Technology behind the GeForce2 GTS Chipset | Test Results

Introduction
Elsa Gladiac GeForce2GTS Video Card

When you spend 99% of your time in a reviews lab, it is rather difficult to share the enthusiasm reflected by a Manufacturer when describing a new product just launched by them as the 'best thing since sliced bread'. I am sure if you do reviews as l do, you understand were l am coming from - was l in for a surprise or what! As a consumer your decision is made even more difficult by exaggerated claims of performance, quality and value for money. Do you really need to upgrade? or simply ignore the hype and come back another day? Well we were rather sceptical when NVIDIA announced the latest addition to their GeForce family, in the shape of the GeForce2 GTS. Will this chipset really give you the extra performance boost and enhanced quality over it's predecessor the GeForce256? More to the point could we get hold of one?. The GeForce256 came, conquered (for a short period and could not meet customer demand), and went. Even then, it still became the most popular chipset of it's time, leaving the competition for dust.

At this point it is important for us to understand as to why NVIDIA is pushing it's R&D team to edge to produce leading edge chipset's within a short period of time, to stay ahead of the competition. The last 15 months has seen a tremendous change in the graphics card sector, lead by technological changes, coupled with plummeting prices has transformed the sector allowing users to purchase leading edge products. This change has also lead to major players in the sector consolidating and building on their relative strengths to regain their competitive edge. The chipset manufacturer 3Dfx sliced into STB to gain a distribution/retail arm, S3 another chipset manufacturer successfully negotiated the takeover of Diamond Multimedia, a leading Graphics card manufacturer. These mergers and takeovers left one independent video chipset manufacturer out in the cold to compete on it's own merits - NVIDIA.

Technology behind the GeForce2 GTS Chipset
It is prudent at this stage to understand the new technology incorporated within the GeForce2 GTS, to establish whether the changes are relevant to your PC environment.

A quick synopsis of the terms will do no harm either: -

Abbreviations
GPU	=	Graphics Processing Unit
GeForce2 GTS	=	Giga Texel Shader
Texel	=	Texture + Pixel
NSR	=	NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer
T&L	=	Transform and Lighting

The .18 Micron process
GeForce2 GTS is manufactured using .18 micron technology; this is a reduction from the original .22 micron core used in the previous GeForce. A reduction in the manufacturing core leads to smaller die sizes, and thus reducing production cost, lower power consumption, which in turn reduces the heat generated by the GPU and a reduction in power consumption, although the current GeForce2 GTS does retain the same heat sink as it's predecessor. The new .18 micron die also runs at 200MHz clock, which is a significant increase over the 120MHz of the GeForce, and is a key factor for the GeForce2 Gas's superior performance. NVIDIA has also increased the number of transistors, to enable the additional features build into the GeForce2, which we will see later in our review.

Memory Bandwidth
An increase in memory bandwidth from 300MHz DDR (150MHz) to 333MHz DDR (166MHz) is not so great in comparison to the other changes, but this is mainly because there is no faster memory currently around. This problem is not exclusive to NVIDIA, other manufactures using the same technology will experience similar bottlenecks.

Mega to Giga the NVIDIA way
Explaining this technology can not only get complicated but also mind boggling, to keep your focus we shall endeavour to keep this part simple.
The term Texel is derived from texture-pixels that can be applied in the rendering process. You may recall the GeForce256 came equipped with four parallel rendering pipelines. Each one of these pipelines could handle one Texel each, and had a fill rate of 480 MTexels/s. The formula is simple, the GeForce256 with its 4 pipelines x clocked at 120MHz x and one Texel per pipeline = 480 MTexels/s.
Enter the GeForce2 GTS - 200Mhz Clock - 4 pipelines and the a new term 'Hyper Texel Pipeline' allowing TWO texels per pixel in each of its four pipelines, apply the formula and the magic figure 1600 Mtexels/s (1.6Gtexels/s) appears. One has to congratulate NVIDIA for being the first 3D Manufacturer to reach the Giga stage. Maybe Intel should take a leaf out of NIVIDIA book.

NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
NVIDIA's GeForce2 GTS - GPU is the first product of it's kind to provide hardware support for real-time per-pixel operations, and incorporates the new NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer. Additional features are Per-Pixel Bump-Mapping, Per-Pixel Diffuse Lighting and Per-Pexel Spectacular Lighting.

The Transform & Lighting Engine (T&L)
The engine in the original GeForce256 could calculate 15 Million triangles/sec compared to the GeForce2 GTS, which due to the increase in clock speed to 200Mhz can calculate 25 Million triangles/sec. Certainly seen as an improvement. NVIDIA were the first company to introduce an integrated T&L engine.

