Review: Top 10 graphics boards for gamers

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By Danny W. Lam

(IDG) -- NVidia bills its GeForce3 as the most advanced graphics chip in the world, with four times the performance capability of its GeForce2 Ultra. It's also the first graphics chip with full support for Microsoft's new DirectX 8 multimedia standard. We put the VisionTek GeForce3 -- the first production card we've received with the chip -- through our tests, and it snatched the number one spot on our "Top 10 graphics boards for gamers" list.

Despite the new chip's red-hot potential, the race for number one was close. We needed the highest resolution and color depth to expose the GeForce3's better performance. The VisionTek card blew away the competition by about 20 frames per second in our "MDK2," "Quake III Arena," and "Test Drive 6" test games. At lower resolutions and color depths, however, the VisionTek GeForce3's frame rates were nearly the same as, and sometimes lower than, those of the two GeForce2 Ultra cards on the chart.

We could not test the GeForce3 with DirectX 8 games; at the time we began testing for this article, there weren't any available. Now that DirectX 8 games have surfaced, we plan to update our test suite in the coming months.

The implementation of DirectX 8 should allow developers to program effects that will take advantage of the GeForce3's sophisticated vertex and pixel-shading capabilities to produce breathtakingly realistic, high-performance graphics. Of course, it's ultimately up to the developers to do the painstaking programming necessary to produce a game with real-time, cinematic-quality 3-D graphics.

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The reason VisionTek's card squeaked into the number one spot had less to do with its performance on our current crop of test games and more to do with its price. It sports a $400 price tag -- cheaper than two GeForce2 Ultra cards on the chart, Hercules's $409 3D Prophet II Ultra and Creative Labs' $499 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 Ultra.

Next month, one less Ultra card will grace our chart. Creative Labs representatives told PC World that the company plans to sell out its current stock of 3-D Blaster Annihilator 2 Ultra and 3-D Blaster Annihilator 2 graphics cards. At this writing, both 3D Blaster Annihilator cards were available in short supply. Creative has launched a GeForce3 board in Europe and will continue to sell cards there.

E3 news

From the show floor at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, held May 17-19 in Los Angeles, Microsoft finally let gamers get their hands on the $299 Xbox, which is due to ship November 8. This gaming console will go head-to-head with Sony's PlayStation 2 and the upcoming Nintendo GameCube.

From that early sneak peek, the Xbox looks to feature some hot graphics, courtesy of NVidia's NV2A chip set. The NV2A is a tweaked version of the NV20, better known as the GeForce3. NVidia developers increased the GeForce3's core clock speed 20 percent. PC gamers can look forward to the same speed bump when NVidia incorporates the faster clock into a future version of the GeForce3.

Meanwhile, graphics chip maker ATI isn't simply standing on the sidelines. It's working with Nintendo to provide the graphics chip for its next-generation console, the $199 GameCube, due to be released three days before the Xbox on November 5.

Top 10 graphics boards for gamers

• VisionTek GeForce3: The first card we've seen with NVidia's GeForce3 chip soared in our highest-resolution tests, although other boards beat it at lower-resolution settings. Full hardware support for DirectX 8 will please serious gamers, although few DirectX 8 games have been released so far.

• Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 Ultra: The Annihilator 2 Ultra was impressively fast in our tests, tying or beating the GeForce3 at all but the highest resolutions -- and displaying great-looking images throughout. The most expensive card to make this month's chart, it costs $99 more than the VisionTek GeForce3. This is its last month on our chart, since Creative plans to sell off its current stock and pull out of the U.S. graphics card market.

• Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra: This Ultra board earned "Quake III" numbers nearly equal to the higher-ranked Creative Annihilator 2 Ultra, and its overall speed scores nearly matched those of the number one card, but image quality lagged slightly. With a $90 price drop, this powerful card is much more affordable.

• Hercules 3D Prophet II MX: This bargain-priced MX board may not be able to beat higher-end cards in our speed tests, but a recent driver update allowed it to post impressive image-quality scores for a sub-$100 card.

• ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon: This is a fine all-purpose board with solid gaming performance -- although it's aimed mainly at people who want its TV and video features.

• CardExpert GeForce2 MX: This MX board delivered respectable performance in our tests. Gamers building a system on a budget will find it a solid value with a few features the higher-ranking Hercules 3-D Prophet II MX lacks.

• ATI Radeon 64MB DDR: While it doesn't offer as many ports as the All-in-Wonder Radeon does, this board still offers more than most. It delivers terrific performance for the price.

• ELSA Gladiac Ultra: This board nearly tied the other Ultras' high performance numbers, but it trailed in image-quality scores because of dark graphics in two of our test games.

• ELSA Gladiac MX: This board's scores were nearly the same as those of the other MX boards on this month's chart. But its higher price and lack of bundled hardware and software extras make this card less of a deal than the other MX boards.

• MSI MS-StarForce 818 GeForce2 MX: This inexpensive board's speed and image-quality scores nearly matched those of the CardExpert and ELSA Gladiac MX boards on the chart, but not the scores of the Hercules 3D Prophet II MX, which benefited from updated drivers.

San Francisco Bay Area freelancer Joel Strauch and PC World Associate Editor Eric Dahl contributed to this article.