By measuring a card's synthetic performance, we can stress individual points of the card, helping to identify problematic areas and accurately compare against other boards. For our synthetic measurements we've used 3D Mark 2000 which incorporates optimizations for D3D Hardware T&L (GeForce), D3D Software T&L (MAXX running on a Celeron) and Pentium III (MAXX running on the PIII systems). These benchmarks should uncover the theoretical strengths of T&L and expose any driver problems relating to Direct3D. Let's take a look at how our three contenders fare.
In 16-bit, both GeForce cards take a commanding lead over the Rage Fury MAXX, while the 3D Prophet DDR-DVI maintains a marginal gain over the ASUS card. Under 16-bit, the memory bandwidth is simply not strained enough to relate a large performance gap.
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