Elsa Gladiac 721TV-Out GeForce3 Ti200

Author : Wayne Date : 30th December 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank Elsa for their help and courtesy in providing this graphics card for review.

Overclocking :

Okay, I know we've covered all this before but let's go through it again for old time's sake. Again I should make it clear that running your card out of spec will invalidate your warranty and may lead to premature failure and that I'm including this information for reference only. Like you care!!

First step on the road to overclocking your card is to make a new key in the registry. This creates a tab that allows you to alter both core and memory speeds. If you're not confident with making changes to your registry then I'd suggest you ask someone more experienced to do this for you.

First you need to open your registry by clicking Start/Run then typing "regedit". After doing this you need to make your way to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global" and then you need to right click on "Global" and create a new key called "NVTweak". The "NVTweak" directory may already exist in which case start from this point. Once you've done this you then need to right click on "NVTweak" and choose the option to create a new dword value which you need to name "Coolbits". Finally, double click on the new "Coolbits" key and in the box that opens enter the value "3". Once complete your registry entry should look something like mine shown below.

Reboot your system and head into the additional properties part of your drivers and you should now see an additional tab named "Clock Frequencies". I think a quick look at the image below will explain all you need to know.

Remember to adjust the sliders a small amount at a time and test your settings before you progress. For those of you who don't need this advice, just humor me.

Overclocking results :

The Ti200 is a well documented solid overclocker, and with the attention to cooling Elsa have applied the 721 proved to be perfectly capable of some great results. From the stock settings of 175/400 I first pushed the memory to find its limits. No extra cooling was used and no extra voltage was applied to the AGP or DIMM slots.
Eventually the memory topped out at 490, though after a few runs I noticed artifacts appearing and, assuming the chips were possibly getting a little toasty I dropped it back down to 485. This is a mere 15MHz from the Ti500's stock memory speed of 500MHz (250MHzDDR). No doubt with a little extra cooling it would have gone a little way higher. Another point I should mention is that the 721 overclocked beyond the maximum settings available using the "Coolbits" tweak shown above and I had to fire up Powerstrip to get to these results.
Next it was time to see how far the core would go, this time 245MHz proved too much for it and I was forced to drop back to 240MHz, a total overclock of 240/485 running stable, not bad considering the Ti500's stock speed of 245/500.

The net result of the overclock was an increase from 7140 3DMarks to a much more impressive 7977 3DMarks. To be able to push a sub £200 card to these kind of performance levels is really pretty surprising and certainly adds to the value of the package. And this remember was with stock cooling and voltages!

 

Conclusion :

If you hadn't already guessed I'm impressed. The 721 is a powerful card with a quality cooling arrangement and a rather nice tendency for overclocking. The red heat sinks look good against the black PCB and the choice of components, including those used for the low pass filter, are first rate. If you missed the buzz, the low pass filter is used to filter out unwanted higher frequencies prior to them being sent to the monitor, and in some cases this caused problems with the image quality displayed when the capacitor quality was less than the very high specifications demanded. On many boards, including the Creative Labs card, you'll find that the last row of three capacitors has been removed, or rather omitted, and this is almost certainly done to help with any potential display problems. The Elsa however comes with all three rows of three capacitors in place, and the fact that image quality remains first notch suggests that their quality is high. In fact, right the way up to 1600x1200 on my Iiyama VM Pro 400 (17 inch), I was unable to see any difference in quality between this and any other card I've ever tested. The days of NVIDIA being hammered for lousy 2D and general image quality are well and truly over it appears.

In terms of raw power, the 721TV-Out has it in abundance. No, it won't be challenging the 921DVI in its stock configuration, but push the clocks a little and it certainly begins to snap at its heels, assuming you don't overclock the 921 that is :) Overall the 721 is fast, very fast.

The lack of a bundled DVD player gripes, as it did with the 921, and as it did with the Creative Labs card if it comes to it. A card with TV-Out and the ability to accelerate DVDs in hardware is crying for a bundled player to get the ball rolling, in fact it's only this omission that stops it from picking up an award from us.

UPDATE : Having spoken on the phone with Adam at Elsa UK, it appears the lack of a bundled DVD player stems from new licensing laws that would add to the final price of the product. Adam tells me Elsa are investigating how they can bundle some kind of DVD player with future products but that for now they have decided that if a buyer should have to pay extra for this license, they may as well have the choice as to which one they go for. Having spoken to other people about this matter , it appears that those companies who do bundle DVD software are either gambling they don't end up facing legal action or are actually charging extra for the license, probably more than you would pay if you bought that same software yourself. With this new information to hand I have changed my mind about the card's suitability for an award.

That aside, the 721 is a prime example of quality engineering coupled with a quality chip, the value for money is beyond question, the bundle will cater to your benchmarking and gaming passions and it will look great through that side window mod with neons. Full marks to Elsa on another great quality product.