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

5/5/00

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla

 
HotHardware's Test System
The usual performance rig...

Full Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium III 866EB,  Soyo SY-6ICA i820 Motherboard 128MB of  800MHz (400MHz. DDR) RDRAM, WD Expert AC418000 7200 RPM ATA66 Hard Drive, Kenwood 72X CDROM, Leadtek Release Drivers based on NVidia version 5.16, Win 98SE, DirectX 7.0a

Benchmarks With The Winfast GeForce2 GTS
What she's got!

 

The GeForce2 GTS claims to have enhanced the DVD Playback capabilities for better over all performance and image quality.  We ran MadOnion's Video Mark 2000 and here are the results.

Mad Onion's Video Mark 2000


These indeed are very impressive scores in the DVD Playback area.  You can compare performance and quality scores here in our VideoMark 2000 Spotlight, versus a GeForce DDR and ATI's Rage Pro 128, the former DVD playback king.  ATI's Rage Pro 128 is still slightly ahead on features but with performance and quality, the GeForce2 GTS and Leadtek seem to have pulled ahead.  Playback with a DVD was excellent and the ATI and NVidia experience was comparable in real world showings.

Time for the Time Demos....

Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament is hardly a testing ground anymore since it is so heavily dependent on CPU horsepower.  Regardless here are scores in 32bit color with Direct 3D, for consistency with respect to our other reviews in the past.

As we noted, hardly a difference in frame rate between the resolutions.  Let's move on to more interesting testing.


With these somewhat uninteresting results under our belt, we decided to fire up a more serious 3D Benchmark, Mad Onion's 3D Mark 2000.

3D Mark 2000

click image for full view

Absolutely outstanding... Any score in the 7,000 range, with or without hardware T&L support, is spectacular.  D3D and the GeForce2 GTS have a lot of potential together.  These are VERY impressive scores to say the least.

And so we Quaked...

Overclocking With The Winfast GeForce2 GTS
NICE!

As we mentioned earlier in this review, the Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 GTS is set up to overclock.  We were able to hit a core speed of 245MHz. and a Memory Speed of 375MHz. and things were very stable with no visual artifacts.  Will you get the same results?  Who knows.... You know the drill here.  All cards not created equal...  Here is an all out drag race with the default HQ setting in Quake3 with no FSAA on.

Sweetness...  If frame rate is king with you, then this is your card.  You can't buy a faster card currently.  Then again, give it a few weeks or months and the next best thing will come along.  What a country!  :)

OK, let's turn the card back down to its default overclock and throw some FSAA in the mix.

 

More Benchmarks!