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Posted by
Toby Crundwell
on September 07, 2001
Manufacturer: OCZ Technology
Product: Titan
2 Ultra SE
Find
prices for GeForce 2 videocards here.
 OCZ
are a relatively new name to graphics cards and have only
recently decided to release their own, Titan, range of
GeForce 2 & 3 based cards. They have been supplying
memory, & overclocking equipment for some time. OCZ is
not the same company as The Overclockerz store, who come
under criticism in the past, although it must be pointed out
that Titan cards are chiefly distributed by The Overclockerz
store. Both companies are owned by AFASTCO. As their name
suggests, OCZ creates their products with one specific
market in mind, although this card will appeal to anyone who
craves faster frame rates, regardless of their intentions of
overclocking. Today at 3D Spotlight we are looking at the
GeForce 2 Ultra version of their product line; the Titan 2
Ultra SE.
Into nVidia’s GeForce 2 family, the
GeForce 2 Ultra is the fastest model, with official clock
speeds of 250MHz for the core and 460 (DDR) MHz for the 64
MB of DDR memory. OCZ have gone one better and have
increased memory speed by 20 (40 DDR) MHz for a total of 500
(DDR) MHz, setting this board apart from the competition. The core
remains an unchanged 250MHz. As you might have already
guessed, we were even able to take the clock speeds higher
than this. The Ultra retains the same four pipelines as
other GeForce 2 cards, apart from the MX family. It is the
undisputed king of speed, and this particular Ultra model
could plausibly outperform other GeForce 3 models on
non-GeForce 3 optimised programs.
The card
The Titan is more than your average
GeForce 2 Ultra. Apart from the previously mentioned
increased memory speed it is also pre-fitted with a Blue Orb
cooler and suitably chunky memory heatsinks. The advantage
being the card will run cooler, and (hopefully) with a
better ability to be overclocked. The disadvantage of using
this method however is that the card will obscure the PCI
slot next to it.
The 256-bit 0.18-micron GeForce 2
chipset is identical to units used on the Pro and GTS
models, albeit running at a higher clock speed. The
advantage of higher clock speeds however is not as
pronounced as higher memory speeds, given the GeForce 2’s
memory bandwidth problem. The Ultra’s memory bandwidth is
officially 7.36Gb per second, but this is inevitably more
for the Titan with its increased memory clock speed. I
worked out the actual bandwidth to be 8.02Gb per second
(501MHz * 128bit / 8 bits per byte=8016Mb/sec). For
reference, MX cards have a memory bandwidth of just 2.76Gb
per second. The memory is not only DDR but also 128 bit,
unlike DDR memory on the MX, which is 64 bit (which defeats
the object of having DDR memory).
The card, as the SE name might suggest,
is OEM, although this does not mean the card is affected in
any way. It comes with no official packaging bar an
anti-static bag, and no software whatsoever. It did,
however, come with an S-Video cable & a 3 pin (fan
connector) to five-pin (Molex) adapter. It is a very power
hungry card, and a suitable powerful PSU is needed,
especially with an AMD system (more on this later). The
Titan shares many of the same features of most other Ultra
boards because it is made to the reference board design
nVidia specifies, apart from the aforementioned faster
memory. However, this does not mean OCZ have not been
innovative. Quite a few other nVidia cards from relative
unknown companies do not come with adequate cooling and do
not feature a TFT Flat-panel (DVI) connector, or even a
TV-out.
 Specifications
-
AGP 2X /4X Support, AGP texturing,
Fast Writes & Side band addressing support.
-
250 MHz, 256-bit quad pipe core.
-
64Mb of 250 (501) MHz 3.5ns VRAM,
8.02Gb per second memory bandwidth
-
1 gigapixel per second, 2 gigatexels
per second, 31 million triangles polygons/triangles per
second
-
Second generation transform and
lighting engines
-
DirectX & OpenGL Optimisations
support
-
S3 texture compression
-
32-bit Z-stencil buffer
-
High-Definition Video Professor
(HDTV) for Full-screen Video playback of 720p and DVD
resolution.
-
Advanced support for DirectDraw
-
NVidia Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
-
Hardware colour space conversion (YUV
4:2:2 and 4:2:0)
-
5-tap horizontal by 3-tap vertical
filtering
-
8:1 up scaling and downscaling
-
Per-pixel colour keying
-
Cube Environment Mapping
-
Single pass multi-texturing
-
Multi-buffering (2x, 3x & 4x)
-
Pre-pixel, perspective-correct
texturing
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Improved RFI filtering for sharper
2D quality
-
Order Independent FSAA
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Original Thermaltake
Blue Orb cooler
-
0.18 micron
-
Multiple video windows with hardware
colour space conversion and filtering
-
DVD sub-picture alpha blended
composition
-
S-Video, DVI & D-Sub connectors
-
Video
acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2
Find
prices for GeForce 2 videocards here.
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