The Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 GTS
The next generation GeForce makes its HotHardware debut

5/5/00

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla

 
Installation / Setup Of The Winfast GeForce2 GTS
A little finicky
 
The Winfast GeForce2 GTS card was very cooperative with our i820 test-bed ( the Soyo SY-6ICA motherboard) and installed within minutes.  We also tried to set the card up on a BX chipset based board, the SY-6BA+IV from Soyo (our secondary test bed for the Voodoo5 preview) but the card would lock up after a few frames of a Quake3 time demo.  This inevitably happened at any AGP bus speed setting, even the specified 66MHz.  We finally set the AGP aperture in the motherboard BIOS to 16K and were able to complete a loop but it was very slow with this setting. 

This may be an isolated case with this motherboard, we are not sure.  Regardless, this problem should be easily remedied with a BIOS revision for the Winfast.  Hopefully Leadtek will be diligent about following up on this quickly.  In addition, we will update this review with benchmarks and ratings should we get our hands on a BIOS patch in the coming weeks.  Let's move onto the good stuff.

As noted, the i820 based system installation was uneventful and the drivers were very familiar.

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The Leadtek drivers we used for testing were based on the NVidia 5.16 release.  They support full scene Anti-Aliasing (OpenGL only at this time) and as well as a host of other features for tweaking your display on your desktop, in a game or with the Video Overlay for a TV Tuner card etc.  In addition, the Winfast drivers fully support overclocking of the card and as you can see, overclock it we did!  More on this later.  Leadtek's "Speed Runner" menu lets you adjust core and memory speed.

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Yes, that is indeed a GeForce2 GTS chip in there isn't it?


A Few Words and Pictures On FSAA The NVidia Way

We won't spend too much time on this section either since it has been covered extensively online by a number of sites including Hot Hardware.  Instead we'll let the screen shots speak for themselves.

Click images for full viewing

Quake3 No FSAA

Quake3 FSAA

Quake3 NVidia High Polygon Level

Quake3 NVidia High Polygon Level

Original TGAs - File sizes are approx. 1.3MB each
Quake3 No FSAA
Quake3 FSAA
Quake3 NVidia Level w/ FSAA Shot1
Quake3 NVidia Level w/ FSAA Shot2

Screen shots and the FSAA debate (NVidia versus 3dfx) are totally subjective.  I personally feel after experiencing both 3dfx's 2X and 4X FSAA and NVidia's FSAA, that NVidia's FSAA is about on par with 3dfx's 2X setting.  Actually, in some cases, I like the 3dfx 2X version even a little better.  Again, this is very subjective so you'll have to judge for yourself.

One area that is very impressive is the high polygon count demo that NVidia did for the GeForce2 release.  These shots show the level of detail and a quick view of things to come with games that can and will be released in the near future.  Developers will take advantage of all this new horsepower being brought to market by the Graphics Card industry.  It is a beautiful thing, literally.
 

 

What else?  Benchmarks!