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The
Elsa Erazor X2 GeForce DDR
Double Data
Rate Fun
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| 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...
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| Specifications
/ Features Of The Elsa Erazor X2 |
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clean reference design... |
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(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
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3D
Game Sampler Including: Decent?
3,
MotoRacer? 2, Drakan? , Prince of Persia?
3, Re-Volt?, Turoc?2, and more...
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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 X2
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.
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| Let's
plug this GeForce in and see what she can do.
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Set
Up, Installation and Overclocking
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