As we've mentioned before, the GeForce 2 is based on a .18-micron process. This move has allowed NVIDIA to ramp up the core frequency to 200MHz without generating the same finger-searing heat the first generation cards radiated. In addition, the card draws less power than it's predecessor, and has given us no problem at all on our older Athlon systems.

Back when we reviewed the 32MB 3D Prophet II, we observed that the memory heatsinks looked impressive, but provided very little functionality. In fact, our sample didn't overclock nearly as well as some of the other GeForce2 cards in the lab. The 64MB card includes the same metallic blue 'sinks covering the memory modules, so you can be sure we'll be testing the overclocking capabilities of this 64MB speed-demon.

Check out the results of our latest benchmarking barrage with NVIDIA's 6.18 drivers. All tests were run with v-sync off. For Quake III testing, texture compression was left at the default setting of "enabled." It should be noted that this setting decreases the visual quality of some lower quality textures, but in exchange, delivers a solid increase of framerates.