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 By
Loyd Case
Design by Ethan O'Brien
Welcome to GameSpot and Computer Gaming World's 3D accelerator shootout.
This is the update to the roundup in our sister print publication,
Computer Gaming World. We've run new benchmarks with new drivers,
and managed to nail down numbers on a few new contenders as well.
The new numbers have unveiled a few surprises, and final scores have
shifted around a bit. Therefore, some cards' ratings in this roundup
differ from their scores in CGW. Those cards are the Velocity 4400
and the Spectra 2500. Three cards were prerelease and thus unrated
at the time of the Computer Gaming World article, but have since been
rated for this GameSpot roundup. They are: the Diamond Monster Fusion,
the Number Nine Revolution IV, and the Wicked3D Vengeance. There are
also three new cards reviewed here that weren't available for the
CGW article: the Asus 3400TNT and two Creative Labs cards.
Not long ago, we took
a look at Matrox's Mystique G200 and found it to be a solid 2D card
with very respectable 3D performance. In fact, it was the fastest
2D/3D combo card on the market. Now a number of new 3D chips leave
the G200 chip far behind in terms of 3D performance. They even outstrip
it in 2D performance. What a difference a couple of months make.
We'll take a look at
some of the brand-new boards that will take us to the next level
in 3D accelerators. An interesting trend in 3D graphics is emerging:
the use of low-cost, 16MB of RAM. Now we're seeing graphics cards
with 16MB of local video memory for well under $200 - some even
approaching $100 - due to the wonders of commodity pricing. Cheaper
RAM also means there are some cards with more than 16MB of RAM.
In fact, one board in our roundup supports a whopping 32MB of RAM,
and more 32MB boards are on the way.
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