NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS 64MB

Pentium III 550E - Quake III Arena demo001.dm3

A Pentium III 550E was used to simulate card performance on lower end systems.

While in general the trend of the 16-bit color performance appears to be the same as experienced on the Athlon 750, there is one noteworthy exception. Unlike the Athlon 750 test system, the Pentium III 550E system did not show any performance increase in 16-bit color until 1600x1200. If you recall, we found that on the Athlon, performance jumped a marginal amount of 1%. This increase is gone in the Pentium III system, most likely due to the fact that the processor is acting as a bottleneck. The performance trend found on the Athlon 750 remains the same on the Pentium III 550E when at 1600x1200x16, with the 64 MB GeForce 2 GTS card performing 8.3% faster (very close to the 8.4% speed increase found on the Athlon 750).

When in 32-bit color, the performance difference does not show again until 1280x1024, a resolution where the memory system begins to be taxed. At this resolution, the additional 32 MB of memory provided a 9% speed increase. At 1600x1200x32, where it appears that the 64 MB GeForce 2 GTS is most able to stand out from its 32 MB counterpart, the card performs 8.7% faster.