NVIDIA Launches Titanium Series – THG.RU

NVIDIA’s Product Cycle

Since fall 1997 NVIDIA is following a product release schedule that presents a new 3D-card every six months. In spring 1998 it was only the rather uninspiring RIVA128ZX, followed by the delayed RIVA TNT in November of that year. 1999 saw NVIDIA’s rise to the top 3D-chip maker, in spring with RIVA TNT2 / TNT2 Ultra and finally with the first ‘GPU’ by the name ‘GeForce256’. The first GeForce release was also the last time that NVIDIA released a new technology in the second half of the calendar year. 2000 saw first GeForce2 and then the beefed up GeForce2 Ultra. This year it will be just the same. In spring NVIDIA presented the first programmable ‘GPU’, simply named ‘GeForce3’, and now its time for a faster GeForce3, which won’t be called ‘ultra’, but ‘titanium’.

Three Times Titanium – Confusion Or Good Marketing?

I assume that it was intentional to make the ‘Titanium’-story a lot more complex than the simple and easily understandable ‘Ultra’-idea of previous releases. While an NVIDIA product with the ‘ultra’-tag used to be faster than the same product without the ‘ultra’, the ‘Titanium’-tag is NOT a warrant for higher performance. To make that understandable I will make a short list of the three new ‘titanium’ products.

Three Times Titanium – Confusion Or Good Marketing? Continued

GeForce3 Titanium 500

This is the ‘real’ new performance king of NVIDIA’s GeForce3-series. The ‘Titanium 500’-package combines a GeForce3 chip clocked at 240 MHz with 64 MB of DDR-memory running at 500 MHz. The 20% core clock and particularly the 9% memory clock increase over the normal GeForce3 cards ensure a new level of top 3D performance. GeForce3 Ti500 is also meant to keep ATi’s upcoming Radeon8500 at arms length.

GeForce3 Titanium 200

The new ‘Ti200’ package is supposed to offer GeForce3-performance at a lower price point than current GeForce3 cards. The GeForce3 cards we knew so far will disappear, replaced by GeForce3 Ti200 cards. With a core clock of only 175 MHz and a DDR-memory clock of just 400 MHz, the specs of GeForce3 Ti200 are somewhat lower than those of previous GeForce3 cards (200/460 MHz), so that we might see somewhat less 3D-performance as well.

Three Times Titanium – Confusion Or Good Marketing?, Continued

GeForce2 Titanium

This one is the most confusing of the three. It has not got a number after the ‘Titanium’, because it is a Geforce TWO chip. NVIDIA will replace GeForce2 Ultra with GeForce2 Titanium. However, even though ‘Titanium’ might sound better than ‘Ultra’, the latter has clearly got the better numbers going for it. GeForce2 Titanium comes with 250/400 MHz (core/memory), while GeForce2 Ultra had a clear advantage in terms of memory performance, with 250/460 MHz (core/memory). Memory bandwidth is the bottleneck for 3D gaming performance, so GeForce2 ‘Titanium’ will hardly be able to reach the scores of GeForce2 Ultra. It might be just a bit better than GeForce2 Pro, which has a lower core clock (200 MHz), but the same memory bandwidth as the ‘Titanium’.

Here’s a little table that shows the most important features of the new and the old cards with NVIDIA chips:

In terms of raw numbers GeForce3 Titanium 500 is the strongest GeForce3-solution, while GeForce2 Ultra still remains the fastest GeForce2-version. ‘Titanium’ is clearly NOT signalizing ‘better performance’. What it is supposed to realize though is ‘better bang for the buck’.

