We measured 3-D performance using ZD's new 3D WinBench 97 test suite. For our 2-D tests, we used Business Winstone 97 and WinBench 1.1's Business Graphics WinMark 97 and Video Playback tests.
Higher scores indicate better performance except on the video playback tests.
Before testing each card, we installed a new copy of Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, the DirectX 3a API, and drivers supplied by the card vendor. Because most Windows 3-D games shipping or under development use Direct3D's Immediate Mode API, 3D WinBench 97 also uses that interface to render its test scenes. After determining the frame rate of all 10 scenes and taking 3-D features supported into consideration, 3D WinBench calculates a score that's scaled to the result of a base machine. To measure each card's impact on overall system performance running mainstream business applications, we ran the Business Winstone 97 benchmark. This test was performed using each card's 16-bit color 1,024x768 driver setting.