited for both parties. Although the GeForce 256 is still somewhat fillrate limited at extremely high resolutions, we'll take 58fps in 1600x1200x16 in Expendable any day of the week.

    That's a whole lot more than what any other card on the market right now is capable of (the SDRAM version was only a couple of fps behind usually) at 1600x1200. In the lower resolutions you'll notice that NVIDIA's drivers still have some way to go. At times an Ultra TNT2 was faster but until a release candidate is let loose and the drivers are fully optimized for older DX6 games instead of just DX7 games you'll just have to live with that fact (assuming you rush out and buy one and get a little perturbed by it).





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