Graphics Card Round up Based On The Geforce2 GTS Chipset

Abit; Well known in the world of motherboards, catering to the most demanding enthusiasts the market has to offer. But little are they known as a graphics card manufacturer. They ventured into this area more or less using Nvidia’s TNT2 chipset with their Siluro series of video cards. We have with us today the newest addition to the Siluro family, based on the new Nvidia GPU; The Siluro GF256 GTS 64MB.

• Technical Specifiactions:
  • Nvidia GeForce2 GTS GPU.
  • 64MB DDR memory
  • 350MHz RAMDAC
  • 4X AGP with Fast Writes/AGP 2X /1X compatible
  • Supports for OpenGL and DirectX 7 and beta DirectX 8

   

• High Quality TV/Video Output and DVD Playback:
  • NTSC and PAL TV output in 640×480 and 800×600
  • High Definition Video Processor (HDVP) for full-screen, full-frame video playback of all HDTV and DVD and resolutions

The Board

The card is more or less like any other GF2 GTS card. There are 8,8MB Hyundai SGRAM chips rated at 6ns giving a total of 64MB’s of memory. These are the same RAM chips used on the Tornado GF2 GTS. The board ships at default clock speeds of 200MHz(Core)/333MHz(Memory). So, again like the Tornado the memory is clocked at it’s rated maximum. But since the tornado gave such good results in the overclocking department I`m more optimistic this time around.

Great news!. Abit has catered for the folk who doesn’t just want the basic card and included a S-Video out and a S-Video cable with this board. Hopefully this type of trend will continue and other manufacturers will follow suit.

Overclocking

Well I got on to the overclocking with more hope this time. But boy what a disappointment! All I could go up to was 220MHz(core)/385 MHz (memory). Anything more than that the game would either crash or artifacting would occur.(don’t forget I managed a whopping 250/410MHz with the Tornado) The over clocked temperature was at 128 F.I feel part of the blame here should go to the ineffective thermal pad that Abit has used between the heat sinks & GPU. As to why the memory couldn’t be clocked any higher is still a mystery!

Pros:

• Very complete user manual
• The two bundled games Test drive 5 & Shogo though old is nice to have been included
• S-Video output

Cons:

• Price is on the high side
• Not freely available.

The next in line is; the Guillemot 3D Prophet II GTS 64MB