Elsa
Gladiac 721 GeForce3 Ti500
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Author : Wayne
Date : 30th December 2001
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3DVelocity would like to
thank Elsa
for their help and courtesy in providing this graphics card
for review.
...Product |
Gladiac 721DVI GeForce3 Ti500 |
...Manufacturer |
Elsa |
...Supplier |
Elsa |
...Price |
£176.25
(From
Jungle)
|

Introduction :
With the arrival of NVIDIA's high power Titanium
chips came a flood of cards built around them, although there's
little doubt that the establishes manufacturers with established
branding had a distinct advantage. This probably explains why
German graphics gurus Elsa decided to stick with the familiar
"Gladiac" name when they introduced their Titanium
cards to an eagerly waiting public.
Elsa introduced three new cards to the market
covering all three NVIDIA chips. Top of the totem pole was the
Gladiac 921DVI built on the awe inspiring Ti500. Memory is the
same 3.8ns found on the "old" GeForce3 cards, but
it is now ramped up to 250MHz (500MHzDDR) against 230MHz for
the GF3. This was achieved by NVIDIA using their influence with
Elite and UMC to ensure better speed binning of memory parts.
By working strategically with TSMC NVIDIA were
also able to pump the core speed from 200MHz to 240MHz by moving
to production of the core to a high performance version of the
0.15u process. Finally NVIDIA redesigned the board with a new
8 layer design and revised power schematic.
Elsa's Ti200 card was the Gladiac 721TV-Out while
their GeForce2 Ti solution was badged as a GLADIAC 516TV- Out,
but it's the 921DVI Ti500 we'll be looking at today.
Product Highlights
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Powered by NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 |
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nFinite FX™ engine—fully programmable effect processor
for realistic 3D representation, e.g. volumetric fog, particle
effects, reflective bump mapping and animated water surfaces |
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High-resolution anti-aliasing (HRAA) in hardware—even
at high resolutions only a slight performance reduction |
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Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ for never seen before
3D performance |
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64 MB DDR SDRAM with 500 MHz effective memory clock and
3.8 ns access time |
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TV-out for games and DVD movies on TV |
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DVI-I interface for digital flat-panel displays |
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Bonus game: GeForce3 optimized game |
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Includes 3DMark 2001 full version (MadOnion) |
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6-year warranty |
Over the next few pages I'll be taking a brief
look at the technology behind the Ti500 chipset by recycling
snips from previous reviews. If you're already familiar with
the technology then simply click HERE
to move on to the main body of the review.
Page 2- Technology overview