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Posted by
Julio
Franco on December 28, 2001
Manufacturer: Visiontek
Products: Xtasy
6964
- Xtasy
6564
- Xtasy
5864
Check
for Xtasy
Ti Line videocard prices.
 This fall NVIDIA didn't get anyone by
surprise, I mean, they didn't have to release any
revolutionary new product in order to get people's
attention, and instead they used some old marketing tricks
that have proven to serve them well. Their new Titanium line
up is based on their already mature products, GeForce’s 2
& 3, giving them a considerable advantage over the
competition <cough>ATI, when it comes to market
deadlines, as well as drivers stability and expected
performance output.
I say old marketing tricks, because
NVIDIA has already done this kind of product relaunch in the
past with the names of MX, Pro and Ultra, and this time is
no different.
Expect 3 new products from the Titanium
line, the GeForce 2 Ti, and the GeForce 3 Ti 200 & 500.
Visiontek, an
US
based manufacturer and main partner of NVIDIA, was first on
the market with their complete Titanium line available in
the form of the Xtasy 5864, 6564 & 6964, respectively.
They were kind enough of providing us with all the cards
aforementioned for testing.
In this article, we will concentrate on
the comparison of the Titanium line, how the cards stand up
to each other, considering both, price and performance. If
you're mostly interested in product features and overall
quality - how the cards do as a single product - then you
will want to take a look to our Xtasy 6964 (Ti 500) product
review where we cover those points extensively.
So let's get into business...
First I should mention that all cards
came on similarly designed retail boxes, TV out ready and
included the same bundle: a quick start paper with basic
installation instructions plus two CDs, one containing
drivers and extended installation instructions and a few
technology demos and a 2nd CD with PowerDVD 3.0. We have
been told however that the PowerDVD CD is not being included
on the units sent to stores, instead a mail in postcard that
will get you that free copy of the DVD software if you mail
it in. According to Visiontek they are using this as a
method of research on the percentage of people that actually
uses bundled software… I can’t blame them for doing
this, as I have found myself trashing most of the CDs that
come with the hardware I buy most of the time, now, blame
manufacturers for bundling crappy software ;). In the case
of PowerDVD, it’s my favourite software DVD player however
I already had a copy of it so the bundled CD wasn’t of any
use to me.
The cheapest card on the Ti line, it's
based on the older GeForce 2 technology and probably the
last card that will make use of it in the desktop market.
Using the GF2 Ultra board design, the
card comes equipped with a regular sized HSF and some RAM
sinks to boot. Visiontek has followed NVIDIA's specs which
results in a default
clock of 240/400 MHz (core/DDR memory) putting the card just
between the Pro and Ultra versions of the GeForce 2.
Now, those are nothing but default
specs, we know NVIDIA shrank the die size of the GF2 Ti to a
smaller 0.15u process down from 0.18, that should not only
help with fabrication prices but overclocking as well.
Visiontek has configured the card with the overclocker in
mind, I'm almost sure they could have left out those RAM
heatsinks, and the card would still be good with the default
speeds.
Now if you also consider this card can
be bought for less than $130, you have got a real bargain
here. GF2 technology is getting old though, so that's a
point to consider, if you are just looking for a card that
will do good on today's games, look no further, but as time
passes, more features found on DirectX8 (and supported on
the GF3) will be incorporated in new games.
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Visiontek
Xtasy 5864
