Detonator 3 + GF 2 Ultra@Tomshardware

NVIDIA has definitely proven that it has a seriously talented software team that was capable of producing some dramatic performance boosts from this major driver revision. The claims of up to 50% boosts in performance were not seen in my testing but the generous gains across the board are more than welcome. The performance of NVIDIA boards in their weakest areas of high resolution and color are now given some breathing room to provide a boost up to around 20% in some cases.

Aside from this release pleasing the many current and future NVIDIA customers, I must say that it isn't looking very good for NVIDIA's competition right now. Coupled with the new driver, the older NVIDIA solutions as well as the newer low-cost solutions will boast some respectable numbers that the competition can only beat with their flagship offerings while not offering much of a challenge to NVIDIA's high-end equivalents.

The results of the benchmarks show it clearly, NVIDIA's new GeForce 2 Ultra is declassing the whole competition. Frame rates of around 100 fps at 1600x1200 / 16-bit color on a PC haven't been seen by any of us ever before. Finally even 1600x1200 at 32-bit color is becoming seriously playable, with the GeForce 2 Ultra scoring over 50 fps in most of the games we've tested! We had all reasons to omit results at screen resolutions of less than 1024x768, because even the weirdest 'hard core gamer' would be crazy playing any game at less than that with NVIDIA's latest 3D-card. If you should indeed fancy FSAA, for some to me unfathomable reason, then the GeForce 2 Ultra has got that for you as well. However, you should maybe rather invest in a high-class monitor and take advantage of the excellent detail offered by a resolution of 1600x1200 at true color.