Creative Labs3d Blaster GeForce3 Ti500

Author : Wayne Date : 24th September 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank Creative Labs and especially Rosie Tickner of ProdigyPR for their help and courtesy in providing this graphics card for review.

The card :

Click for a larger image

One thing I wasn't expecting from Creative was the rather impressive looking cooling arrangement. Creative have historically been rather loath to "pretty up" their cards in the past, preferring to go for solid functionality at a sensible price. There's no denying that the Ti500s warm up quite nicely and needs a well thought out cooler, but the addition of ram sinks and the polished chrome effect came as a surprise, although it was a nice surprise.

One thing I personally dislike is when the cooling for the memory and GPU are cast in one piece. In addition to making it difficult to modify the cooling to suit your needs it also means heat from the GPU warms up areas of the heat sink that are cooling your memory. Fortunately in this case, although it looks at first glance as though the heat sink is a single assembly the rams sinks are actually separate to the GPU sink.

GPU sink and RAM sink in profile

The board is faithful to the reference design and comes with no unusual features other than the expected TV out and DVI connector. As you'd expect the quality appears top notch though with that amount of armour on the the card is a touch on the heavy side. Not that the weight is likely to cause any problems, even in its horizontal tower orientation, I mention this simply as a reminder to remove the card before you so anything likely to jolt the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The use of components on the rear of the card means those of you who like to whip out the epoxy and slap on some cooling from the back may have to plan a little harder, but as this is a practise that's dying out anyway it's hardly likely to be a major issue.

The fan itself was reasonably quiet and appears to be pretty robust. Creative took a lot of stick over the quality of the fan they chose to use on their GeForce2 range but this appears to be a better quality offering all round. Also of note is the design of the heat sink on the GPU. Those side channels should allow a screw to bite quite nicely should you get the urge to try a slightly more powerful fan, though needless to say this will invalidate your warranty.

All in all this is a great looking card that appears classy without needing to dabble into the world of coloured PCBs and fruit favoured Orbs. You may decide you need more than the basic features offered by this card, but for £283 (+ VAT = £332.53) from Creative's online shop it still represents excellent value for money compared to similar offerings from other manufacturers. A little shopping around should see the board listed for nearer the £300 mark, for example Jungle stock the card for £289.99 including Vat.

The Bundle :

The bundled extras are best described as adequate, though if you're as fussy about your games as I am, the fact that you've not had to pay extra for a pile of games you're never likely to play is actually a good thing. Inside the box is the card itself, the driver installation CD which also includes a selection of stock NVIDIA tech demos (Zoltar, Inferno, Chameleon, Bumpy Shiny Patch etc.). You'll also find a four track OEM version of Rage Softwware's eRacer and a full version of Incoming Forces. I haven't at this point had a chance to play with Incoming Forces, but I'm happy to say that eRacer is a pretty awesome showcase for the Ti's abilities. This visually impressive arcade racer offers great tracks, superb visuals and very detailed textures. Play it online and you double the fun. Its one weakness is the steering which was clearly designed with stabbing a D pad rather than using a joystick. It does have that "one more try" appeal to it though so even those who splash out on this card with a minimal game collection should be happy for a while (though I'm guessing it'll be the more seasoned gamer who pay for this card).

Other than this you get nothing more than a quick start guide to help get things running as soon as possible.

Installation :

After the often frustrating amount of grappling you need to do to get ATi's cards installed and configured to run properly, installing this one was a breath of fresh air. Even allowing for the fact that I was running Windows XP, I slotted in the card, fired up and it was immediately found, the drivers were installed and it was ready to fly. It didn't even require a re-boot, though I did anyway to be safe. The first thing that struck me was that I wasn't trapped in 60Hz as I had been with all the Radeons I'd used. The Ti seemed perfectly able to control XP's refresh rates at all resolutions which made a nice change and immediately left a good impression. Before I did anything else I ran through the supplied tech demos from the CD, and let's just say this left an equally good impression. Okay, enough talk, let's get to the all important performance figures.

 

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