AOpen 3D Navigator PA70 Savage3D

PROS

I'll start with the good things about the AOpen PA70. Below is a list, along with a brief explanation, plus substantiation for my claims.

Fast D3D Performance - Anand's Video Accelerator Round-up benchmarks speak for themselves

Good OpenGL Performance - While Quake2 performance isn't the best available, the Savage3D is definitely all you need if you play Quake2 @ 800x600.

High Resolution Support - 1600x1200 3D resolution available, though it isn't really suitable for games (too slow)

Price? - I have to verify this, since I could not find pricing information regarding the AOpen PA70, I am estimating $100 street price, but I could be wrong. As soon as I receive response from AOpen regarding price, I'll let you know.

Texture Compression - Increases bandwidth substantially, barely noticeable image quality decrease.

Runs Extremely Cool - 0.25 micron process

2D & RAMDAC - I really don't consider 2D an issue nowadays; which is why I did not discuss it in the review. The 2D of all the cards I have tested seems to be nearly identical. The only 2D related item which is important is RAMDAC. The Savage3D based AOpen PA70 features a 250mhz RAMDAC; which makes it suitable for 17" and above monitors; running at high resolutions, with high refresh rates. I didn't see a difference between this and the Matrox G200 in terms of image quality at 1024x768; however, this may be due to my monitor.

CONS

Poor OpenGL drivers - ICD is pathetically slow; Requires special miniGL wrapper for Quake2 based games to get good speed.

Glitches in OpenGL Games - Noticeable glitches in OpenGL games like Quake2, Half life, and Unreal.

Inconsistent Frame Rate - Check out Vsync discussion on previous page

Registry Settings - Better drivers should do this for us.. Adding 'AA' = "On" to your registry is required for better performance (and AGP usage). AOpen / (actually S3, since AOpen uses reference drivers) should have added a little line in their driver install code to add this to the registry. This is a very careless thing to leave out.

Overall Driver Quality / Maturity - Frequent crashes in 3D applications, some applications may sometimes refuse to run; or crash.

Ratings

Bottom Line

I would recommend waiting until the Savage3D based boards and drivers (not just the PA70 reviewed) mature before considering this board as a high performance board. If you want a fast board for around $100, there really isn't another option...'