nVidia GeForce3--How Fast Is It?

Last week we received our nVidia GeForce3 graphics card kit from the Apple Store. The $499 card brings the latest and greatest graphics chipset for Macs (and PCs as well), the GeForce3, to PowerMac G4s introduced in January with a 4X AGP slot.

The GeForce3 kit comes with the card, two CDs (a newer Power Mac G4 Software Install CD with newer nVidia drivers v2.1 and an updated Apple Hardware Test CD) and an installation guide. The card has a fan attached to the graphics processing unit (GPU) like ATI's Radeon card but the GeForce3 fan is larger. There are also heat sinks attached to the 64MB of DDR RAM. It has two ports, a new Apple ADC port and a standard VGA port.

We installed it in our Power Mac G4 533 DP which originally shipped with an nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics card. We simply removed the GeForce2 and pressed the GeForce3 in the 4X AGP slot. Then we booted up in Mac OS 9.1 and ran the Software Install CD and restarted. Nothing to it. We ran all the applications that we use frequently and encountered no problems. We then rebooted into Mac OS X 10.0.3 and also noted no problems or oddities.

We ran a number of benchmark tests on the GeForce3 and re-ran the same tests for the GeForce2 and Radeon (retail AGP not OEM) cards since the drivers for both have been updated (v2.1 for nVidia and v6.2.3 for the ATI Radeon) since our comparo review. We have v1.2.2 of the OpenGL drivers running on a Power Mac G4 533 DP with a 17" Samsung flat panel LCD display. The display has a native resolution of 1280x1024 but scales to lower resolutions very well for an LCD. It will not scale to higher resolutions.

We ran the familiar Quake III Arena Demo 1 (v1.17) benchmark. In our last review we noted that the frames per second were virtually identical between 32 bit and 16 bit color so we only ran 32 bit. All of the preference settings were at their highest (best) except for Texture Detail which we backed off one click from the highest for maximum stability.

Quake III Arena v1.17 Demo 1 (frames per second)

Resolution/Color Depth	GeForce3	GeForce2	Radeon
640x480 - 32	64	66	64
800x600 - 32	63	64	64
1024x768 - 32	63	52	59
1280x1024 - 32	62	34	43

The Radeon improved over our last test and the GeForce2 deteriorated some, possibly because the v2.1 drivers are optimized for the GeForce3 chipset. The GeForce3 shines at the highest resolutions, losing virtually none of its speed at 1280x1024. If you have a CRT monitor that will run at higher resolutions, the GeForce3 will keep on pumping at an acceptable frame rate while the other two cards will give out beyond 1280x1024.

We also ran the Walker 1.2 sunlit atrium spin (a test of QuickDraw), Cinebench 2000 (a test of 3D modeling), the venerable MacBench 5 graphics and publishing graphics tests and a scroll speed test in Adobe Acrobat Reader 5. The latter is completed by opening the Virtual PC 4.0 manual .pdf in Acrobat Reader 5, adjusting the view to "Fit Visible", pressing the down arrow and recording the time it takes to scroll though all 144 pages of text and graphics.

Mac OS 9.1 -- Various Tests

Test	GeForce3	G3Force2	Radeon
Walker 1.2 Spin (min fps)	44	44	50
Cinebench 2000 - Shading OpenGL (score)	7.6	7.6	7.6
- Raytracing Multiple (score)	11.5	11.4	11.5
MacBench 5.0 - Graphics (score)	6220	4418	4815
- Publishing Graphics (score)	4582	3405	3790
Acrobat Reader 5 Scroll (sec)	24	24	25

The GeForce3 significantly out scores the other two cards on the MacBench graphical tests. However, this theoretical edge is not evident in the other tests which are a virtual dead heat among all three cards. The same is true for two speed tests that we performed in Mac OS X as noted below.

Mac OS X -- Two Tests

Test	GeForce3	G3Force2	Radeon
Acrobat Reader 5 Scroll (sec)	50	50	50
OmniWeb Scroll (sec)	4	4	3

The GeForce3 is THE 3D gamers card for the Mac but it did as well on our system as the Radeon in other graphics functions. The Radeon did slightly better than the GeForce2 for the most part and it appears to be the base card of choice since ATI will likely continue to tweak the Radeon drivers and nVidia is likely tweaking theirs for the GeForce3. Is the GeForce3 worth the $250 premium over the Radeon or GeForce2 as a BTO option? Is it worth $500 as a retrofit kit? Only, in our view, if you are a rabid hard-core gamer and need the last frame that one can squeeze out of every second to play at ultra high resolutions. But it is very nice to be able to use the 17" LCD at its native 1200x1024 resolution and get over 60 fps with a great image. Plus the GeForce3's performance will be factored into the next round of 3D games by developers.

-- TGIF, June 15 --