Of course, like any good GeForce review, we've revved up some game engines and taken a few video cards full throttle in an effort to see how the LeadTek DDR card performs with respect to the competition.
Test System
- Processor: Intel Pentium III Coppermine 600Mhz, Celeron 300A @ 450MHz
- Memory: 128MB PC100 SDRAM
- Motherboard: Abit BF6 (BX chipset)
- Hard Drive: Western Digital 5.1 GB HDD
- Sound Card: Creative Labs Live! Value
- OS: Windows 98 SE with DirectX 7
The following cards were used with their respective driver version:
- LeadTek GeForce 256 with 32MB DDR SGRAM (120/301 MHz) / 3.68
- ASUS V6800 Deluxe with 32MB DDR SGRAM (120/301MHz) / 3.68
- ASUS V6600 Deluxe with 32MB SDR SGRAM (120/166MHz) / 3.68
- Matrox G400 Max with 32MB SDR SGRAM (150/200MHz) / 5.50.005
Quake III: Arena, id Software's latest first person shooter (AKA benchmarking utility to those of us at Sharky Extreme), sports one of the most complex 3D engines ever used in a game. The normal quality settings provide great eye-candy without sacrificing too much performance. Of course, v-sync was turned off and the only modification to the settings was a change in resolution (only because we can't sleep at night otherwise).
As the benchmarks show, LeadTek's DDR offering is on par with ASUS's V6800 Deluxe GeForce DDR card. Providing a boost over the standard GeForce 256 SDR card at higher resolutions, both DDR cards make competitive play at 1024x768 resolution feasible. Of course, you have to ask yourself if the extra money spent on a DDR card is worth the additional 10 frames/second at 1024x768.
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