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<td valign="top">&nbsp;<p><font face="Arial" size="5">Guillemot<br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="6">3D Prophet</font><font face="Arial" size="7"><br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="1">By Darin Genereux&nbsp; 991030</font></td>
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<p><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial" size="5">Introduction</font></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><font face="Arial" size="4"><span lang="EN-US">&nbsp;</span></font><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p>
</o:p>
</span>
</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Welcome to my
short review of the new GeForce video board from Guillemot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>By now most of you will probably have read one or more reviews of
the GeForce composed on mostly hardcore and recent computer systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>There are many people not yet blessed with such machines, so the
main purposes of this review will be twofold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>First, I intend to share my experience with the retail board,
stressing any compatibility or stability problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>Secondly, I hope to provide a reasonable expectation of the
GeForce’s performance on a K6 based system in relation to it’s older
brethren.</font></span></p>
<h5><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Test System</font></span></h5>
<ul>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">AMD K6-2 450Mhz</span></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">FIC VA-503+ Motherboard</span></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">128MB PC-100 SDRAM</span></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">Aureal Vortex 1 Soundcard</span></font></li>
</ul>
<h5><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Video Cards</font></span></h5>
<ul>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">Diamond Viper V550, TNT w/16MB</span></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">Hercules Dynamite TNT2 ULTRA, TNT2 w/32MB</span></font></li>
<li><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">Guillemot 3D Prophet, GeForce w/32MB
SDD</span></font></li>
</ul>
<h5><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Video Drivers</font></span></h5>
<ul>
<li><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Viper V550 - NVidia 3.53
reference</font></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Dynaimte TNT2 - NVidia 2.08
reference</font></span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">GeForce - NVidia 3.53
reference</font></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial" size="5">Initial Installation</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">The Guillemot
3D Prophet arrived packaged in a slick looking box, indicative of
Guillemot’s savvy marketing schemes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>Included were the following items:&nbsp;<o:p>
</o:p>
</font></span></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Basic User
Manual (in French and English)</font></span></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">$20 rebate
(US$)</font></span></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">S-VHS to RCA
adapter for TV-out</font></span></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Driver disc
with the following software:</font></span></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3;
tab-stops:list 18.0pt"><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7.0pt">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2 demo</span></font></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3;
tab-stops:list 18.0pt"><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7.0pt">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>Speed Buster demo</span></font></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3;
tab-stops:list 18.0pt"><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7.0pt">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>SCARS demo</span></font></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3;
tab-stops:list 18.0pt"><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7.0pt">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>Tonic Trouble demo</span></font></li>
<li>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3;
tab-stops:list 18.0pt"><font face="Arial"><span lang="EN-US">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7.0pt">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>Xing DVD player</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:54.0pt;tab-stops:list 54.0pt"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">&nbsp;<o:p>
</o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">First I did a
brief inspection of the video board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>I had heard of possible heat related problems with earlier boards,
and was curious to see that fan/heatsink combo on the chipset was no
larger than the cooler on the Hercules TNT2 card.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>During testing, I employed the famous ‘spit sizzling’
temperature monitoring method and found the heatsink to be very hot, but
not enough to sizzle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>If
you’ve never heard of such a test, it’s rather simple—just lick
your finger before touching a suspect device.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>On an extremely hot device, you’ll hear the sizzle long before
feeling the pain allowing you to avoid a sore finger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>Nevertheless, during the entire time I used the board I
encountered absolutely no problems or unexplained crashes.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>I should also note that my case is a rat-packed
mini-tower with relatively poor circulation, so I don’t think heat
will be a problem for most people.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">Finally I
installed the card and booted up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>Being
forewarned of outdated drivers on the CD, I commenced immediately with
installing Nvidia’s 3.53 reference drivers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>The setup program gave me some weird error about uninstall not
running, but the drivers installed just fine anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>BTW, this error also appeared with the TNT card, so it’s
definitely a Nvidia driver thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>Finishing
up the driver installation required installing the following line into
the registry to enable advanced options such as core and memory
overclocking and disabling D3D Vsync:</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times New Roman"><font face="Arial"><b>[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA
Corporation\Global\NvTweak]<o:p>
</o:p>
</b>
</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times New Roman"><font face="Arial"><b>&quot;CoolBits&quot;=dword:00000003<o:p>
</b>
</o:p>
</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><font face="Arial">After
installing the drivers, I noticed one minor drawback.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>The vibrancy of color, particularly white, seemed diminished from
that of the Viper or Dynamite cards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;
</span>I tried to compensate for it using color controls in the Display
Properties, but that didn’t help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>Lowering my refresh rate to 75Hz from 85Hz seemed to help, as did
lowering the resolution from 1024x768.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>I’m not sure of the exact cause of the problem as the picture
and text remained very crisp.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes">&nbsp; </span>Perhaps I could have compensated with my monitor’s color
controls, though I never tried that approach.</font></span></p>
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