Absolute Multimedia Outrageous Ultra GeForce DDR

It has been a bit over 2 months since our last 32 MB DDR GeForce review. Does this lengthy time frame suggest that the arrival of the GeForce II GTS killed the DDR GeForce market? Quite the contrary. While we were all eagerly learning more and more about NVIDIA's latest processor, companies have continued to release and update products based off the "old" GeForce: the GeForce 256. Are GeForce 256 based cards budget cards now? No. Are GeForce 256 based cards useless for a powerful game system? Absolutely not. In fact, with the release of the GeForce 2 GTS, DDR GeForce cards even have more going for them.

The first event that occurred upon the release of the GeForce 2 GTS that proved to help the GeForce 256 market was the release of NVIDIA's 5.16 driver set. Although these drivers were available before the GeForce 2 GTS's unveiling, the packaging of GeForce 2 GTS cards with the 5.16 drivers all but demolished previous claims of the 5.xx series drivers being unstable and unofficial. We are yet to see NVIDIA post 5.16 drivers for download, but a quick search on the internet reveals a multitude of places to grab these from. By using the 5.16 drivers with 32 MB DDR GeForce cards, the texture swapping that was overwhelming in pervious tests all but disappeared. As described in our 64 MB GeForce review the 5.16 drivers utilize S3TC compression to allow many more textures to fit in the card's built-in 32 MB of RAM. It should now be just a matter of time before these drivers are proclaimed official by NVIDIA and packaged in their detonator driver package.

The second effect of the GeForce 2 GTS's release, and an effect that is yet to reach its full potential, is a price decrease on the GeForce 256 front. Since our DDR GeForce Roundup, we have seen DDR GeForce 256 prices fall anywhere from $20 - $40 depending on the card and retail location. This price drop may not be huge when one is already spending over $240, however it may make the difference between affordable and out of reach. In addition, expect this price to fall even more in upcoming months: as GeForce 2 GTS prices fall and more cards hit the market (which should just be a matter of time), the price of the DDR GeForce 256 cards will continue to fall.

With these facts in mind, as well as the fact that the DDR GeForce 256 is anything but out dated and easily replaced, we bring you our first DDR GeForce 256 review since our DDR GeForce Roundup. This time we bring you Absolute Multimedia's second attempt at the 32 MB DDR GeForce market: the Outrageous Ultra GeForce DDR. In an effort to repair the problems that plagued the original Outrageous GeForce DDR, Absolute Multimedia updated a few features of the original card. Do the updates prove worthy and make this card one of the better lower costing GeForce cards on the market? Let's find out. We begin by looking at the card specs, many of which remain mysteriously unchanged from the original card.

• Graphics Processor
  NVIDIA GeForce 256 graphics engine
• Bus Interface
  1x/2x/4x AGP with fast writes, full sideband/execute mode support
• Memory
  32 MB high-speed DDR (double data rate) memory
• RAMDAC
  Built-in 350 MHz
• Maximum Resolution
  2048 x 1536 pixels
• Vertical Frequency
  60 Hz to 240 Hz
• VGA Connector
  DB-15 analog monitor connector, VESA DDC2B, DPMS, VBE 2.0/3.0
• TV-Output
  S-Video
  Optional DVI connector for digital flat panel
  PAL + NTSC support
• High-Quality Video Playback
  30 fps full screen DVD playback
  DVD and HDTV-ready motion compensation for MPEG-2 decoding
  Video acceleration for DirectShow and MPEG1, MPEG-2, and Indeo
• 3D Performance
  Quad-Engine Design
  Hardware Triangle Setup
  Hardware Transform and Lighting
  32-bit rendering
  AGP 4x texture support
  Alpha-Blending
  Bilinear, Trilinear and 8-tap
  Anisotropic filtering
  Four rendering pipelines capable of delivering four pixels per clock
  Anti-Aliasing
  Bump Mapping
  Cube Environment Mapping in hardware
  Fogging
  Render with geometry instead of texture
  Subpixel Precision
  Transparency
  Gouraud Shading
  Perspective Correction
  32 bit Z + Stencil Buffer
• 2D Acceleration
  Hardware acceleration for all Windows GDI operations
  Multi-buffering (up to quad buffering) for smooth animation and video playback
  Fast 32-bit VGA/SVGA support
• Software Support
  Windows 95/98
  Windows NT 4.0
  Windows 2000
• Package Contains
  Outrageous 3D graphics card
  Install / Driver CD-ROM including Video Install and local language manuals
  Intervideo DVD DVD software
  Software Choice DVD ROM