NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Battle Royal — THG.RU

Introduction

Two weeks have passed since NVIDIA dropped the bomb by launching yet another first-class chipset, the GeForce2 GTS, and we’re starting to see cards appear on local store shelves across the country. The first company to release product based on this chipset, ELSA, surprised not only consumers but also competition as well being available as of last week beating Leadtek and AOpen to the punch. Leadtek and AOpen will be releasing within the next couple of weeks and have graciously supplied me with final product. All of our contestants are in review form and are not previews of what is to come. Our goal in this comparison is to compare the competing products with each other and help you decide which product is best suited for you if any.

The Chipset

The AOpen PA256 Pro, ELSA Gladiac, and Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS (WFGF2) are all based on the GeForce2 chipset by NVIDIA. Let’s have a quick recap of what this new chipset offers over the original GeForce.

• .18 micron core resulting in greater clock speed, less heat and cheaper production costs
• Higher performance T&L engine (faster core and slightly optimized T&L engine over GeForce)
• Higher Fill-Rate of 800Mpixels/s and 1.6 Gtexels/s
• Slight increase in Memory Bandwidth at 333MHz DDR vs. its predecessor’s 300MHz DDR memory
• Full Scene Anti Aliasing (FSAA) (available in the GeForce driver but performance not reasonable to use)

It also includes all of the features offered in the original GeForce chipset. For more detailed information about the GeForce2 GTS chipset or how it compares to competing chipsets, please read the extensive report, Tom’s Take on NVIDIA’s New GeForce2 GTS.

Contestants: AOpen PA256 Pro

The AOpen PA256 Pro in this review is the OEM package that will be available in the next couple of weeks for $349 followed by a retail package (that differs by offering two games over the OEM package) that will cost $400. The OEM board is shipping with your bare essentials: graphics card and drivers. However there are two hardware features that might tickle your fancy. The first is an upcoming BIOS patch that will offer a very unique feature to any other GeForce2 based card out there. This special feature is called OpenBIOS and allows users to configure the following:

• Core voltage and speed
• Memory voltage and speed
• AGP settings (1/2/4X, AGP Sideband)
• Misc. Graphics delays

This feature is probably going to be a huge deal with tweaker/overclocking fans but you’ll probably need to upgrade the stock cooling solution as it is supplied with the mediocre reference cooling. This is a big deal as increasing the core speed and/or voltage will dramatically increase the thermal cooling requirements. You can have all these fancy adjustments but without proper cooling you won’t get very far.

The second is the video-out feature that isn’t necessarily available on all GeForce2 solutions. Although the board doesn’t come with a soft-DVD player, I did test the video-out with a quick game of Quake 3. Entering the Video Output Menu demanded a mandatory 30-second lag time but also allowed me to enter my TV mode without changing my desktop resolution. The board also offered settings pre configured for various international formats. Pick a country and you’re ready to rock n’ roll. Text normally isn’t very clear on television sets and this of course was the case during my testing, but once I entered Quake 3, things were just fine and the picture quality was excellent. I wouldn’t say this feature is useful for typing up a word document but perfectly fine to play games with.

AOpen PA256 Software Driver

Here we have the general information panel for the PA256 Pro. You can check on various driver versions and hardware settings.

This is your basic color adjustment property window with the ability to set color schemes.

Here we have the first of three different D3D property windows. This is all based on the NVIDIA reference driver.

Here are some additional D3D adjustments that include the ability to disable vsync.

AOpen PA256 Software Driver

The driver offers you the option to toggle FSAA in D3D but as far as I know this option is non-functional at the moment.

We have all the typical OpenGL settings that also include the feature to toggle FSAA on.

Is the screen too dark? No problem, just adjust your settings right here.

Here you have your typical overclock settings but upon testing them, I found out they didn’t work! I’m sure AOpen will fix this issue, but I sure wish the AOpen quality team had caught this rather simple problem before releasing a driver.

AOpen PA256 Software Driver

This window has a few general settings as well as the ability to toggle a taskbar option.

Entering this window on accident can be a real pain as I mentioned before with about a 30-second pause once you enter it. Changing the format will allow international users to adjust the output to their specific needs.

As mentioned above, you have the ability to change the output format.

Overall the AOpen driver does its job just fine although the overclocking needs to be fixed and the video output option can be rather annoying. A majority of the driver is based on the NVIDIA reference so there shouldn’t be too many problems.

Contestants: ELSA Gladiac

The ELSA Gladiac is the first official GeForce2 board available here in the US at the price of $349 and includes board, driver, optional game software (see below) and video software. The one odd thing was that a software DVD player didn’t come included in the package. After contacting ELSA about this, I was told that the software DVD player could be obtained through technical support, free of charge. Pushing the product out caused the DVD player to slip the cracks so you’ll have to contact ELSA if you’d like it.

