The Absolute MORPHEUS GeForce3
Great minds in 3D Graphics come together and make it happen

By Dave Altavilla
7/9/01
 

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.

Drivers, Features and Anti-Aliasing
Detonator 12.41 makes its official debute

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.

800X600 No AA

800X600 2X AA

800X600 Quincunx AA

800X600 4X AA

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?
 


 

 

Test Setup, Overclocking and 3DMark