Elsa Gladiac Ultra: A Perfect Graphics Card? – THG.RU

A Barely Affordable Gamer’s Dream Solution

How many users would spend more than $500 on a graphics card? I can only guess, but this market seems to be definitely profitable, as several companies are offering graphics solutions at this price range and beyond. The situation surprises you even more once you consider that even AMD’s fastest Athlon processor can already be obtained for less. It seems quite obvious that the component with the biggest impact on game performance is no longer the CPU.

However, everybody should check his real requirements before making the decision to buy a frame rate monster. A reasonably equipped PC consists of a decent CPU (600+ MHz), 128 MB main memory, a fast hard drive and usually a 32 MB graphics card. That’s basically enough to handle the majority of common applications and games. ‘Serious’ gamers are not interested in such ordinary systems though. Latest action games and 3D shooters need pure power – the more, the better. Particularly high screen resolutions and highly detailed scenes will make the standard system look like an old and ugly bird. Elsa’s Gladiac Ultra is confidently titled as “World’s Fastest Gamer’s Board”. Of course we wanted to know what’s behind this claim; so we checked if this product is actually worth its money.

Features of nVIDIA’s GeForce 2 Ultra

The only difference between the 3D-chips of the GeForce 2 GTS and the GeForce 2 Ultra is the fact that the latter runs at a faster clock speed. While the GTS chip is clocked at 200 MHz, its brother runs 50 MHz faster. Both have identical 3D feature support, including T&L and are manufactured in 0.18 µm process.

Thanks to faster memory chips, the second and most important difference between GTS and Ultra, the DDR memory, is clocked at 460 MHz (230 MHz DDR) in case of the GF2 Ultra boards. GTS boards usually come with 333 MHz DDR-SDRAM (166 MHz actual clock rate), while the later GeForce 2 Pro cards are running the memory at 400 MHz (200 MHz actual clock).

4 ns DDR Memory – Expensive, But Powerful

Due to DDR SDRAM chips with a cycle time of only 4 ns, boards with the GeForce 2 Ultra are not only the fastest (1 Gpixel/s and 2 MTexel/s), but also the most expensive graphics solution for comsumers.

At 230 MHz memory clock (460 MHZ DDR) it’s now time for some memory coolers.

In the past, a large amount of graphics memory used to be required to enable high resolutions and high color depths for 2D only. Since 3D-capabilities were added to the graphic chips, it turned out that size is not the only thing that matters, adequate bus and memory bandwidth are just as important for 3D performance. Former 3D chip generations weren’t able to provide fast frame rates at high resolutions, because not only the fill rate, but also the high memory bandwidth requirements weren’t met.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 2 was the first available graphics chip architecture which is actually able to run most 3D applications at beyond 1024×768 at satisfactory frame rates. Both high fill rate and memory bandwidth allowed pushing the 3D screen resolution to new heights.

The GeForce 2 Ultra is no miracle, but simply the next step beyond GeForce 2 GTS. Ultra cards are already considerably faster than standard GeForce 2 GTS models because of the increased memory clock. The higher GPU-clock however ensures a further performance boost of those cards.

One more reason for a 64 MB board is Full Screen Anti Aliasing (FSAA). Back in April, Tom already explained FSAA in detail. Even though you only run the lower resolutions (usually 1024×768 max), the scene is internally rendered at much higher resolutions and then super-sampled down, to reduce the stair step appearance (‘jaggies’) of objects. With FSAA, the 3D chip calculates values to slightly blur such lines and edges. To do this, the chip needs high fill rates and the memory has to be fast enough to handle high data load. The size of the initially rendered scene plus the final super-sampled frame need to fit into the local graphics memory, which is why the requirements for the amount of graphics memory are much higher in FSAA than for normally rendered scenes.

