GeForce 3 Which one AARRRRRHHHH!!

[nick t]

Help is there a better Geforce 3 card out now than the Leadtek WinFast GeForce3?

[Dudster]

The only GeForce3 I know of that's better than the Leadtek is the Morpheus GeForce3 by Absolute Multimedia. The Creative card might be better, I don't really know (though it got good reviews) but I think the Morpheus is basically the best.

I have the Leadtek GF3 myself and it's not quite as good as I thought it would be. The drivers are ok (though the driver info on their site is non-existant) but the bundled utilities are pathetic (the WinFox software). My previous card was a Creative GF256 and their software was far better. Native support for toggling Fast Writes, Sidebanding etc. Another cross for the Leadtek card is the supposed Hardware Monitoring doesn't work whatsoever. Another plus for the Creative card is that you can buy a spare fan from their website for £10 which you'll certainly be glad of if the original fan goes (happened on my GF256). I tried to get a spare fan from Leadtek but they were havin none of it.

I'm not sure if you can get the Morpheus over here. When I last looked, it would,ve been shipped from America which took 2 weeks. If you decide against the Morpheus, I would definately check out the Creative card.

[Infinitus]

You could try looking at the GF3 roundup at www.tomshardware.com. To sum up whats there, Leadtek was one of the fastest along with the Gainward (CardEx). It seemed as if the Leadtek's heatsink wasn't as extravagant as most of the others though.
If you aren't so interested about speed as features you might look into the Asus. However I do know the Gainward card does have TV in/out. You'll have to look at the article to find out about the rest of the cards...

[nick t]

Thanks for that guys, the only other card i can find over here is the Elsa Gladiac 920 Geforce 3 64Mb, i dont think its a ddr card , as im changing from intel to amd i want a system that is a good as it can be, i will have a search for the other card you sugested. At the moment i can get the Elsa for £276 or about $414, i think.

Thanks a lot Nick

[Dudster]

the Elsa Gladiac 920 Geforce 3 64Mb, i dont think its a ddr card

Not sure what you mean by that. If you mean the memory on the card then I think it must surely be DDR (I think all GeForce3s are DDR).

That does look like a good price for the Elsa 920 (£276?). Creative Labs have their own online store here and have their GF3 (which hardware wise is identical to the MSI GF3) for £297. Here's a review for both the Creative and Morpheus cards. Personally, if I was getting my GF3 all over again, I would get the Creative card (I have no use for video inputs or 3D glasses ).

The Asus and Gainward cards are available from here

[nick t]

lol thanks

[j moy]

Go get a Hercules card... they have great drivers and I love their Game Theater XP

[adbvfab]

The Gainward GeForce 3 Golden Sample is also worth a look!!!
You can really clock it to some amazing speeds!!!

I think they're available at http://www.overclockers.co.uk if you're interested.

[Hellmund]

Another cross for the Leadtek card is the supposed Hardware Monitoring doesn't work whatsoever

I've got a GF2 PRO with Winfox and had no trouble using Hardware monitor, actually the dam thing was set to check every second and I had to disable it...OFP was running quite slow

[Dudster]

Oh right, I had no idea that hardware monitoring would affect performance. In that case, I'm glad it doesn't work

When I read the review in PC Format magazine about this card, they couldn't get it work either, so either it's a driver fault or they binned it for the GF3.

[sKiT]

Just thought id put my two cents in...I recently purchased VisionTek's GeForce3 card. I dont know exactly how it ranks up against other GeForce cards but, I was very impressed to say the least. here are their specs on the card:
Specifications
• NVIDIA GeForce3 GPU
• AGP
• 64MB
• 200MHz Core Clock
• 460MHz Memory Clock
• 350MHz RAMDAC
• API Support for OpenGL® 1.2 and lower, DirectX® Version 8.0 and lower
• VGA Connector , TV/S-Video Out

My 3dMark2001 score averaged out to 6459
My Specs:
Shuttle Spacewalker AK32 DDR Mainboard FSB @266Mhz
AMD Athlon T-Bird 1.2Ghz @ 1.2Ghz 1.75vcore runs @49C-52C
Mini Copper Orb HSF
384MB DDR RAM PC2100
VisionTek GeForce 3 64MB
SB Live! mp3
WD 60Gig ata100 5400rpm(partioned to two 30gigs for dual boot)
Seagate 9.1 Gig ata33 5400rpm
Compaq 40x CD-ROM
Sony 4x-2x-24x CDR-RW
OS= WinME on C: & WinXP Pro on E:
Compaq P75 17" Monitor
3dmark2001 score on WinME avg'd 5387 and on WinXP with the DetonatorXP driver avg'd 6459

Hope this helps

[Dudster]

If you go for the Hercules GF3, make sure you get the newer A5 revision. I think all other GF3s are already the A5, it's just the original Hercules was the A3.

www.overclockers.co.uk have the A5 Hercules if you want it.