If you should not be too familiar with all the bells and whistles of NVIDIA’s GeForce3 and GeForce2 cards, but want to learn about their 3D-features and effects, I suggest you read the following articles:

• High-Tech And Vertex Juggling -NVIDIA’s New GeForce3 GPU
• GeForce3 Performance
• The Magnificent Seven: GeForce3 Board Round-up
• GeForce3 Under Attack: ATi’s Radeon 8500 Previewed
• NVIDIA Strikes Back – The GeForce2 Ultra 3D Monster
• NVIDIA’s Detonator 3 Drivers
• ATi’s New Radeon – Smart Technology Meets Brute Force
• The Fastest GeForce2 GTS Card – Gainward’s CARDEXpert GeForce2 GTS/400
• 3D Benchmarking – Understanding Frame Rate Scores
• Tom’s Take On NVIDIA’s New GeForce2 GTS

The Secret Behind ‘Titanium’

The little metallurgy that I know comes from my mountain bike, which I tuned with a whole lot of carbon as well as titanium parts to save weight. The metal ‘titanium’ is known to be lighter than iron or steel while under many conditions at least as strong or durable. It is also more elastic than steel. I suppose that NVIDIA is trying to get at the ‘titanium is lighter, but just as strong‘ issue. The new chips that carry the ‘titanium’ nametag are produced (by TSMC in Taiwan, as you certainly know) using an enhanced process technology, which is allowing higher core clock frequencies, while offering better yields. Let me use my favorite phrase these days: Make no mistake, this new process technology makes those chips neither faster, nor does it add any new features to the new GeForce2 and GeForce3 chips. The real catch of the enhanced 0.15-micron process technology used for the ‘titanium’ chips is simply the fact that the chips are cheaper to produce, which in turn makes the cards less expensive as well. Besides that, the chips are just the same as before. Geforce3 is still GeForce3 and GeForce2 remains GeForce2. Only the chip of GeForce3 Titanium500 gained a bit of clock speed. While usual GeForce3 cards came with a core clock of 200 MHz, the ‘Ti500’ runs at 240 MHz and thus 20% faster. Too bad that the memory bandwidth of ‘Ti500’ hasn’t been improved just as much, because THAT could really have boosted performance.

The new ‘Ti’-cards are also based on a new printed circuit board (PCB) with 8 layers and an improved power supply circuitry.

A Practical Coincidence -DetonatorXP

A couple of months ago, when I heard about NVIDIA’s ‘Titanium’-plans for the first time, I was told that GeForce3 Ti200 will be equivalent to previous GeForce3 and GeForce2 Ti will perform just a well as previous GeForce2 Ultra cards, while both ‘Ti’-cards would be much less expensive. When you now look at the above table and compare the performance numbers (memory bandwidth, fill rate), you will have problems to accept that. The reason why NVIDIA is actually able to get away with this claim, comes from the recent introduction of the ‘DetonatorXP’-set of drivers. Those drivers have shown to improve performance, so that even a card with less fill rate and less memory bandwidth can beat a previous product, as long as the performance of this product is measured with the OLD drivers.

This is not completely fair of course, since the ‘old’ products are running just fine and also faster with the new driver set. Therefore an ‘old’ GeForce3 card will beat GeForce3 Ti200 and an ‘old’ GeForce2 Ultra card will beat Geforce2 Ti as long as all run with the same drivers.

DetonatorXP was also able to finally take care of some rather old bugs of GeForce3. When NVIDIA’s new 3D chip was ready for its introduction in March 2001, some white papers contained feature lists that included ‘volumetric’ or ‘3D’ textures as well as ‘shadow buffers’, while some other white papers didn’t. After researching this confusing situation I was told that GeForce3 does NOT support those features. In reality, the feature support had been there, but the driver support didn’t quite work. This has changed since ‘DetonatorXP’ was released. Now all GeForce3 cards are able to use 3D textures and shadow buffers. NVIDIA hadn’t been able to market those features so far, so it seemed practical to make it look as if the new GeForce3 Titanium500/200 cards are the first to offer those features. This is not correct. Here’s the original comment of an NVIDIA spokesperson about this issue: “We are marketing Shadow Buffers and 3D Textures as new features because they are newly enabled in the software drivers. Honestly, these features are available on the original GeForce3 as long as one uses the Detonator XP driver, but we don’t spend time marketing last seasons products…..we market products that we are selling now.” I’d say that this comment speaks for itself.