We set about to obtain a GeForce2 GTS based video card by contacting all the major NVIDIA OEM's, we had dates of end of May, beginning of June, we immediately had vision's of major shortages, late deliveries, until we contacted ELSA. Traditionally ELSA are normally late out of the blocks for launching new video cards based on latest chipsets, as they normally work on a custom design, although this often has advantages in terms of enhancements the disadvantages simply out-weigh them in terms of cost and lost sales due to delay's. ELSA strategy to become the first OEM to supply the cards in retail format is paying dividends by using a tried and trusted working reference design for the GeForce2 GTS chipset. Have ELSA compromised it self in any way? Only time will tell.

The latest and greatest hyper reality graphics card from ELSA integrated with NVIDIA's awesome GeForce2 GTS finally arrived at our labs. Put your seat belts on and let's take this baby for a ride.

How we carried out our tests

We decided to divide our review into two sections:
Test A - Utilising state of the art technology for customers that may have or are buying a new system and are contemplate using the GeForce2 GTS as their graphics solution, and provide justification for testing the GeForce2 GTS based video card.
Test B - Customers who are contemplating upgrading their video card for a current system, thus providing a real time benchmark comparable to your specification.

Test system specification
Test A
CPU:	Athlon 750Mhz CPU
Motherboard:	Abit KA7 Motherboard
Memory:	128Mb SDRAM Hyundai PC133 - 7ns
HDD:	Quantum Fireball LCT10 - 20.4GB UDMA66 5400rpm
FDD:	3.5" 1.44Mb - Panasonic
CD ROM:	48 x Creative
Video Card:	ELSA Gladiac GeForce2GTS 32Mb DDR
Driver ver:	4.12.01.0202-0040 using Direct X ver 7.0a
Test B
CPU:	Intel Pentium III - 500Mhz - 512k - 100FSB
Motherboard:	Abit BE6-II
Memory:	128Mb SDRAM Samsung PC100 - 6ns
HDD:	Quantum Fireball LCT10 - 20.4GB UDMA66 5400rpm
FDD:	3.5" 1.44Mb - Panasonic
CD ROM:	48 x Creative
Video Card:	ELSA Gladiac GeForce2GTS 32Mb DDR
Driver ver:	4.12.01.0202-0040 using Direct X ver 7.0a

The card arrived in a neat retail box, with all the necessary manuals and drivers required to get you up and running. The user guide is easy to read and follow. Installing the ELSA is a breeze, remove your system cover, simply insert into the AGP slot, and boot the system and install the drivers, and you are done.

Our first test was TEST A, using the Athlon 750 and the Abit KA7 combination. The Abit KA7 and Athlon 750Mhz CPU is an awesome combination that has resulted in decent test results, and as such we have now made it a de-facto standard in our labs.

Once the drivers were installed we were ready to begin testing, (no tweaks were applied at this stage) having set the resolution at 800 x 600 - 16 bit, we ran 3DMark 2000, the test begin with no problems, but as soon as the High Detail section kicked in, the problems begin - the helicopter was choppy and the frame rates dropped to 7 frames per sec, we had a problem! Upon further investigation with the help of ELSA we discovered the problem was related to the VIA VT837 (KX133) chipset. A patch was despatched to us by ELSA without haste and this resolved the problem instantaneously. ELSA maybe the first Company with the GeForce2 GTS chipset, but their technical support team is also well prepared with any problems that may occur. The complete issue took 48 hrs to resolve, from a "no reports on this problem" condition. Under the same conditions we changed the resolution to 1024 x 768 - 16bit, and ran the test, completed with no problems at all.

Our second test was TEST B, using the same scenario as TEST A with the components listed previously, but without the VIA patch, and using the Abit BE6-II motherboard with the Intel BX chipset. We had no problems and the tests completed successfully.

Figure 1 provides the 3DMark2000 graphs for TEST A
Figure 2&3 provides the 3DMark2000 Results screen shot for TEST A
Figure 4 provides the 3DMark2000 graphs for TEST B

The results of both TEST A and TEST B were breathtaking, we ran the benchmarks no less than 12 times just to ensure accuracy, and we selected the average result of all tests. The results we have provided for you in graphic format on the basis that somebody out there may scream 'foul play' and we wanted to share with you the fastest video card we have tested in our labs to date.

TEST A 800 x 600 - 16bit:	6218 marks under 3MARK2000
TEST A 1024 x 768 - 16bit:	5704 marks under 3MARK2000
TEST B 800 x 600 - 16bit:	4473 marks under 3MARK2000
TEST B 1024 x 768 - 16bit:	4400 marks under 3MARK2000

We were and are still left speechless with the results of TEST A, suffice to say, if your are planning to purchase a system in the near future ensure you specify the ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS card to be included as part of your graphic solution. Should your selected supplier not carry the required card, then go elsewhere, but insist on the ELSA card. NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce2 GTS chipset combined with ELSA's product strategy created a lead for others to follow. The ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS is a worthy winner of our prestigious Excellence award and as the card was the fastest we have seen to date, it also collects our Performance award. Well Done ELSA.

Note: We have not investigated the tweaking potential of the chipset, but we are under no illusion the chipset has the potential of tweaking, we have however decided to re-visit the card to exploit its full potential and provide a detailed report in the coming weeks.