NVIDIA GeForce3

by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 22, 2001 9:00 AM EST

Real-World Fillrate

We debuted the Serious Sam Test 2 Fillrate test most recently in our Kyro II Review, using it as a good way to test real-world fillate instead of simply quoting manufacturer specs which are generally very unrealistic. Since the GeForce3 has the same theoretical fillrate as the GeForce2 GTS, its performance here should be compared to that of the GeForce2 GTS and the comparison will allow you to see how efficient the GeForce3's Lightspeed Memory Architecture is, including its Visibility Subsystem.

While the GeForce3 doesn't boast the same incredible efficiency of the Kyro II that uses a tile-based rendering algorithm to give it close to 100% of its peak theoretical fillrate, the GeForce3 does offer an impressive 93% improvement over the GeForce2 GTS in terms of real-world fill rate. It is this advantage that allows the GeForce3 to outperform the GeForce2 Ultra at very high resolutions, simply because it is more efficient at managing the memory bandwidth it has.

When comparing Multitexture Fillrates, the same picture is presented for the NVIDIA cards since the performance hit taken when moving to a situation where two textures are being used is negligable. Again, we see that the GeForce3's architecture is quite efficient indeed.

Now that we've proven that the GeForce3 is more efficient, let's see if it translates into any real world performance gains under Serious Sam.

OpenGL Performance - MDK2 OpenGL Performance - Serious Sam Test 2
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