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).