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The benchmarks I used were 3Dmark2000, QuakeIII (demo001), the MDK2 demo, and SPECviewPerf. Each test was run 5 times with the highest and lowest scores removed leaving 3 scores which were averaged for the final total. Each benchmark was run with the highest possible quality settings, other than the variables being tested. Tests using 16bit colour depth used 16bit textures and tests using a 32bit colour depth used 32bit textures. FSAA and vertical sync were disabled for all of the tests.

3Dmark2000 – Global Settings:
	Z-buffer Depth: 16bit (@16bit colour depth) and 24bit (@32bit colour depth)
	Texture Format: 16bit (@16bit colour depth) and 32bit (@32bit colour depth)
	Frame Buffer: Triple
	Hardware T&L

3Dmark2001 – Global Settings:
	Z-buffer Depth: 16bit (@16bit colour depth) or 24bit (@32bit colour depth) 
	Texture Format: 16bit (@16bit colour depth) and 32bit (@32bit colour depth)
	Anti-Aliasing: Off
	Frame Buffer: Triple
	D3D Pure Hardware T&L

QuakeIII (demo001) – Global Settings:
	Lighting: Lightmap
	Geometric Detail: High
	Texture Detail: Highest
	Texture Filters: Trilinear
	Full Screen: On

MDK2 Demo – Global Settings:
	Colour Depth: 32bit
	Texture Quality: Highest
Filtering: Trilinear
	Mipmap on
	Full screen on
	Hardware T&L on

SPECviewperf 6.1.2:
	Resolution: 800x600@32bit
                Runall.bat

Benchmark Results

While the Geforce3 trails in the lower resolutions, the upper resolutions (which are also the resolutions most games are played at) reveal just how powerful the NVIDIA’s flagship product is. The Geforce3 achieves a higher score at 1600x1200@32bit than the Geforce2 MX can score at 800x600@32bit (half the resolution). That’s a lot of computing power; it’s too bad 3Dmark2000 doesn’t run at any higher resolutions because the Geforce3 still has some headroom.

3DMarks2000 Win98, Win2K & 3DMarks2001 Win98

Unfortunately the Visiontek Geforce2 Ultra wasn’t available at the time the 3Dmark2001 tests were run.

Quake III & MDK 2 Time Demo

A similar story to 3Dmark2000 is played out here: the GF3 pulls in a little below the GF2 Ultra at the lower resolutions, but as the pixel count starts increasing so too does the GF3’s muscle. 71.9fps at 1600x1200@32bit on a PIII 800EB is an exceedingly impressive score.