Elsa Erazor X2 GeForce DDR


Elsa Erazor X2 GeForce DDR - Page 1

The Elsa Erazor X2 GeForce DDR
Double Data Rate Fun

Over the past few months NVidia clearly has taken the lead in the 3D graphics race.  First we saw the release of GeForce based card from various vendors like Creative, Asus, Guillemot, Leadtek and of course Elsa.  The second round of GeForce based cards were designed the way the GeForce was truly intended to shine, with DDR SDRAM memory. 

This type of memory allows for reads and writes to it on the rising and falling edge of the clock cycle, effectively doubling the available memory bandwidth to the GeForce.  This type of memory is more costly than Single Data SDRAM but it really allows the GeForce to perform to its full potential.  We here at HotHardware think of a GeForce SDR card as fighting with one hand tied behind its back.  It still packs the hardest punch in the 3D market right now but nothing compares to the full force body blows a DDR based GeForce card can deal. 

This is a Hot Hardware look at the Elsa Erazor X2 GeForce DDR with 32MB of Synchronous Double Rate SDRAM Memory on board.  Here is what she is made of...

 

Specifications / Features Of The Elsa Erazor X2
Another clean reference design...

 

(Click for 800X600 view)

 

  • NVidia? GeForce 256? GPU
  • 32MB DDR Memory - Clock Speed 300MHz 
  • 256 - Bit QuadPipe? Rendering engine
  • Transform & Lighting Geometry Engines
  • 350 MHz RAMDAC support display resolution up to 2048x1536
  • 32-bit Z-buffer/stencil
  • Optimized for Direct3D acceleration with complete hardware support for DirectX 7
  • Cube Environment Mapping
  • Full OpenGL 1.2 ICD driver support.
  • 32 bits true color texture mapping support.
  • Hardware Transform and Lighting
  • TV-out support up to 800x600 resolution
  • Full PC99 and PC99a compliant
  • 3D REVELATOR Ready
  • 3D Game Sampler Including: Decent? 3, MotoRacer? 2, Drakan? , Prince of Persia? 3, Re-Volt?, Turoc?2, and more...

Pretty standard stuff for a GeForce DDR card.  The heat sink/fan combo on this card is not as nice as the one on the Erazor X SDR card.  It is a standard unit much like the ones we have seen on Leadtek card.  It does the job OK but nothing stellar.  As you can see in the picture, this is a basic reference design with one small exception that you probably wouldn't notice unless we told you.  Take a close look at the picture above, in the top left corner.  See the missing connector and land pads where chips should go?  

The Erazor X doesn't have the pin header "Video Feature Connector" on it.  There are also about 4 missing 16 bit muxes (sold by IDT of course :-) ) that would support this interface to the card.  What does this mean?  Well not much really, except that this card does not support the standard "feature connector" that some cards do.  It is no big deal really and is hardly ever used today for much.  Historically, this would have been used for a daughter board add on card for hardware MPEG decode or video capture.  These technologies are either supported by the GeForce's more than adequate MPEG/DVD support or a discrete adapter card in the case of a TV Tuner for instance.  There are also several components missing that would support Digital Flat Panel Output.  Typically unnecessary components in the signal path only add noise and reduce image quality anyway.  If you don't need this support, you won't miss this extra circuitry.

Let's plug this GeForce in and see what she can do.

 

Set  Up, Installation and Overclocking

 

 

Tags:  GeForce, DDR, X2, force, Elsa

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