![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , January 01, 2001
- Author:
- Sean Meuller
- Google +1
GeForce2 / Visiontek Chipset Roundup
Intro: Enter Visiontek
Unlike the software industry, you don't see new hardware players pop into the market with a bang on a regular basis. If anything, they tend to more or less go out with a bang (S3... 3dfx...). So when I was afforded the opportunity to do a round-up of Visiontek video cards - a company that has seemingly come out of nowhere in the last month to dominate the hardware press - I became so giddy that I dang near pee'd on myself.
Most of everything there is to say about NVIDIA's GeForce has been said both here and everywhere else already. Everyone knows what the GeForce chipset can do, yet it seems like every day that some chump website is putting' up yet another review, just begging for your attention. And I'll be 100% honest with you, I haven't read a video card review in over three months. I already know what they're going to say, so why should I bother? And why should I expect you to bother reading this? Well, I hope some of you do, because I feel Visiontek is a damned impressive company that puts out some pretty impressive products. What our focus here is this a little Visiontek history and then we want to show you the real world difference between these cards so that you hopefully make a better purchasing decision when buying one. This comparison should be food for just about any GeForce2 chipset card, but we would suggest you keep your eyes open for these guys.
Now, I know by now that each and every one of you can recite the features of a GeForce powered card from memory, and the last thing you're interested in reading is the same old drivel you've seen a million times before. Trust me when I say I feel the same way. That's why I'm not going to try and drill holes into your cranium and pump your brain full of garbage you already know. So that means no stat lists, and no NVIDIA propaganda. Feel free to breathe a sigh of relief and continue to read without fear.
Visiontek Background Info:
Who is Visiontek, and where have they come from? Both of those are pretty good questions. According to their website, Visiontek was founded in 1988. This is well before many of the companies whose products grace your box - and credit card receipts for that matter - were even a twinkle in their respective CEO's eye. If you've utilized a product from Dell, Compaq, DEC, Gateway, IBM, Sun, Toshiba, or Intel, chances are its got a little Visiontek luvin' in it somewhere. While as of late Visiontek's been getting press for their video cards, they're really known throughout the industry as one of the leading producers of memory related products. Products such as compact flash, RAMBUS, SDRAM, and... well... pretty much every other type of memory you can think of. Visiontek is also one of the few companies to offer a lifetime warranty (3 year warranty for video products) and a 100% compatibility guarantee. Shoot, they've even got a 1-800 number you can call for tech support. (1-800-360-7173 Give 'em a call and tell 'em I said hola.) It's no wonder their products have been chosen by all the top dogs in the computer industry.
With that said, when a company such as NVIDIA chooses you to be the sole designer of their reference hardware, that says a little something about what you're doing. Namely that Visiontek, and the people they employ, have their game so tight that if you stuck a piece of coal in their... (Ooops. I'm not supposta say stuff like that anymore...) *ahem* Visiontek knows quality. So much so that many OEMs that sell NVIDIA products don't even bother to make their own. Instead, they buy, rebadge, and resell Visiontek video cards as their own (*cough* Elsa *cough*). So if any of these video cards look remotely familiar to you, well, now you know why.
For today's roundup, I've been graced with four cards. Card number one is a 32meg SDRAM GeForce2 MX with TwinView and S-video support, clocked at 175MHz core and 166MHz memory. Card number two is a 64meg GeForce2 GTS with TV out, clocked at 200MHz core and 333MHz memory (DDR). Card number three is a 64meg GeForce2 Pro with TV out, clocked at 200MHz core and 400MHz memory (DDR). And last, but not least, we have card number four, which is a returning favorite here at the [H]ard|OCP. She's a 64meg GeForce2 Ultra with TV out and S-video support, clocked at an amazing 250MHz core and 458MHz memory (DDR). All of these cards arrived at my door in typical Secret Agent style. That being, in plain brown boxes with no outwards way of determining what's inside. (Steve gets a LOT of those packages.) In each box was a small 12 page installation guide and a CD with the NVIDIA reference drivers. With that said, one might assume that these would be some of the cheapest video cards on the market. However, a quick search on Pricewatch shows that this is not the case. While the Visiontek video cards are definitely not the most expensive cards on the market, they are arguably the highest quality - which may or may not account for the price difference. Although it does seem odd to me how some cards which are just remarked Visiontek products can sell for less. Of course, those cards don't come with the Visiontek support system either... Here's a few shots of the cards in the event you somehow managed to forget what reference GeForce video cards look like.
Cooling/Overclocking:
As you can see from the images, three of the GeForces come equipped with a HSF combo. NVIDIA feels the MX doesn't require one, as in it's castrated state it doesn't seem to put out much heat. To be honest with you, I agree with 'em. Not that that means too much; it isn't like anyone asked me. Anyways, all four cards were very good overclockers with minimal effort on my part. I didn't bother to remove any of the HSF units. Instead, I just pointed a Gamma 28 at each card and let them do their best with what NVIDIA and Visiontek graced them with. I used Q3A HQ torture1 at 1024x768 to test each card's stability. And with results like what I achieved, who really needs a BLORB? With the MX, I achieved a maximum useable speed of 252/193 core/mem. Mind you that's without the aid of a heatsink too. The GTS was a bit of a show-off, as its core ran rock solid at 268MHz and the memory at 415MHz!!! Pretty freagin' good - especially when you compare it to its more expensive brothers. The Pro's core wasn't nearly so overclocking friendly, as it only managed a maximum useable speed of 255/480 for the core/memory. I was rather surprised to find that the GTS core was more overclockable then the Pro's, especially seeing how the Pro is equipped with a more robust cooling solution. Just goes to show how each product is different, and how there's more to a product then just its name. Overclocking the Ultra is actually a bit of a strange affair; the thing just didn't seem to want to die. I started at 300/500, and aside from a few pixel pop'ers, all was well. So I went up to 310/510 - more pixel poppin', but it still ran. I pushed her to 315/515, then 320/520, and she still ran! Now, you couldn't play at these speeds, mind you, because of all the graphical glitches. Regardless, that's still impressive. I found the best compromise between speed and graphical quality to be 305/505 core/mem. Of course, your results may vary.
Benchmarks/Test System:
For today's round of benchmarking fun I wanted to stick with the stuff you kids all know and like. That means nothing you can't relate to, and only the stuff you've got gracing your own [H]ard boxes. We've got some Quake III Arena Torture1 at High Quality and at various resolutions. We've also got Mad Onion's soon to be retired 3DMark 2000 default benchmark, at both 16 and 32bit colors. And last, but not least, we have ZDNet's 3D Winbench 2000.
The test system for all benchmarks was as follows:
AMD 1GHz Thunderbird
ABIT KT7 Raid
128meg Crucial SDRAM @ 133MHz/CAS2/Bank4
18gig ATA66 Western Digital HD
Win98
DirectX 8
NVIDIA Reference Drivers 6.31