Elsa Gladiac 721 GeForce3 Ti500

Author : Wayne Date : 30th December 2001

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

	Powered by NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500
	nFinite FX™ engine—fully programmable effect processor for realistic 3D representation, e.g. volumetric fog, particle effects, reflective bump mapping and animated water surfaces
	High-resolution anti-aliasing (HRAA) in hardware—even at high resolutions only a slight performance reduction
	Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ for never seen before 3D performance
	64 MB DDR SDRAM with 500 MHz effective memory clock and 3.8 ns access time
	TV-out for games and DVD movies on TV
	DVI-I interface for digital flat-panel displays
	Bonus game: GeForce3 optimized game
	Includes 3DMark 2001 full version (MadOnion)
	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