Test Setup

NVIDIA supplied us with the brand new DetonatorXP driver rev. 21.85, which we used for all cards in this test. NVIDIA’s reviewer’s guide tried to convince us that WindowsXP would be most excellent for testing, but we don’t see why we should fall for the XP-hype just yet. NVIDIA suggested using only high resolutions, true color and a lot of anti-aliasing, which we agreed to. To ensure optimal conditions for each card, we chose a Pentium 4 2 GHz in an i850 board as our test platform. We would like to remind you though, that processor and platform performance has very little impact on the 3D-scores at the high resolutions that we tested, because the graphics card, and in particular the graphics memory, is the actual bottleneck.

Make no mistake, we are testing the fastest 3D cards out there right now. GeForce3 Ti500 should reach new 3D performance heights, while GeForce3 Ti200 might be somewhat slower than the ‘old’ GeForce3′, and GeForce2 Ti should also be beaten by the previous GeForce2 Ultra. We refrained from testing NVIDIA’s new cards against the upcoming ATi Radeon 7500 or 8500 just yet, since both cards are not yet available and haven’t quite reached their final status.

Test Results [Updated]

3D Mark 2001 – Theoretical Scores

3DMark2001 is an excellent tool for comparing cards from the same manufacturer with the same driver.

GeForce3 Ti500 is clearly the fastest, while ‘old’ GeForce3 and ‘old’ GeForce2 Ultra are clearly ahead of their new ‘Titanium’-replacements.

The picture is similar with FSAA enabled (GF3 – quincunx / GF2 – 2x). Especially GeForce2 Ti is hardly scoring better than good old GeForce2 Pro.

In terms of real fill rate, GeForce3 Ti500 beats the rest, but ‘old’ GeForce3 has also got quite a lead over GeForce3 Ti200. GeForce2 Ti is hardly any better than ‘old’ GeForce2 Pro, while ‘old’ GeForce2 Ultra is clearly ahead.

This theoretical number shows that a high core clock without a high memory clock is at least good for high polygon scores. What surprises is that GeForce2 is clearly beating GeForce3.

3D Gaming Scores

The following charts are all showing the same thing. Geforce3 Ti500 is the clear performance leader, while ‘old’ GeForce3 is well ahead of GeForce3 Ti200. Geforce2 Ultra is easily beating new GeForce2 Ti, while GeForce2 Pro is not far behind the new ‘Titanium’-GeForce2.

3D Mark 2001 – Car Chase

3D Mark 2001 – Dragothic

3D Mark 2001 – Lobby

3D Mark 2001 – Nature

Quake 3 Arena, Demo001

Vulpine GLMark

Giants

Price Expectations

These are the numbers NVIDIA supplied me with. Please keep in mind that the final pricing is up to the card maker.

150 bucks for a 3D card that performs somewhere between a GeForce2 Pro and GeForce2 Ultra sounds very attractive. The 200 dollars for a GeForce3 Ti200 will ensure that Geforce3 and thus DX8-compatibility with its vertex and pixel shaders will become mainstream. NVIDIA’s new top performer has not only become faster, it is also less expensive now. NVIDIA’s pricing policy has clearly become very aggressive – something that we aren’t used to. The market has become very tough these days and even NVIDIA has to react to it.

Conclusion

NVIDIA’s “Titanium Launch” seems as if it was motivated by strategic considerations rather than real technical achievements. Especially compared to last year’s impressive launch of a very high performing GeForce2 Ultra, the performance leap seen with the new GeForce3 Ti500 doesn’t come across by far as remarkable. NVIDIA is ‘repainting’ its proven GeForce2 and Geforce3 design in ‘titanium colors’, trying to reduce costs as well as price, while not really offering anything new.

