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During our
testing and evaluation of performance for this card, nVidia
decided to release a new set of Detonator 4 drivers for the
entire line of their existing product. Since the
MORPHEUS card we received didn't come with a 3D Power driver
suite per say, we used the latest 12.41 reference drivers
for WindowsME that were included.
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Drivers, Features and Anti-Aliasing |
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Detonator 12.41 makes
its official debute |
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However, as we
mentioned earlier in this article, a strong suit for this
GeForce3 card is its software bundle. In addition to
full versions of games such as Dronez, No One Lives Forever,
and MDK2, you also get a licensed copy of WinDVD.
Click image...
Once again,
kudos to 3D Power for doing it up right.
In the event
that this whole GeForce3 thing is new to you, here are a few
screen shots from the driver control panels from the latest
revision of the nVidia refrence drivers.
Click all
images for full viewing
As we have noted
in prior reviews on
other GeForce3 cards, the latest revision of the nVidia
Detonator drivers, have a host of customizations an end user
can implement. In addition with the GeForce3, Digital
Vibrance is available which can dramatically affect the
color saturation on the desktop and in 3D mode.
Anti-Aliasing -
A refresher course:
Of course then
there is nVidia's new approach to Anti-Aliasing. One
can choose from three modes, "no AA", 2X, Quincunx (an
advanced multi-sampling method) and 4X. Here are some
examples of the benefits of each mode.
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800X600
No AA
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800X600
2X AA
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800X600
Quincunx AA
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800X600
4X AA
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The above
screenshots are from the Janes Electronic Arts Flight
Simulator, F/A-18. Although this sim is somewhat "old
school" at this point, we are more interested in
highlighting the effect of good quality anti-aliasing in
these shots. There is no better example of a game that
benefits from good AA, than a Flight Simulator. In
these shots, you'll see that the no AA mode has some pretty
hard core jaggies going on.
What is more
disappointing is the way those jaggies "swim" and shimmer
across the screen as you approach the deck of the carrier in
this training mission. The 2X AA setting does a nice
job of cleaning things up and settling down the swimming.
Quincunx in our opinion is a little too blurry but then
again, this type of thing is very subjective. Finally
4X AA looks near perfect and the stability of the image
during live action, is superb.
So, let's do
some testing, shall we?
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Test Setup,
Overclocking and 3DMark |
