NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro

CPU Scaling Performance

CPU scaling gives us an idea of how a card will perform in a system besides the 1.1 GHz tested in this review. As the above graph shows, the GeForce2 Pro seems to like higher end processors, such as the Pentium III 800 EB and beyond. Below this mark, performance of the GeForce2 Pro seems to be very lackluster compared to what it could be getting. One question remained, however: was the GeForce2 Pro the item that was performing differently on the various systems or was it simply reflecting the processor speed since the CPU was acting as the bottleneck?

Normally we do not test CPU scaling at 1024x768x32, however the GeForce2 Pro proved to be a special case. We needed to know if in fact the GeForce2 Pro was acting as the limiting factor of if the CPU was providing a system bottleneck. As the above results show, testing at 1024x768x32 provide us with the same results we saw at 640x480x32. We still see that the GeForce2 Pro needs a faster processor, such as the Pentium III 800EB, to provide maximum performance. Therefore, the GeForce2 Pro is acting as the as the limiting factor, not the CPU.