Other Boards Using The GeForce 2 Ultra

Graphics boards like Elsa’s Gladiac Ultra are still available in limited quantities only. That’s mainly due to the imminent shortage of 4 ns memory chips, which also results in high prices for the card makers. In the end, the customer has to pay these premium prices. Besides the Gladiac Ultra, there are several other cards with the Ultra-chip available:

• Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 2 Ultra
• Gainward Cardexpert GeForce 2 Ultra
• Guillemot 3D Prophet II GTS Ultra

Is The ATI Radeon an Alternative?

Even though I personally like this chip, the answer has to be no. The 64 MB version of Radeon is basically able to keep up with the GeForce 2 GTS, but it cannot compete with the performance of the GeForce 2 Ultra.

However, please do not forget that Radeon cards belong into the top graphics league as well. A Radeon 64 MB can be obtained for less than $400, which is making them an interesting alternative for cards with the GeForce 2 Pro or GTS.

Revelator 3D Glasses

Most people interested in a graphics card with GeForce 2 Ultra might not care about additional gimmicks. Some might however like the fact that Elsa is shipping the Gladiac Ultra with their Revelator stereo-glasses, which enable the sensation of real 3D. So far, those glasses had to be bought separately.

You have to get used to the weight of the glasses, which are much heavier than regular sunglasses. There is a cable and an IR version available and Elsa bundled the IR version, which is actually the smarter choice. You use the included splitter cable in order to attach the IR module (the IR-port of your motherboard cannot be used). Up to 1280×1024 we could not see any negative impact on picture quality in Windows. At 1600×1200 luminance and sharpness get lost a little bit.

Test Setup

We have been using this setup for quite some time now. The tests with the GeForce 2 MX and ATI Radeon reference boards have been done at this setup as well, giving us the option to make direct comparisons.

Benchmarks: Quake III Arena

The Radeon’s frame rates are high enough to provide smooth game play at all resolutions. As you can see, the Gladiac Ultra scores exactly the same results as the GeForce 2 Ultra reference board from nVIDIA.

At highest quality the frame rates are clearly dropping. The Ultra cards are still able to provide 50+ frames per second at 1600x1200x32. Cards with ATI’s Radeon or the GeForce 2 GTS are way behind those excellent results.

Benchmarks: MDK2

All cards are very fast. Again, the Gladiac Ultra and our GeForce 2 Ultra reference board provide higher frame rates than you will ever need at 16 Bits in MDK2.

The result is pretty much the same at 32 Bit colour deth. Elsa’s Gladiac Ultra and the nVIDIA reference board are absolutely even.

Benchmarks: Evolva Rolling Demo

The action game Evolva is one of the most demanding 3D applications. Unfortunately, ATI’s Radeon card fails to provide a minimum of 30 frames per second at 1600×1200. This frame rate is required however, to keep games at a playable level.

Ultra-boards are even able to supply playable frame rates at 1600×1200 and true color.

Summary

$450+ is a huge amount of money, even for an excellent graphics board like the Gladiac Ultra. One advantage this card has over its competitors are the included 3D Revelator Stereo-glasses, which make the Gladiac Ultra a rather exclusive choice.

We could not spot any performance difference between NVIDIA’s reference board and the Gladiac Ultra. So far, all released graphics boards with the GeForce 2 Ultra are based on this reference design. Hence it doesn’t make sense to pick a certain model because of its performance.

The only hardware difference between the different GF2 Ultra cards will be the memory speed and of course the presence or absence of a video-out port. According to NVIDIA’s specs, the memory is clocked at 460 MHz (230 MHz DDR), which can be realized with 4.4 ns memory chips. Elsa uses even faster 4 ns chips, which goes up to 500 MHz (250 MHz DDR). I doubt that many companies will utilize those fast chips, as they are still very expensive. If you get your hands on such a board, you can be sure to have some margin left for overclocking.

Due to NVIDIA’s elite chip, the Elsa Gladiac Ultra belongs to the upper class in any event. The long warranty time of 6 years and the 3D glasses are a basis to differentiate between the competition. It’s hard to say how many potential buyers will truly be interested in the 3D glasses however. I tend to call the Gladiac Ultra one of the most impressive status symbols in terms of 3D graphics.