Leadtek WinFast 3D L2300 
4MB AGP (66 Mhz) 
Reviewed by Jackie Lee Choon Yau (19 June 98)

<Introduction> <The Good> <The Bad>
<Test System Configuration> <Conclusion> <Rating>

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Introduction

The Leadtek WinFast 3D L2300 has won two awards;Best Overall and Best Value 3D graphic card by Byte Magazine Lab Report, March, 1998. The card was also rated 5 stars by Byte Magazine. This Ultimate 3D Graphics Accelerator is distributed by Intresource Systems Pte Ltd. There are two version of the L2300 that is available. The 4MB and the 8MB versions is priced at S$ 249 and $299 respectively.  The L2300 uses PERMEDIA 2 workstation class 3D processor chip from 3DLabs.

The following is the attached softwares you will find if you buy it in Singapore :

• 02 x WinFast 3D L2300 (PCI/AGP) Installation Disks for Windows 95/98 Version 1.2A

• 01 x WinFast 3D L2300 (PCI/AGP) Installation Disk for WIndows NT 4.0 Version 1.4A

• 01 x BIOS Utility Disk Version 1.0

• Asymetrix Digital Video Producer Version 1.1

• Asymetrix 3D F/X Version 1.1

• Bonus Pack CD Version 1.2 containing Microsoft Internet Explorer, RealiMation Demo and VDOLive Video Player

• 01 x User Manual

The Good

The first good point on the list is the fact that L2300 utilizes that workstartion class PERMEDIA 2 chip for superb 3D acceleration and MPEG -2 video acceleration.The next good point is that this card supports DVD playback too. The card also provides a VMI connector for multimedia extension.  The card also uses high quality 100 Mhz SGRAMs on board. The Winfast 3D L2300 is designed to accelerate 3D presentation, animation, authoring, 3D VRML web browser, CAD applications and 3D gamings. From this you could understand that this card should provide a wide array of 3D features and superb picture quality. And you are correct.

The 3D Features includes : (3D Winbench)

• Fog Vertex capable

• Fog Table capable

• Specular Highlights capable

• Colour Key Transparency capable

• Alpha Transparency incapable

• Linear capable

• MipMap Linear capable

• Dithering capable

• Perspective Correction capable

• Fog Vertex and Color Key capable

• Fog Vertex and Alpha capable

• Alpha Bending capable

• Interpolated Diffuse Lighting capable

• Stencil Buffer capable

• Full Scene Anti-Aliasing capable

Don't just think of L2300 as a 3D only solution, because it simply isn't.  While most video card manufacturers, when designing a 2D/3D combo card, will skimp on either the 2D or 3D acceleration of the card, Leadtek also create a video card that not only excels in 3D performance, but Windows/2D performance as well.

To better understand the card's performance, I have extracted the below :

Professional Performance

• 1M 3D polygon/sec - textured (25 pixel)
• 83 M pixel/sec - textured, bilinear filtered, perspective
• 42 M pixel/sec - texture, bilinear filtered, perspective, Z buffer
• Smooth MPEG-2 video playback  (Still require a DVD Decoder)
• High resolution, high color ergonomic refresh rates

The bios drivers for the Leadtek WinFast 3D L2300 can be downloaded here from the Leadtek Taiwan Site.

The benchmarks below are performed under the Windows 98 Environment and with the installed DirectX Version 6 Beta.

So here they are :

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The Bad

The price tag of S$ 249 is relatively high as compare to its competitors; Riva 128 based cards. The card has a very system resources dependent nature due to the Permedia 2 Chip. Do not expect that even with Pentium II 300 Mhz to give very high frames rates in Quake II. This explains the super low reading in Quake 2 Timedemo. The installation package could also be improved with recent games demo (Permedia 2 supported) and a CD installation package.

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Conclusion

Overall,this card offers superb picture quality leaving Riva 128 based cards in shame. But the lagging DirectDraw performance will probably put you off. The higher relative pricing could also be another detering factor. But, if you are concern principally on a good affordable CAD graphics card, then Leadtek WinFast 3D L2300 is the card to go for.

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