NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS Roundup - July 2000

The Test

Now that we know a bit about the GeForce 2 GTS as well as how it reacts to overclocking, let's take a look at the contenders. To fully place each card through a battery of tests, required a bit of additional testing that was not performed in the original card reviews. First off, each card was tested in a BX system with an overclocked FSB. As detailed in our BX-133 Video Guide, some video cards have trouble working in systems with an overclocked AGP bus. We tested each video card in our AOpen AX6BC Pro motherboard with FSB speed of 133 and 148 MHz (88 and 98 MHz respectively) to see if the card ran. More information about this can be found in our BX-133 Video Guide.

The temperature of each card was taken using a thermistor placed directly on the back of each video card right under the processor. We found this to be an excellent place to measure card temperature. The data was recorded by a Winbond W83977EF-AW chip found on an ABIT BE6-II motherboard using Motherboard Monitor 4.17.

As described above, we found that the best way to overclock the GeForce 2 GTS was to find the maximum memory speed and then increase the core. In addition to overclocking in this manner, we also found how fast each card could go while simultaneously increasing the core and memory speeds. The results of increasing both the core and memory speeds to the maximum amounts are given in the Highest Overclock (max core) row, while the amount of speed that could be pushed out of the card while at the memory's maximum speed is found in the Highest Overclock (max memory) row.

With this testing methodology in mind, let's get on to the cards.