Leadtek WinFast GeForce 256 DDR Revision B

By and large Leadtek's pride and joy lies in their video cards. With the introduction of the TNT2 based S320, Leadtek obtained the reputation of being an early producer, as the S320 was one of the first TNT2 cards to hit the market. Feeding off the fickleness of the video card community, Leadtek products originally appealed to consumers who wanted to be the first on their block with new technology. This marketing strategy was also incorporated into the GeForce market. Once again, Leadtek was one of the first companies to release an SDR and DDR card.

The one thing about being first to a market is that time is often saved by reducing features. In the case of Leadtek's WinFast GeForce 256 DDR Revision A card, the NVIDIA reference design without any further enhancements or features was used to speed up production time and decrease development time. While this is fine when the card first hits the market, when there is little to no competition, it is only a matter of time before slower companies release competing products with additional features. When this occurs, it leaves the older products selling at a much slower rate than the enhanced competing products.

About 2 months after its initial release, Leadtek must have realized that the WinFast GeForce 256 DDR was not so revolutionary in the market anymore, a fact most likely represented with a decrease in sales. Also noticed was some sort of heat problem, a problem which Leadtek admits may have caused unstable performance in some of the older WinFast GeForce 256 DDR cards. With this in mind, the research team at Leadtek set out to revamp their DDR product. The resulting product is what Leadtek is calling the WinFast GeForce 256 DDR Revision B, but in actuality is pretty much a new card. Sold in the same box with a "Rev B" sticker on it, we set out to see how the WinFast GeForce 256 DDR Revision B performs and how it differs from its Revision A counterpart. We begin by looking at the card specifications.

• 2D and 3D Features
  NVIDIA GeForce 256, 256-bit GPU
  Quad Engine Design for complete 3D Pipeline
  350 MHz RAMDAC support display resolution up to 2048x1536
  32-bit Z-buffer/stencil
  Optimized for Direct3D acceleration with complete hardware support for DirectX 7
  Cube Environment Mapping
  Full OpenGL 1.2 ICD driver support
  32 bits true color texture mapping support
  Hardware Transform and Lighting
  Optional Digital Flat Panel interface with scaling and filtering for flat panels up to 1600x1200
  S-Video and Composite TV-out support up to 800x600 resolution
  Full PC99 and PC99a compliant
• Driver Support
  Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 driver support
  Microsoft DirectX 7.0 for windows 9x/2000, OpenGL IDC for Windows 9x/2000/NT 4.0
• Video Acceleration
  DVD and HDTV-ready motion compensation for MPEG-2 decoding
  DVD sub-picture alpha blended composting
  Hardware YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 color space conversion support
  Multi-tap X and Y filtering
  8:1 up and down scaling on video overlay
  Industry's first 5-tap horizontal by 3-tap vertical video filtering
  Supports planar YUV12 (4:2:0) to/from packed (4:2:2) conversion for software MPEG acceleration
  Video acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1
• Drivers and Utilities
  WHQL-qualified drivers Optimized for Pentium III SSE and AMD 3D NOW
  With Leadtek's user-friendly Windows 9x Control Panel (WinFast Settings), you can adjust the gama correction, Direct3D and OpenGL controls and fine tune performance with our Speed Runner utility (overclocking tool)
• Bundled Software
  MPEG-2 (DVD) Player (WinDVD)
  Colorific (for fine-tuning color calibration)
  3Deep (for accurate adjustment of color matching between monitor and printer)
  WEB 3D from Asymetrix (optional)
  WIRL from Platinum (optional)
  VRCreator from Platinum (optional)
  3D/FX from Asymetrix (optional)
  RealiMation STE (Demo) from Datapath (optional)
  Microsoft Internet Explorer (optional)
  Digital Video Producer from Asymetrix (optional)
  VDOLive Video Player from VDOnet (optional)
• Package Contents
  WinFast 3D GeForce Graphics card
  User's Manual
  Driver and Utility CD
  CD with Software DVD player
  Bonus Pack CDs (optional)
  S-Video Cable
  Composite Cable