Introduction
NVIDIA’s GeForce2 Ultra Reference board
With the recent release of the new GeForce3, NVIDIA rocks the whole graphics market once again. As you could read in the largest article in our history, this new 3D killer chip is expected to declass its competitors in terms of features and performance.
Thanks to this new star, it will only be a matter of weeks until the precedent GeForce2 family will be object to price cuts, making the former top-model GeForce2 Ultra finally affordable. Still the TNT2/Ultra is the most sold NVIDIA chip, as most of them are being integrated into low-cost systems. Unfortunately, this oldie is rather lame by today’s standards.
The GeForce2 family consists of five different chips: The GeForce2 MX, which is the most versatile mainstream chip including TwinView for two displays, the GeForce2 Go for Notebooks, GeForce2 GTS and GeForce2 Pro as the performance models and last but not least the GeForce2 Ultra, representing the very top of this family at 250 MHz clock speed. Currently, only ATI is able to compete with NVIDIA in terms of features and performance. However, the high-performance sector is traditionally ruled by NVIDIA; a tradition, which will be continued with GeForce3.
At prices between $ 100 and $ 200, the GeForce2 MX is the most attractive chip. Simple GeForce2 GTS or Pro models start at $ 150, while the Ultra monsters cannot be obtained for less than $ 350. This article will answer the question whether you should invest your money in a fast processor or in a high-end graphics card and which team will provide the best graphics performance for your money.
The GeForce2 Family
GeForce2 MX | GeForce2 GTS | GeForce2 Pro | GeForce2 Ultra | |
Chip Clock | 175 MHz | 200 MHz | 200 MHz | 250 MHz |
Memory Type | DDR or SDR SDRAM | DDR SDRAM | DDR SDRAM | DDR SDRAM |
Memory Clock | 166 MHz | 2x 166 MHz DDR | 2x 200 MHz DDR | 2x 230 MHz DDR |
Memory Size | 16, 32 MB | 32, 64 MB | 32, 64 MB | 32, 64 MB |
Interface | AGP 4x | AGP 4x | AGP 4x | AGP 4x |
TV Out | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional |
TwinView | Yes | No | No | No |
Process | 0.18 | 0.18 | 0.18 | 0.18 |
Pixel Fill-Rate | 350 MPixel/s | 800 MPixel/s | 800 MPixel/s | 1 GPixel/s |
Texel Fill-Rate | 700 MTexel/s | 1.6 Gtexel/s | 1.6 Gtexel/s | 2 Gtexel/s |
The GeForce2 MX is a slimmed derivate of the GeForce2 family. The GTS, Pro and Ultra models use exactly the same chip design, just running at different clock speeds.
The abandonment of features with the MX is not only cutting performance, but is also an advantage in terms of production costs and power consumption. Many MX cards do not require any active cooler.
Instead of 4 pixel pipelines, the MX does only have two. In addition the memory interface does not have to be 128-bit wide like with the other chips, but can optionally be 64-bit (even though hardly anybody builds this configuration). Last but not least, the chip clock has been reduced to 175 MHz.
Fast CPU or High-End Graphics Card?
GeForce2 GTS
After choosing a platform you have to figure out which CPU and which graphics card to use. Since the price war between Intel and AMD broke out in summer 1999, the regular price drops devaluate microprocessors faster than anybody would have expected. Even the fastest processors have become rather affordable.
Choosing a fast processor may ensure a prolonged lifetime of the computer, but it will also increase system costs. Even though we are not talking about $ 800 CPUs like some years ago, those $ 300 for an Athlon 1200 might still be wasted if you do not need high performance. An Athlon 900 costs approximately $ 150 right now and still performs fast enough for almost all applications.
Teaming up such a mid-class processor with a high-end graphics card like a GeForce2 Ultra seems to be quite a good idea, as fast graphics cards are not that CPU-dependent today (see benchmarks later). Doing the opposite, using an Athlon 1200 or Pentium 4 with a TNT2/Ultra or GeForce2 MX is quite a silly idea, unless you don’t require 3D-performance, as the graphics board is definitely no adequate partner for those processors in 3D-applications.
Going the middle course is usually the best choice. The fastest components need fast partners in order to show their potential.
