ELSA GLADIAC ULTRA 64MB GeForce2 Ultra

The Gladiac features the 0.18-micron core clocked at 250MHz matched with 230MHz DDR SDRAM. If you recall our GF2 Ultra review, we said that all Ultra chips are mere GeForce2 GTS chips, which are capable of reaching higher clock speeds. The GTS core with four pixel pipelines, each capable of rendering one pixel per clock with two textures per pixel, effectively gives one Gigapixels per second fill rate and two Gigatexels per second texel rate. That’s more than 25% in pixel fill rate compared to the GeForce2 GTS.The SDRAM chips which are rated at 4ns gives a theoretical maximum operating frequency of 250MHz DDR. (500 MHz effectively).

But with the Gladiac Ultra boards shipping with a 460MHz effective memory clock the overclockers out there will have their hands full. These 4ns rated memory chips are claimed to be the fastest memory available on a consumer product today. With the equivalent of 460MHz memory on a 128-bit memory bus the Gladiac Ultra carries a whopping 7.36GBs of bandwidth,which is an increase of 38% over the original GeForce2 GTS. As to why Nvidia specified a 460MHz memory clock with 500MHz rated SDRAM is very clear. This is because the 4ns memory is still not able to successfully operate at 500MHz on the Ultra boards 100% of the time. So by lowering the memory clock Nvidia is just playing safe, but the potential for overclocking is very obvious.

Elsa has used an even larger heatsink/fan combo than of the reference board. The fan is a full 2` in diameter and has 7 large fins where as the reference design is 1.5` with 10 fins. The larger heatsink and fan should cool the core better than the reference design setup. The 8 memory chips have the same two shark finned heat sinks we saw on the reference board.

Now let’s not forget the hardware transformation and lighting engine. At 250MHz the Ultra pushes 31 million polygons per second, compared to the 25 mill/sec of the GTS. Well it’s true that only a handful of games even make use of the 15 million polygons per sec of the GeForce256, and the 31 million is just an over kill. But hey, Who’s complaining?…

 

Features

Other than the speed improvements, the GF2 Ultra architecture is very much the same as a GF2 GTS. So what features does this baby have to offer? Well let’s start with what the Gladiac Ultra doesn’t have. The board we reviewed does not have a TV-out header or a DVI port. But Elsa’s VIVO(Video-in Video-out) module which adds both TV-out and Video digitizing capabilities will be available soon and will cost around $40 ,according to Elsa. This is a nice feature since it allowes for an upgrade without having to replace the entire card. The VIVO module looks very similar to the TV-out header present on the NVIDIA reference board and features a Phillips controller chip. The Phillips chip will allow for the switching between using the Single S-Video port as a TV-input or output.

But there is no cut out for the S-Video port on the expansion slot bracket on the card. Therefore a modified bracket+instructions on how to replace the current one, will have to accompany the VIVO module. Even with the VIVO module the Ultra losses somewhat of functionality when compared to the competition. For example, with the Asus deluxe board we reviewed recently you could have an input device like a camcorder, plus, a TV connected for output, simultaneously. On the other hand the VIVO module only let’s one of the two, that is either Video-in or Video-out through the single S-video port. But ‘creativity is the essence of life’ and you could expect Elsa to come up with some solution that`ll somehow allow simultaneous video input and output. Well let’s have patience till the Vivo module is released, to see how Elsa tackles the problem.

VIVO Module

3D Revelator Glasses:

The Gladiac Ultra comes with the 3D revelator glasses. These glasses give more 3D depth to your screen, by alternating polarizing lenses coupled with two alternating offset images on screen. The glasses differ considerably from the Asus V7700 deluxe’s VR glasses. The 3D revelator glasses use a wireless infrared interface to communicate with the card, whereas the VR glasses connect to the card via a 1/8 jack. Also the 3D revelator glasses only support Direct3D games and unfortunately there too, not all Direct3D games will work. Having cables tying you to your computer just doesn’t appeal to me, and the cordless glasses are more than welcome for my requirements. The glasses have to be used with Elsa’s drivers and this is a bit of a problem since you’ll have to give up the benefit of having the latest drivers on your system, and have to wait until Elsa releases their own update. All in all, the glasses may bring more realism to your gaming, but is not something I’ll be using often.

Overclocking

The Nvidia reference board we reviewed back in August was rock steady at 285MHz core and 500MHz memory, overclocked speeds. Well, we had higher hopes on overclocking the core with the Gladiac simply due to the more powerful cooling capabilities (larger fan) and since it uses a heatsink/fan combo that has a greater surface area (heatsink) than the reference board. We didn’t expect the memory to go higher than the 500Mhz mark because the yields on the 4ns rated chips aren’t high enough to go beyond 500Mhz. True enough, we hit 305MHz with the core and the memory was stuck at a maximum of 500MHz .

 

Quake III Normal	640×480	800×600	1024×768	1280×1024	1600×1200
Default (250/460)	133.8	130.8	128.9	116.1	92.1
Overclocked (305/500)	133.1	132.3	129.2	120.0	98.3

 

 

The GeForce2 Ultra is already very fast, and the fact that the board is so overclockable is very impressive. But the gains from getting the core speed up are not as beneficial as getting the memory clock higher, since speed is not something the Ultra lacks.

To the Benchmarks Now!