The game software option named ELSA best select gives you the option to purchase to be announced game titles at a very low cost. The first two titles you can obtain for a $7 shipping cost and an option to pick three more full titles for $69. This is somewhat cool as if you like the games you’ll get them at a great price or you can avoid it all together if you don’t care for any of the software.

Video-in and out are an option but are not available with the retail board. An optional daughter card will be available in a few weeks that should cost about $30 and be the only GeForce2 I know of to have video-in. On a smaller note, although I had no video input, I was able to check out the video editing software that came on the CD and it looked rather impressive for beginner video editing software.

Lastly, the 3D Revelator (3D glasses) option will be available soon and ELSA mentioned that it was already working in their internal testing. Pricing and availability wasn’t available but I assume it will be about the same as the currently available option.

ELSA Gladiac Software Driver

The general information panel for driver and hardware information is pretty straightforward.

The D3D property settings window that lets you also setup D3D profile settings. The vsync option is available.

Here we have the D3D control window for FSAA.

All the necessary OpenGL options are here including FSAA.

ELSA Gladiac Software Driver

I had no issues using ELSA’s overclocking utility during the testing.

ELSA is offering another display settings window that overrides the windows setting.

The ELSA driver allows you to tweak detailed settings of your monitor.

Adjusting the monitor and video color levels can all be done in this window.

Overall the ELSA display driver gave me no problems at all and was fully functional. I didn’t experience any odd glitches or annoyances. About the only thing someone might want over what it offers is the ability to toggle things like the fast-writes option or set the AGP mode but most people won’t really care too much about those things.

Contestants: Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS

I already know what you’re thinking, «Look at the size of that heat sink!» All of the Leadtek WFGF2 boards will come with this cooling solution as a basic feature; this is not a special version. This heat sink is 220% larger than your typical GeForce2 setup. Initially this board with video out, software DVD player and miscellaneous color adjustment software will be selling for $349. A video-less board will sell for $10 less and a DVI version, at an undisclosed price, in the coming weeks. This package is pretty basic but overall it offers more than the rest of its competition for the same price.

The TV output tested just fine (although you do have to adjust the desktop resolution to 800×600 or less first unlike the AOpen PA256) as I used it to play Quake 3 and watch a few minutes of a DVD movie. The picture quality was just as good as the AOpen board during my quick death match session and the DVD movie played without any obvious visual defects. The only concern I have is that the board didn’t offer quite as many video output modes as the AOpen offering had. The NTSC modes available (J and M) might not be enough for anyone out of the US. Unfortunately I don’t have the ability to test this but be warned if you need any other modes.

Leadtek WFGF2 Software Driver

All the commonly needed software/hardware information is available here. Yes, I did take this screenshot after playing with a few overclocked settings.

Here we have the video device control window. Please note that to enable video-out, you must switch the desktop resolution to 800×600 or 640×480. Although there is no lag entering this window like the PA256 Pro.

Available to you is the basic gamma correction window.

Here you can override the windows settings and get to other options like the overclock and taskbar utils.

Leadtek WFGF2 Software Driver

This is the first of three D3D option windows available.

This is where the D3D vsync option is tucked away.

The last D3D window holds the FSAA option settings.

All of your basic OpenGL settings from the NVIDIA reference driver are present.

Leadtek WFGF2 Software Driver

This option window isn’t used very often but does lead to the monitor adjustment section.

This window can be useful especially if you don’t have adjustments on your monitor.

If you’re faced with any gamma issues, you’ll be using this window to adjust things.

Leadtek WFGF2 Software Driver

Speed Runner is the Leadtek overclocking util.

This option lets you enable a taskbar shortcut to all the available Leadtek property windows.

Although the software DVD has an odd coloring scheme, it has all the options you need to comfortably watch a DVD movie on your machine.

The Leadtek software driver package covered all the bases and aside from being real picky about not having a fast writes or other specific AGP options, it does just fine.

Contestants Overview

Here is a table to compare some of the major features.

* Not in retail box but can be requested through technical support.

Performance — Test Setup

Test Expectations

Seeing as most of the boards are based on the NVIDIA 5.16 driver, I don’t expect to see much of a performance difference. Aside from vsync I’ve left all the default settings alone to represent what most people will see. This means fast writes are on and no other changes were made to tweak the visuals. I did also compare default settings of each manufacturer and found no major differences. Layout differences typically give more stability benefit than raw performance unless there is a major change to the design. I expect our scores to be very close among the competing boards.

Test Results — Shogo

At this low resolution the benchmark is much more CPU dependant although we do see the GeForce2 based cards pull slightly ahead of the older GeForce reference card.

Lifting the resolution upwards begins to show the fill-rate advantage of the GeForce2 based cards. All the GeForce2 cards are basically tied.

At this high resolution and in 16-bit color the GeForce2 boards take a nice lead over the older GeForce board but still score right next to each other.

