It seems that every 6 months, we here at SharkyExtreme have this dilemma. It all started with the GeForce. We got our first GeForce, a reference board from NVIDIA, tested the hell out of it. We poked, prodded and twisted the board until we had a real clear idea of how fast it really was, and then we published our results for all to see. Then every board manufacturer on the planet sent us their GeForce based products and we went through the process again, ad nauseum.
Fast forward to the GeForce 2, and we see the same predicament: a slew of boards all based on the same graphics core, with similar features and similar bundles. In the end, we concluded that a GeForce 2 was a GeForce 2 in terms of performance, and you should pick the board based on the extra features, quality of the product, and price. NVIDIA threw us a bit of a curve with their Pro and Ultra versions of the GF2, but after the fall-out settled the story was even clearer: a Pro was a Pro and an Ultra was an Ultra.
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