What exactly have we got now with the new ‘Titanium’ cards?

Well, we certainly have one card that is faster than anything else before, the GeForce3 Ti500. However, the performance advance over previous GeForce3 cards is not that substantial, mainly because the memory bandwidth was only increased by some meager 8.7 %. The core clock increase of 20% may look good, but it doesn’t really result in any major performance boost. If we look back at the GeForce2 Ultra launch from last year, we remember a memory bandwidth increase of 38% and a core clock increase of 25% over GeForce2 GTS. Obviously GeForce2 Ultra marked much more of a quantum leap in terms of performance than GeForce3 Ti500 is doing today. However, GeForce3 Ti500 is still offering more performance than anybody needs right now. If you consider that and then remember the reduced price of GeForce3 Ti500, you might see it as an attractive product. Whatever the success of GeForce3 Ti500 may be, NVIDIA had to release it to make sure it will remain the 3D-performance leader by the time when ATi finally releases Radeon8500.

GeForce3 Ti200 will sell at a really attractive price point, offering the wealth of GeForce3’s new DX8 features to a large audience. The performance of Ti200 may be some 5-15% lower than the ‘old’ GeForce3, but for the price Ti200 offers outstanding speed as well as features. It is obvious that NVIDIA is willing to push its vertex and pixel shader technology into the mass market to make sure that game developers will make more use of this technology. Once this is achieved, products without programmable T&L will look stone old. I consider Ti200 as the by far most attractive ‘Titanium’-package. It’s offering the best bang for the buck and it will make ATi’s life a lot harder.

GeForce2 Ti is the one of the three ‘Titans’ that I don’t really like much. Due to a low memory clock its performance is extremely close to the cheaper GeForce2 Pro cards, while it is clearly beaten by the ‘old’ GeForce2 Ultra, the card it is meant to replace. On the first look the $149 for GeForce2 Ti may seem attractive, but as long as you can buy GeForce2 Ultra for less than 180 bucks, you might want to consider spending the extra money for some extra 5-12 % of performance. Alternatively, you could choose a GeForce2 Pro card with 64 MB graphics memory, which will most likely sell for significantly less than GeForce2 Ti, but offer you 92-98% of its performance.

NVIDIA didn’t really position GeForce2 Ti in relation to its own products, because then it would have noticed that GeForce2 Pro is dangerously close to as well as cheaper than GF2 Ti. This product is a mere answer to ATi’s Radeon 7500.

Last but not least, I’d like to mention NVIDIA’s freshly released DetonatorXP driver. We already had one controversy with this driver set, when an early version of it was given to the press right before ATi’s pre-release of Radeon 8500. Finally the new driver is official now and its improved performance speaks for itself. Similar to the Detonator 3 release last year, NVIDIA was able to get a lot more performance out of all of its chips.

Exactly this is the catch however. Every graphics card with an NVIDIA chip that is at least less than 2 years old is able to benefit from this ‘free’ driver upgrade. It is not a new feature and it should not be mumbled up with new product releases. Right now NVIDIA is trying to say that the GeForce3 Ti200 would offer the same performance as ‘old’ GeForce3 plus new features. This is not exactly true. Only if you would run the ‘old’ GeForce3 with ‘old’ drivers, GeForce3 Ti200 would be able to reach similar scores and boast ‘new’ features like 3D-textures and shadow maps. As soon as you run ‘old’ Geforce3 with DetonatorXP drivers (which is not more than sensible), you get those ‘new features’ as well and the scores are clearly beating ‘Ti200’. The same is valid for GeForce2 Ti and GeForce2 Ultra.

I can understand that NVIDIA wants to market at least something else besides the new pricing out of the ‘Titanium’ release. However, it is not quite correct to claim that the GeForce3 Titanium cards are offering any more features than ‘old’ GeForce3. It is also not ok to compare the performance of new and old cards by using different sets of drivers.