Test Results — Quake 3 Demo1 Normal

Scores look pretty even at this super low resolution.

Ouch, the older GeForce takes a spanking! However, we still have dead even scores between the GeForce2 based cards.

Nice, all of our GeForce2 boards prove that playing at 1600×1200 in Normal mode is a reality for many people now. The older GeForce board just can’t keep up.

Test Results — Quake 3 Demo1 High Quality

Things are pretty well tied up but even at this low resolution, the older GeForce board is slightly slower.

All our GeForce2 boards continue to lead but are also staying a three-way tie. Interestingly enough the lead over the older GeForce board isn’t that impressive in 32-bit color. It’s due to the memory problem that GeForce2 is suffering from, as Tom has already pointed out in the initial GeForce2 review.

Once we slam the resolution up to this setting all the boards drop hard in framerate. This drop was more than 50% for the GeForce2 cards and makes me wonder if the memory bandwidth issue can be more obvious than here.

Test Results — 3DMark 2000 High Detail

Interesting. The GeForce2 cards have almost a 25% performance advantage but I expected more than that especially in 16-bit color. Our leaders are still very on par with each other.

Switching things to 32-bit color in 3DMark 2000 helps the original GeForce card make up some ground as the memory is most likely beginning to hinder the GeForce2 leader that are tied up top.

Some of test scores were omitted from this section because the results were extremely repetitive as the GeForce2 boards were basically tied across the board while the original GeForce did fairly decent in most areas against its big brother. The results above should be sufficient data to show you that not one GeForce2 board has a magical hardware performance advantage over the others.

Each board performed its tests smoothly and without any crashes of any sorts. I felt that more rigorous stress testing would be needed to show who could rise above the rest so lets move onto our overclocking section.

Overclocking

As I have always stated, overclocking isn’t the safest use of your hardware and results from my testing may vary from what others see. With that being said, I went ahead and tested the maximum stable settings for each card, tested thermal conditions and checked to see which boards were able to overclock in the BX platform at 133MHz FSB.

There were several interesting discoveries in this testing. First, lets look at the test results then move onto a few notes I have. By far the number one board was the Leadtek. You’ll notice that the Leadtek WFGF2 was able to achieve the highest core and memory speed and thus the best score. The core speed performance we can definitely thank the insane cooling solution for on the Leadtek board. The memory speed it achieved was also impressive but I think it was more luck than anything.

The ELSA Gladiac was hardware limited on its memory performance as no matter how high I set the software setting, the real world limit was 380MHz memory. Keep in mind that just because a setting if offered in software doesn’t mean the hardware can support it.

I tested many settings before getting the peak scores and can assure you that the overclocked core gains at PEAK were providing about a 1% frame rate boost while the memory was offering a near 25% boost in the case of the Leadtek board 29.6 FPS stock vs. 36.3 FPS at 400MHz memory. This further supports our claim to the GeForce2 board being crippled by its lagging memory performance. People will be sadly disappointed to find out that core overclocking will do basically nothing for them unless you’re in 16-bit color and mid to low resolutions.

So what did the thermal readings look like during the testing?

Obviously the Leadtek board was the coolest due to its insane cooling solution while the AOpen board just loved to generate heat for some reason. The heat sink and fan was visually the same as the Gladiac but for whatever reasons it had the highest thermal heat during normal and overclocked conditions.

BX Overclocking

Each board was tested on my BX platform and all passed the test with stability by enduring an hours worth of Quake 3 on a populated server. The test scores were nothing surprising other than the lowest resolution scores being slightly faster than the OR840 because fast writes are unavailable while they’re on by default for the 840 board. No special settings were used to get the boards to work properly so I’m very confident that you should see similar results.

Conclusion

The AOpen PA256 Pro’s main advantages are a decent price (OEM package), a promising feature called OpenBIOS and video-out that offers a wide range of output settings. The rest of the package is fair but offers nothing compelling at the moment over the competition. This board may prove to be the best overclocking solution once OpenBIOS is released and its coupled with a much better cooling solution than it comes with but until then its’ all around average offering doesn’t help it stand out from the crowd.

ELSA is out in full force in local stores here in the US and can be purchased, right now. The Gladiac offers an interesting software bundle arrangement for those that care about bundled games and the DVD player can be had with a little effort. The ability to upgrade to video in/out is another benefit especially if you’re into the video capture side of things as it currently is the only video-in solution and comes packaged with video capture software.

The Leadtek WFGF2 with its massive heat sink, solid overclocking performance, DVD software, video-out and good price make it a tough card to beat. Although this board will not have video-in capabilities, it does come with everything else you will most likely need in a GeForce2 based board.

With that being said, I have to give Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS the thumbs up for the currently best available GeForce2 solution. The price, package, performance and stability of this board earned it the highest marks over any of the competition.