In the blue corner we have the reigning 3D champion, weighing in at 480M/texels per second, the GeForce 256. In the red corner we have a new challenger, weighing in at 1.6 Gigatexels per second, the GeForce2 GTS. And just for good measure we threw in a BETA Voodoo5 5500 into the equation to give you a rough idea of the current competition. You know the rules etc… Now, Fight!

Still at the top of our list for benchmarking OpenGL applications, Quake 3 Arena offers fantastic visuals and fast-paced gameplay. For our first run of benchmarks we tested the cards using Normal quality settings at various resolutions. Although Normal quality won't strain the limitations of the GeForce or GeForce2 (at low resolutions); we still get an idea of what performance can be had with an average of speed and quality. For testing purposes, v-sync was turned off on all platforms, while fast-writes were disabled only in the i820 test bed (with the 3.68 drivers ONLY).

Performing solidly across the board, the GeForce2 GTS bests the GeForce by a significant margin, with an emphasis on high-res gaming. 640x480, 800x600 and to some degree, 1024x768 are all free resolutions, limited mainly by the power of the CPU. Even the 1GHz Athlon test bed couldn't pace the card in the low-res timedemo!

At higher resolutions, the GeForce2's lead can easily be described as commanding. The Voodoo5 5500 isn't final silicon, but a 20fps gap won't be easy to cover. More than likely it will take 3dfx's high-end part, the Voodoo5 6000, to overtake the GeForce2 GTS.