Test Setup
Test System | |
CPU | AMD Athlon 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200 MHz AMD Athlon-C 1000, 1133, 1200 MHz |
Motherboard | Asus A7V133, Rev. 1.02. BIOS 1003T |
RAM | 128 MB PC133 SDRAM, 7ns (Wichmann Workx) CL2 |
Hard Disk | IBM DeskStar 75 GXP, DTLA307030, 7200 rpm |
Graphics Card | nVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra 64 MB DDR-SDRAM (4 ns) |
Operating System | Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A Windows 2000 Professional 5.00.2195 SP1 |
Benchmarks and Setup | |
Office Applications Benchmark | BAPCo SYSmark2000 |
OpenGL Benchmarks | Quake III Arena Retail Version command line = +set cd_nocd 1 +set s_initsound 0 Graphics detail set to ‘Normal’, 640x480x16 Benchmark using ‘Q3DEMO1’ SPECviewperf 6.1.2 Full Run |
Direct3D Game Benchmark | Mercedes Benz Truck Racing Default Direct 3D Settings |
Screen Resolution | 1024x768x85, 16 Bit 1280x1024x75, 16 Bit for SPECviewperf 6.1.2 |
DirectX Version | 8.0a |
SYSmark 2000: Windows 98 SE
As you can see the good old SYSmark scales very linear: More CPU clock will always improve your overall performance. Those applications do not require vast memory bandwidths or high clocked 3D chips, making those three graphics card equally good choices.
Mercedes Benz Truck Racing
NVIDIA’s latest driver set 7.52 seems to be a little buggy, as I faced some display bugs when running MBTR. I re-checked those results by using driver version 6.47 which did not produce those errors.
It is very interesting to see that this game runs on an Athlon 800 just as good as on a 1200 MHz model. MBTR does not even seem to be memory bandwidth sensitive, else the GeForce2 Ultra would have scored even better results compared to the GTS.
Quake III Arena: 1024×768
The memory bandwidth of a GeForce2 MX will already be exhausted at 1024×768 and 16 Bits per pixel. You will not be able to get better frame rates when upgrading the processor, but only by getting a faster graphics card. You can also see that the difference between an Athlon 1000 and 1200 is not too important here, as the frame rate is fast enough anyway.
Quake III Arena: 1600×1200
As expected we can see the same kind of limitation with the GeForce2 MX. This time, none of the graphics cards is able to provide enough video memory bandwidth to enable higher frame rates. At 1600×1200 the frame rate depends almost completely on the graphics card. If you take an Athlon 900 you will definitely have a processor that is fast enough for power gaming. A faster processor will not give you any benefits.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: Advanced Visualizer
Let us start the evaluation from the slowest setup I benchmarked: The Athlon 800 and a GeForce2 MX. To get a faster system for this application, you could either get an Athlon-C 1200 or a GeForce2 GTS card. The faster Athlon means an extra expense of approximately $ 180, while the GTS card is only ~ $ 50 more expensive than the MX model. Buying a GeForce2 Ultra model will cost the same as buying the fastest Athlon, but will give you more then 60% more 3D-performance.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: Design Review
Design Review will only be able to benefit from fast CPUs if you use a fast graphics card as well. If you just take a MX or GTS card, you won’t be able to get higher results by using fast CPUs.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: Data Explorer 6
The Data Explorer highly benefits from the 133 MHz FSB speed of the Athlon-C. The difference between the 100 MHz Athlon models is quite negligible. It’s once again rather recommendable to get a fast graphics card instead of a fast processor.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: Lightscape
This benchmark is much more processor intensive than the preceding ones. Getting a fast processor will almost be equally good than obtaining a fast graphics card.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: MedMCAD
The GeForce2 Ultra is able to perform much better than the two competitors. Again it is clearly better to obtain an expensive graphics card than the fastest processor.
SPECviewperf 6.1.2: ProCDRS
It looks like ProCDRS is extremely performance intensive. Using the GeForce2 Ultra will not enable much more performance than a GeForce2 MX is able to provide. Just a faster processor will speed up ProCDRS.
Conclusion
I hope that this article underlined precisely that processor clock is not the Holy Grail at all. Many discounters are still selling high-end systems, based on AMD and Intel CPUs beyond 1 GHz, in combination with antiquated graphics cards like a NVIDIA TNT2/Ultra or Vanta, which is definitely the wrong way to keep costs down – even though high processor speeds may sound very attractive.
If you belong to the group of those users who want best 3D performance, you should set highest value on the graphics card. The second issue that you should pay attention to is a high FSB speed: I personally would only purchase systems/components with 133 MHz FSB (both Pentium III and Athlon), since you could waste the potential of modern processors at high core clock speeds.
Another group of people uses their computers for Internet browsing, office applications and rarely for games. Those people definitely do neither need a fast 64 MB graphics card nor a GHz processor.
Lately, microprocessors are dropping their prices much faster than graphics cards, making the investment of e.g. $ 300 into a high-end graphics card more sensible than the purchase of a fast processor. Spending a lot of money for a fast processor is more of a status symbol rather than a clever purchase.
Finally the trend is going into a clear direction. Processors with 1 GHz provide enough performance for most people, and we don’t expect that to change substantially within the next 12 months.
My outlook for power users is as follows: With a reasonable amount of RAM, the Windows performance is no matter of discussion anyway. Thus the 3D performance becomes the important factor. If your system should be too slow for certain 3D applications, just replace the graphics card with a faster model instead of throwing away the whole system. As of late, new-generation 3D-chips offer significantly larger performance gains than new microprocessors.