NVIDIA GeForce 256 Part 1: To buy or not to buy

For the past year and a half, 3dfx has been the first to launch the next product cycle; first, with their Voodoo2 and then with the Voodoo3. This time around, NVIDIA is stealing the thunder with the release of their GeForce 256. The recently announced product is designed to be a departure from NVIDIA's TNT architecture and a migration towards a new series of graphics cards. In reality, the differences between the GeForce 256 and the previous TNT2 and TNT cards are not incredible in terms of numbers but they are very well defined.

3dfx and S3 can do nothing but stand by idle as NVIDIA either succeeds or fails miserably with the GeForce 256.  Which will it be?  Depending on your current video card it may be either one.  But there is one thing for sure, for now NVIDIA has the fastest 3D accelerator on the market.   But held back by a lack of support for its true potential and maturing drivers may taint the introduction of this part.  Once thing that can be said is that if you've had good experiences with the TNT and TNT2 then you know what you can expect from your GeForce experience since NVIDIA has not under-delivered with this chip.  But how well will the chip stack up in the future and how much of an advantage does it offer over what's currently on the market? 

Those are the questions we'll answer in Part 1 of our GeForce 256 coverage (which, in spite of its name, isn't incomplete at all ).  What we were expecting from the GeForce before ever laying hands on the card was a card that raised the playable resolution mark while adding a few key features that are a step forward for the industry as a whole.  And that's exactly what NVIDIA delivered.

We will be concentrating on answering the question "Should I buy a GeForce 256 and why?" However, in the coming week we will be concentrating on much more in-depth benchmarking of the chip itself with Part 2 of our coverage. So without further ado, let's dive right into the specs straight from NVIDIA…