The Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 TD
A Reference Design With Attitude...

By, Marco "BigWop" Chiappetta
June 27, 2001
 

 

Now that the GeForce 3 has been widely available for a few weeks, we find ourselves in the same situation we we've been in numerous times before, since the days of the Voodoo2. Manufacturers follow a standard reference design, mass produce it and market it under their recognized brand name. The advantage of this process is knowing you are getting a product based on a proven, tested design. The disadvantage is that differentiating one product from another becomes very difficult. Many times potential customers are forced to make their buying decisions based on the included software bundle, or solely on price.

Occasionally though, a company will modify this reference design to better cater their product to a particular market. This is the case with the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 TD we'll be taking a look at today. Although this card is not a complete departure from the standard nVidia reference design, a few slight, but significant changes, have been made that should please many hardcore gamers. If you're at all familiar with the current crop of GeForce 3s, just looking at the Winfast GeForce 3 TD reveals that this card is different than most others in its class. With over 15 years of experience in the design and manufacture of a wide range of high performance graphics and video solutions, you'd be inclined to think that the engineers at Leadtek posses the "know how" to produce a top-notch product. We were impressed with a few of Leadtek's GeForce 2 based offerings, specifically the Winfast GF2 MX DH Pro and their Enhanced GTS), but we won't know how we feel about the Winfast GeForce 3 TD until we see how it performs in our usual suite of benchmarks…lets get started and see what we find out…

       

Specifications and Features Of The Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 TD
This ain't your momma's reference design

 

Specifications:
  • Nvidia GeForce3
  • 350MHz RAMDAC
  • 3.2 billion AA samples per sec fill rate
  • 7.36GB/sec memory bandwidth
  • Lightspeed Memory Architecture amplifies memory bandwidth
  • AGP 2X/4X with Fast Writes Support
  • 32-bit Z/stencil buffer
  • DirectX 8.0
  • OpenGL 1.2 ICD support

Cooling solution:

  • On-board heat-sink cooling fan (Special Designed Active Cooling Module for GPU and Memory)

Memory:

  • 64MB On-board 4ns DDR memory

AGP Standard:

  • AGP 2.0 slot support

TV-out / DVI:

  • TV-out up to 1024x768 resolution
  • Onboard DVI connector up to 1280x1024 resolution

Driver support:

  • Win 2K, ME, Win 98

Hardware Features:

  • High-Performance Hardware Anti-Aliasing
  • DVD software included
  • AGP 4X/2X, AGP texturing
  • Programmable Vertex Shader
  • Second Generation Integrated Transform and Lighting (T&L) Engines
  • Leadtek WinFox system utility

Leadtek WinFox Utility:

  • Leadtek unique WinFox Utility is specially design for users to tuning/monitoring the hardware condition of their system.

  • Speed Runner for overclocking the graphics core/memory speed.

  • Information (PCI-Watch) for system information report.

Product Bundle:

  • S-video to RCA Cable, RCA cable, S-video cable

  • WinFox, WinDVD, Speed Runner, Cult3D, Colorific

  • DVI-I Display resolutions support


DVI Resolutions

VGA Resolutions

 

The specification and feature list of the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 TD reads like virtually all other GeForce 3s, with a few notable exceptions regarding the maximum TV-Out resolution and the cooling solution.  The specifications also state that there is 4ns memory on board, when in fact it is 3.8ns.  We suspect Leadtek has done this because the default clockspeed (460MHz DDR) is equivalent to a 4ns part (460 / 2 = 230, 1000 / 230 = 4.3).

 

 

The card ships with a decent bundle. Included in the box you will find a CD with all of the necessary drivers and utilities, an S-Video to RCA adaptor, a short S-Video cable and another CD containing the rest of the software bundle. WinDVD, Colorific and Cycore's Cult3D are included as well as Leadtek's own Speed Runner overclocking utility and their WinFox hardware monitoring software.

 

 

 

 


 

 

Drivers, Features, Screenshots and Demos