NVIDIA 3D Vision, First Looks. Part One - The GPU and Monitor

Work has finally slowed enough for me to crack open all of my new gear and start playing. I had a 9800 GX2 going into this bit I got a GTX 280 with the box of goodies from NVIDIA. Being the perfomance addict that I am I decided to do a quick side-by-side test to see which card had the most pure horsepower. This is not the no-brainer you think it might be because the 9800 does single-card SLI, due to having 2 GPUs inside, vs the 280's single chip:




















This is just a simple test to see how many megapixels/second each card processes and not an in-depth bank of benchmarks but it eases the decision to pull out my faithful 9800 (on the bottom) in favor of the GTX280.

Now for the other half of the display end of our kit. For the GeForce 3D Vision to work you need a 3D Vision ready Display. NVIDIA was generous enough to provide the 22" Samsung 2233RZ. Until now I had thought the Samsung 22" 226BW I bought almost 2 years ago looked good but the RZ is stunning. It is capable of refresh rates up to 120Hz (twice what "old school" LCDs are capable of) and has a 20000:1 contrast ratio the so colors are deep and crisp and, with a 5ms response time, not even the craziest shooter should have the opportunity to tear, blur or blink.

That wraps up what we'll be looking AT while we play with the 3D Vision. Next we'll cover what came in the box, how "user friendly" the kit is and talk about how this thing looks when you're actually playing a game.