NVIDIA GeForce 256 Part 1: To buy or not to buy

OpenGL Performance Explained

It is obvious that the GeForce 256 is the fastest Quake 3 contender available currently.  This is primarily because of the 60% increase in fill rate the GeForce 256 offers over the TNT2 Ultra and other similarly clocked competitors but some of the performance increase is because of the hardware transforming supported by Quake 3. 

The performance difference is negligible at lower resolutions and the explanation behind this is two fold.   First of all, at lower resolutions the game is not fill rate limited rendering the 60% fill rate advantage the GeForce holds over the TNT2 Ultra negligible.  Secondly, lower resolutions is where the hardware T&L of the GeForce should come into play.   But since the lighting is done entirely within Quake 3's engine we're not going to see a major performance boost from the hardware T&L as its only taking advantage of the transforming part of the equation.

The performance on the K6-2 450 is quite impressive as it easily steps ahead of the competition at all resolutions.  This is, once again, primarily due to the increased fill rate but also due to the hardware transforming provided for by the GeForce.  An interesting thing to note is the performance of the GeForce 256 on the Athlon in 32-bit color mode.   The GeForce 256 is trashed by the Matrox G400MAX at higher resolutions in 32-bit color due to the G400MAX's increased amount of memory bandwidth.  Yet another reason that you should pursue GeForce cards with faster memory for now, at least until DDR boards begin shipping.