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Only a couple of months after the launch of the GeForce2 GTS chipset, nVidia has come up with an even faster graphics solution snappily titled the GeForce2 Ultra. Even though the GTS was no slouch in the 3D graphics arena, the Ultra really does take 3D performance to the next level.
We were supplied with a reference board direct from nVidia with a CPU clock speed of 250Mhz and 64Mb of DDR memory running at 458Mhz, making it a significantly higher spec than the GTS. Substantial heat sinks cover both the CPU and the memory chips, but the card still gets fairly hot. That said, it was pretty stable during our tests.
Unfortunately, the Ultra, like previous GeForce cards, doesn't support hardware environment bump mapping, so it's not the most feature rich solution. Running 3DMark on the Ultra resulted in the fastest results we have ever seen, producing a result of 4385 at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 in 32bit colour. Pushing the resolution up to 1600 x 1200 produced equally impressive results of 5029 and 3304 in 16bit and 32bit colour respectively.
Quake III also showed the Ultra to be the card to beat, with incredible frame rates at every resolution. The score of 76fps at 1280 x 1024 in 32bit colour was impressive enough, but 54fps at 1600 x 1200 in 32bit colour was stunning.
On the downside though, nVidia is estimating a US price of $499 (around £330), but the actual UK price has yet to be confirmed.
There will be a full in-depth review of the GeForce2 Ultra in the November issue of PCW, on sale 28th of September 2000.
See also:
Using the latest nVidia chipset, Creative brings its latest graphics card to the High Street. 10 Jan 2001
All Graphics Cards
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