Budget Video Card Comparison - November 2000

Windows 2000 Driver Performance

One important aspect of a video card, and one that is often times pushed aside by manufacturers, is the card's driver support under operating systems other than Windows98/ME. One area we noticed many consumers having problems in is under Windows 2000, where some manufacturers ignore the users needs. In many cases, the driver support under Windows 2000 is enough to slow down gameplay a noticeable amount.

Once again, we examine each card individually to see what kind of performance hit is taken when using Windows 2000 instead of Windows 98SE.

We are proud to announce that in the case of 3dfx's Voodoo4 4500 there is no longer a performance loss when going from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. When we originally looked at the Voodoo4 4500, we were a bit disappointed with it's lack of Windows 2000 speed, as the card performed up to 33% slower under Windows 2000. With beta drivers version 1.01.01 in Windows 2000, there was absolutely no performance decrease over driver version 1.01.03 in Windows 98. This is great news for all Voodoo4 4500 owners currently running Windows 2000, as it means that your card's total speed can be fully realized in Windows 2000.

One problem we originally noted upon the release of the Radeon SDR was its poor performance under Windows 2000. Unlike 3dfx, however, ATI has not yet fixed the problem, leaving Radeon SDR owners who run Windows 2000 wishing for a driver update.

Compared to the Windows 98 performance of the Radeon SDR, the performance of the card under Windows 2000 is unacceptable. The card performs 10% slower at 640x480x32, 16% slower at 800x600x32, and a full 19% slower at 1024x768x32. With a frame rate decrease of almost 10 frames per second, the Radeon's poor Windows 2000 performance is only due to one thing: poor driver support. We have noted time and time again that ATI's drivers are often not up to the par they need to be, and again in the Radeon SDR we find that this is the case. With 3dfx fixing their Windows 2000 performance problems, there is no reason that ATI can not do the same thing.

In the case of the GeForce2 MX's drivers, we once again could not be any happier regarding Windows 2000 performance. The Windows 2000 scores are identical to the Windows 98SE scores. In fact we have gotten the GeForce2 MX to produce higher scores under Windows 2000, proving once again that this is not an impossible task.