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Anyone
who remotely follows the PC hardware scene has no
doubt become familiar with nVidia and their very
aggressive product cycles.
Ever since the Riva 128 was released,
nVidia has consistently and quickly released a new
product every 6 - 8 months, that is faster and
more feature rich than it's predecessor.
Not all of these releases are for
completely new products though.
Some of these products are referred to as a
"refresh" release. Take the TNT2
Ultra for example.
The TNT2 Ultra did not offer any new
features over the standard TNT2. It was
simply a TNT2 with a higher clock speed.
The Elsa Gladiac Ultra that we are looking
at here today is equipped with nVidia's latest
chipset, the GeForce 2 GTS Ultra.
Like the TNT2 Ultra, the GeForce 2 Ultra
offers all of the same features as it's older
brother the standard GeForce 2 GTS. However,
thanks to a refined process at their fabrication
partner TSMC, it has a significantly higher clock
speed.
nVidia
has not had any trouble finding OEMs to produce
cards using all of these new chips.
One of their loyal supporters has always
been Elsa. Elsa
as a company is much better known throughout
Europe than they are here in the United States.
Although Elsa has not modified nVidia's
reference design with any of their products, they
have consistently produced fast, stable boards and
get them on store shelves very quickly.
This excellent execution has garnered Elsa
some praise as of late and they are gaining market
share on this side of the Atlantic.
Their execution and loyalty did not go
unnoticed to nVidia. On
July 26, 2000 it was announced that Elsa and
nVidia would also form a strategic partnership
in hopes of becoming a more dominant force in the
workstation market.
Well,
we know that nVidia is capable of making one heck
of a 3D chipset and that Elsa sure likes
implementing nVidia's parts. Let's find out
what the Elsa Gladiac Ultra is made of!
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| Specifications
Of The Elsa Gladiac Ultra |
| A
New Reference board to get used to |
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The
Board:
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NVIDIA
GeForce2 GTS Ultra GPU
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250MHz
Core Clock speed
-
High-Performance
4NS DDR memory
-
230MHz
(460MHz Effective) Memory Clock speed
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AGP
4X with Fast Writes
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32-bit
color ARGB with destination alpha
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Cube
environment mapping and Anisotropic
texture filtering
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Optimized
Direct3D and OpenGL acceleration
-
Complete
DirectX 7 support
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Advanced
support for DirectDraw
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Hardware
color space conversion (YUV 4:2:2 and
4:2:0)
-
5-tap
horizontal by 3-tap vertical filtering
-
8:1
upscaling and downscaling
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Per-pixel
color keying
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Multiple
video windows with hardware color space
conversion and filtering
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DVD
sub-picture alpha blended compositing
-
Video
acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1,
MPEG-2,and Indeo
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RAMDAC/Pixel
Cycle: 350 MHz
-
Memory:
64MB DDR RAM
-
Bus
Systems: AGP 2x/4x (including fast
writes and execute mode) or PCI
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Standards:
DPMS, DDC2B, Plug & Play
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BIOS:
VESA BIOS 3.0 supportHorizontal SYNC
Signals: 31.5Hz - 108.5Hz
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Vertical
Refresh Rate: 60Hz - 200Hz
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Plug
and Play installation
Included:
-
ELSA
GLADIAC ULTRA gaming accelerator card
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Installation
CD-ROM with on-line users manual
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Elsa
3D Revelator Glasses
-
Hard-copy
installation manual
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Software
drivers for Windows® 98, Windows® 95,
Windows® 2000, Windows® NT 4.0,
Windows® Millennium Edition, and Linux
-
Windows
utilities including ELSA WINman Suite
and ELSA 3D Settings
Optional
Items:
Warranty
and Support:
-
The
ELSA GLADIAC ULTRA is backed by a 6-year
warranty
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Online
registration at www.elsa.com/america
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Technical
support - toll free 5 days a week at
800.272.ELSA or
- Sup-us@elsa.com
| | If
you?ve been comparing the specification list of
other GeForce 2 Ultras, I?m sure you?ve
noticed that they are all very similar.
There are some rumors floating around the
net that we hardware review sites received ?juiced?
reference boards from nVidia with 4ns RAM running
at 500MHz. The
rumors also stated that many Ultras would ship
with 4.5ns RAM.
Well, let us assure you that the Elsa
Gladiac Ultra is guaranteed to ship with 4ns
RAM. It is printed prominently on their box.
It's under there
somewhere...
We?re
unsure what speed RAM will be shipping on
competing products. Perhaps Elsa and nVidia?s
special relationship made access to the premium
RAM easier for Elsa.
We?ll let you know as we find out
more.
There
are also a few ?goodies? that either ship or
are optional with the Gladiac Ultra.
The card ships standard with a decent
software bundle, a $75 US set of wireless 3D
Revelator Glasses?
?and
there is an optional video in / out module
available for $39 US.
We opted to get the whole package for
review. If you?ve got the cash for a major
purchase like the Gladiac Ultra, we assume you?d
want the works!
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