Elsa Gladiac 921DVI 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.

The Card :

As you can see from the images, Elsa have stuck pretty firmly to the reference design. The use of gold coloured RAM sinks and GPU cooler look classy against the black PCB and certainly give the impression that this is a card with a few tricks up its sleeve, though as we'll discover in a moment it doesn't really offer much above and beyond what we've come to expect from the Titanium 500 line. Elsa aren't famed for going all out on cooling their cards which hasn't earned them a big reputation with the overclockers, but this card has all it needs to hopefully hit some decent numbers. One useful thing to note is that some of the airflow from the fan is directed out over the RAM sinks helping to keep them cool.

 

The fan is held in place using the usual spring tensioned plastic lugs which means it's a doddle to remove it should you want to add either a more efficient cooler or a more efficient thermal grease.

And on the subject of thermal grease, flipping off the cooler revealed a liberal application of what appeared to be a silicone based grease. This in itself raises a few questions simply because the card that Elsa supplied me had clearly been handled be several other people before me. The state of the box suggested that it had been sent out to probably half a dozen people before I got it, not a big deal considering the price of these boards, but it does mean I have no way of knowing if this grease was applied by Elsa or by one of the people who had the card before me. This same issue also raises questions over the cards overclockability. While I'm not suggesting for one moment the Elsa hand picks their review samples based on their performance and overclockability, it does mean that can't be ruled out.

The Gladiac 921 comes with the usual assortment of connectors including analogue and DVI out and of course TV out which is handled by the Conexant BT869 chip. This aging chip is used on most Ti series cards and offers adequate if unspectacular performance at resolutions up to 800x600 from various YCrCb or RGB digital streams. It also offers both NTSC or PAL outputs. I can't help but think it's time manufacturers moved on to using the superior Conexant CX25871 chip which offers ATSC High Definition Television (HDTV) output, true international television display (NTSC, PAL and SECAM output), and resolutions from 320 x 200 to 1024 x 768. This isn't really a negative point as very few manufacturers are using the CX25871 chip as yet, it's more a passing remark.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ramsinks are held in place using double sided thermal adhesive tape which seems to hold them pretty firmly. You may want to pop them off and use a quality thermal epoxy such as ESG's soon to be released Nanotherm Epoxy. I mentioned this one specifically as it's non conductive, and believe me the last thing you want is an electrically conductive epoxy spilling over onto the legs of your memory chips. That said, using any form of epoxy will invalidate your warranty so check out the stock performance before you tinker.

If you're interested, the memory chips in use under those RAM sinks is EliteMT 3.8ns.

A quick delve around PowerStrip confirmed that this card is indeed manufactured by Elsa and is a Revision A5 board.

Bundled Items:

Other than the printed installation manual the box is a little on the sparse side. You do get a printed installation manual in addition to the CD version and of course the usual warranty paraphernalia. The supplied software is minimal, but was clearly chosen with care. Two things a new owner is likely want to do first with his/her shiny new Gladiac is admire the eye candy and check out the power, and both of these are catered for with the bundled versions of DroneZ and 3DMark2001. I doubt I need to say much about 3DMark 2001, this current generation benchmarking software is used industry wide by reviewers and enthusiasts alike. DroneZ on the other hand is a game with a rather basic plot, but which uses a massive range of OpenGL visual tricks to really show you what your new toy is capable of.

As with the Creative card, I was a bit mystified by the lack of DVD playback software considering the TV out option.

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