Ooooo, nice Hardware! (nVidia Geforce2 256)

Member Name: ia_young

Product:	nVidia Geforce2 256
Date:	29/10/01 (406 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: makes pc faster, games look good, games run better

Disadvantages: none

First off when you start talking about Graphics Cards many people forget to talk about why a good one is very beneficial to your computer. There are many benefits that a good graphics card will have, it will free up processor time as it has it's own, it also free's up RAM as it has it's own. With the advent of 3D Graphics Cards this also means you can play computer games which look and feel more realistic than ever. Hopefully I will try and explain about Graphics Cards in an easy to understand way then give a review of the Nvidia GeForce 256.

** What do 3D Graphics Cards Do? **
The whole point of getting a 3D Graphics Card is that you will most probably want to play the latest computer games. Most of these have been written with these cards in minds and a lot of them won't work without them, you have to check on the game computer specification to check this out. These images in these games are basically triangles built up to look like the characters they are representing. The graphics cards render (the process of constructing a 3D image) these images, the faster the graphics card the better, as these pictures will appear faster.

Even if you are not using a computer game these card will speed up your computer as the task of displaying your desktop is taken over by the graphics card, so freeing up system resources and making the computer faster.

** What is Direct X? **
Direct X is a multimedia API (Application Programming Interface) developed by Microsoft for the Windows Operating System. This allows software developers access specialised features of hardware without having to write specific code for each bit of hardware. This basically means that the software written with Direct X in mind will work on a more varied array of hardware. For more specific information on Direct X visit the Microsoft website: www.microsoft.com/directx/default.asp.

** What is OpenGL? **
This is another programming API
for use with 3D Graphics and much like Direct X makes it easier for 3D graphics to be displayed by different bits of hardware. An advantage of OpenGL to Direct X is that is more widely supported on different Operating Systems, it is not just for Microsoft Windows but the UNIX and Mac platforms can also use this. For more information about Open GL please visit the Open GL website: www.opengl.org.

** GeForce 256 **
When this was released on 31 August 1999 this card was billed as having the worlds first GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). A basic description of a GPU is a processor that will render at least 10 millions polygons per second (a polygon is the building block of all 3D objects, usually triangles or rectangles).

** Specification **
Graphics Core: 256-bit
Memory Interface: 128-bit
Triangles per Second: 15 Million
Pixels Per Second: 480 Million
Memory: Up to 128MB
AGP 4x with Fast Writes

Triangles per second is the rate at which the GPU processes triangles, this is the common way of describing performance of such cards. The higher the number of triangles the faster the GPU/Card.

Pixels per second is the unit used to describe the fill rate of a GPU, usually measured in millions of
pixels per second or Megapixels/second.

AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port, this is an industry standard expansion port specially designed for graphics cards. There are three types of AGP port 1x, 2x and 4x with the 4x (speed) obviously being faster.

For more information on 3D terminology and technology please visit the following page on the Nvidia website: http://www.nvidia.com/glossary.asp.

** Ease of Install **
This was very easy, all you have to do is locate the AGP slot in your computers motherboard and plug the card in. When the computer boots up the card will be detected, the computer will then ask you for the driver disk and this is the card installed. I would recomme
nd that anyone not confident in servicing their PC to get someone to do it for them as you might damage your computer.

** My Thoughts **
Since installing this card the computer has run significantly faster than it did before, I have also been able to try out some of the latest games, which I must say look superb. Some of the graphics that are displayed are superb and run smoothly, which was nice (no jerking as the computer tries to play catch up!). Anyone wanting to boost their computer performance, who has not got a decent graphics card, I would recommend this.

Summary: