A comparison between three of nVidia's heaviest all-time hitters.

Since nVidia's release of their GeForce2 GTS cards as successors to the original GeForce line, the question looming in every PC enthusiast's mind has been: "Do I upgrade now, or should I wait?" This comparison between three of nVidia's fastest, and most expensive, video cards released within the past 18 months should provide insight into the elusive "upgrade" question. I won't go too deep into the gory details about the particulars of each card, since I feel this dead horse has been beaten enough. But, I will provide some refresher information about each card. This review will illustrate the benefits, or lack thereof, of upgrading from a GeForce2 Ultra or GeForce3 to a brand spanking new GeForce4 Ti4600.

As with all prizefights, let's start with the weigh in:

In the green corner, we have the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 Ultra.

Let's hop in the "way-back" machine. In the fall of 2000, the GeForce2 Ultra was the Mac Daddy of gaming video cards. The Ultra was based on the hugely successful GeForce2 GTS platform. To bridge the gap between the GeForce2 GTS and the upcoming "NV20", now known as the GeForce3, nVidia applied the "brute force" method of achieving higher performance. This method simply involved increasing the core and memory speed. To achieve the core speed increase, an "enhanced" 0.18µ process was used to reach the core speed of 250 mhz. To complement the increased core speed, the GeForce2 Ultra was equipped with 64 mb of 4ns DDR SDRAM, running at 230 mhz. The GeForce2 Ultra was the first video card that allowed gaming at 1600x1200 resolution with acceptable framerates.

In the orange corner, we have the Visiontek GeForce 3.

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Roughly six months after the release of the GeForce2 Ultra, nVidia blessed the gaming community with the GeForce3. However, on the surface, the specifications of the GeForce3 appeared to be no better than the GeForce2 Ultra. The GeForce 3 core runs at 200 mhz (50 mhz slower than the GeForce2 Ultra) and the memory runs at 230 mhz. But, a more detailed examination of the card revealed the first true Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) released by nVidia. What set the GeForce3 apart from the GeForce2 line was the programmable GPU. The GeForce3 GPU included the same transform and lighting (T&L) engine from the GeForce2, but added an nfiniteFX Vertex processor and an nfiniteFX Pixel processor. These two new vertex processors and pixel processors, combined with the T&L engine comprised the now famous nfiniteFX engine. The new nfiniteFX engine allowed the GeForce3 to pull ahead of the GeForce2 Ultra in most benchmarks, even with the same memory speed and lower core speed. As you will see later, the biggest difference between the GeForce3 and GeForce2 Ultra is at 32-bit color depth. Six months after the GeForce3 debuted, nVidia released the Ti200 and Ti500 versions of the GeForce3. The Ti200, slower than the original GeForce3, has core and memory speeds of 175 mhz and 200 mhz, respectively, and was aiming at the budget minded buyers. The Ti500, on the other hand, was slightly faster than the GeForce3 running a core speed of 240 mhz and memory speed of 250 mhz and was aimed to stay off the charge of the ATI Radeon 8500.

And in the red corner, we have the Visiontek GeForce4 Ti4600.

Enough of this history lesson, let's move to the present. With a new line of nVidia cards come some new features as well. New to the GeForce4 line is an improved Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA), dubbed LMA II, an improved nfiniteFX (II) engine with dual vertex shaders, and the Accuview Anti-Aliasing (AA) engine. The GeForce4 also brought about a new definition of speed. The Mac Daddy Ti4600 boasts a core speed of 300 mhz and a memory speed of 325 mhz. That's a little over 33% increase in core speed and a 29% increase in memory speed compared to the Geforce3. In addition to the base speed increases, the Ti4600's are also equipped with 128 mb of DDR SDRAM, in BGA packaging. As you know the Geforce2 Ultra and Geforce3 were equipped with only 64megs of memory. This new combination of brute force (core/memory speed) and finesse (LMA II, nfiniteFX II, AccuView AA) allows gamers the coveted option of high resolution AND anti-aliasing, while maintaining blistering framerates.

That all sounds great, doesn't it? But what does that really mean for me as a gamer? In our AthlonXP 2100+ Review we saw how different processors affect framerates in games at resolutions of 1024x768 and above. But what effect will a video card upgrade have on a system? What if I already have a kick butt gaming rig and a GeForce2 Ultra or GeForce3? Will the GeForce4 Ti4600 really make that much of a difference on my system? Let's take a look…