GA-Source heeft een vrij interessant artikel online gezet over de GeForce 256, en of hij eigenlijk wel de moeite waard zal zijn. Er schijnen namelijk nogal wat hitte problemen te zijn, en op korte termijn zullen er maar weinig games uitkomen die de nieuwe mogelijkheden van de GeForce benutten. Hier heb je vast een gedeelte uit het artikel:
Memory - Currently, and to my best knowledge, the card manufactures will be releasing their first GeForce 256 cards with 32MBs only. Creative, Guillemot and ELSA (I have not checked with the others) will not be providing an upgrade option to 64MB. If I am not wrong, or this doesn't change before the release later this month to late October (for ELSA - read my report), then purchasing the 32MB version seems like a waste of money to me, and I suggest waiting for the 64MB version, which according to all the card manufactures will really result in providing the chips full powers. Notice how none of the card manufactures (even Leadtek) have announced a price for the 64MB version. I truly believe, and based on my discussions with a few of them, that the first cards released will be 32MB only with no upgrade option (in hardware, like the Matrox G200 had last year).Heating and Compatibility Issues - Creative Labs had a nice booth at ECTS. Bill Havlicek, Technology Evangelist Developer Relations at Creative (who by the way was incredibly helpful) was in the booth showing off a GeForce 256 reference card running on what I believe was an AMD K7 system. The system over heated every few min, crashed and a cold boot was needed. I can not quote anyone here, but I will say that I spoke to a few developers and card manufactures, which all said that the chip currently has some serious over-heating problems. Yes, I do believe that all the companies involved "are doing their best to solve this issue", but until I am shown differently, currently the GeForce 256 has major heating problems.
As mentioned in my report on ELSA's Erazor X card, they are releasing the card a month later, due to the fact that they are changing the card's design to solve some of the current compatibility and heat issues which are found on NVIDIA's reference design.
Do you self a favour, and even if you are eager to get your hands on the first cards released later this month, wait for some reviews. Make sure you read the reviews which address this issue.
