XFX Graphics, which is a division of Pine, has sent us one of their GeForce 3 Ti500 model video cards. Although the new Nvidia flagship is now the Geforce 4, the Geforce3 series is still a major player in desktop graphics. And now since the GeForce 4s are out, you can get great deals on GeForce 3s, which are still amazing video cards. Let’s see some of the specs, shall we:
Using what nVidia has deemed the Infinite Effects (nFiniteFX) Engine, the GeForce3 is a next generation video card capable of advanced 3D rendering, including full hardware transform and lighting (T&L), programmable pixel shaders, and vertex shaders, along with support for 32 bit color and full DirectX 8.1 compatibility.
The GeForce 3 Ti500 uses nVidia’s unified driver architecture, so that all you have to do is download one driver for any nVidia card you have since the TNT, and it will work. Although these sound quite impressive, many games don’t really use any of these features, and thus are left out in the cold. That’s why we here at OCmodshop try to give you a full spread of benchmarking and testing results, so you can see not only what the buzz is all about, but also to show you how well you can play your games with this piece of hardware, and how it will enhance your experience.
Here are the specs of the card itself:
- 256-bit Graphics Core running at 240MHz clock speed.
- 8.0GB/s Memory bandwidth.
- 64 Megabytes DDR RAM running at 250MHz (500MHz DDR) clock speed.
If you would like to check out all the nifty features and such that this card is capable of, you can read the support document from nVidia (link below). You can also find out more information about this particular card at XFX Graphics. Let’s check out a few pics of the card itself.
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This is the top of the box. I don’t know why they put a jet on it, maybe it provokes thoughts of speed or something in the consumer, I really have no clue. Doesn’t look bad though.
Here’s a picture of the box, it shows us all the neato features of the card, as well as the system requirements for it.
Here we can see the card inside the anti-static bag. This card didn’t come with any bundled software, besides a driver CD. But this is a good thing, because it keeps the price low.
We took the heatsink off to get a picture of the core. As you can see, it is a GF3 core, and that the PCB is actually a very attractive blue color, which would go great with a blue modded case.
This picture shows us all of the different kinds of outputs that this card can take advantage of. On the very left we have the standard 15-pin VGA output. In the middle, we have the S-Video output so that you can hook the computer up to your TV for some DVD or game playing action, and on the right we can see the DVI connector, which allows the card to be connected to digital monitors such as TFT LCDs and some CRTs which use the DVI connection.
This is a picture of everything that comes along with the card, which is the driver CD, the manual, and a card so that you can register your card with XFX Graphics.
Here we can see the thermal grease on top of the core which is used to transer heat from the core to the heatsink/fan combo that comes with the card. We here at OCmodshop recommend Arctic Silver 3 as a replacement thermal epoxy, since it is the best stuff on the market and you get a ton for cheap.
And finally, here we see the card as we tested it, all in one piece :) I noticed that the heatsink/fan combo on this card really isn’t the best, and you’ll probably be able to see the effects of this in the next few pages. My recommendation is to just get a really good heatsink like the Crystal Orb or something and throw that on the core with some AS3 and you’ll be stylin’ as well as running cool.
Well, onto the tests, which will really show us how this card stacks up in 3D gaming. All the tests on this page were run with the card at its default 240MHz Core/500MHz Memory speeds, we will see how good of an overclocker this bad boy is in a moment. Here are the specs of my test rig to start off:
CPU: Athlon XP 1600+ (1400 MHz) at default voltage (1.75)
Motherboard: Epox 8KHA+
Videocard: XFX GeForce 3 Ti500
RAM: 256 Megabytes Micron PC2100 DDR-SDRAM at default voltage
Hard Drives: 80 Gigabyte Western Digital Caviar ATA100
Heatsink: ThermalRight AX-7
CD-ROM: 16x10x40 LiteOn CD-Burner
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Digital
Network Interface Card: Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 BaseT/TX
First up, we have Quake 3: Arena. Although the game is getting a little long in the tooth, it is still a good comparison benchmark since almost every review site on the planet uses it for their tests. I am using the 1.17 patch, and I tested it at the 640×480 Normal Quality setting, the 800×600 High Quality setting, and at 1024×768 with graphics maxed out. Here are the results:
Not shabby at all. And considering that this card was retailing for over $200 a month or two ago, its not surprising to see such high frame rates. I actually don’t think that Quake 3 stressed this card to its max, as you can see that the differences in frame rates between the 3 resolutions is not that great. This test seemed to be limited by my CPU. But since my monitor doesn’t support resolutions higher than 1024×768 that’s all I can really do right now.
Now, on to the Serious Sam benchmarks. Serious Sam is a good test for video cards, as it has very nice graphics and also uses a very solid graphics engine to pump the volume of triangles up to the max. I patched the game up to version 1.05 and used the average FPS to determine the graph. Let’s see how this card fares:
Once again, the framerates don’t really deviate much until we get up into the highest resolution, where the card is more strained than the CPU. Hopefully we can do a video card roundup sometime soon so that we can compare the performance of this card to other cards. But for now, you can just check out the other reviews on the site. :) These scores are very respectable, characteristic of the GeForce3 Series.
Now it is time for 3DMark2001SE. I am using the newest version, build 330, to test this. Test was performed at 1024x768x32bpp, using compressed textures, 24 bit Z-buffer, and triple buffering:
Scores are pretty good for my rig. These scores are comparable to other GF3 Ti500s on the market, so nothing much to really say about them. I’ll let you guys judge if the price and performance ratio meets your needs. All I can say is that this card will definitely run all today’s games perfectly, with features built so you can play tomorrow’s games as well.
Next up is 3DMark2000, which is a good measure of the system as a whole, but focuses mainly on the 3D graphics, like its newer brother 2001SE. I have found it to be a decent measurement of 3D graphics power in the past, so I have included it here. I ran the test in 1024×768 resolution, 32 bits per pixel color, 32 bit textures, and 24 bit Z-buffer:
Breaking the 10,000 point mark is no easy feat in 3DMark2000, and an almost impossible one in 3DMark2001SE, unless you have a beast of a rig with a GeForce 4 (and the $200 – $300 price tag that comes along with it).
Lastly but definitely not leastly :) is the Vulpine GLMark benchmark, made specifically to stress the card as it pertains to OpenGL performance. This test was run with the GeForce3 Features setting enabled, in 32 bit color at 1024×768 resolution, running on quality settings:
Once again the card performed admirably, never dropping below 40 FPS, which is still a very reasonable frame rate. Also, this test really tests how powerful your card is, and the graphics are really nice as well. In normal games you should not get any slowdown unless your CPU isn’t up to par (I recommend at least a 1.2 GHz CPU to utilize the power of this card fully). Next up, how well does this bad boy overclock?
Now for the time we’ve all been waiting for: how well does this baby overclock, and how does it improve performance. The default core/memory speeds for this card are 240/500, the 500 giving it the name Ti500 (as a side note, the Ti200 is named after its core clock speed of 200 MHz, not the memory speed.) Well, I fired up coolbits and did a lot of stress testing, and the highest stable overclock I could get was 260/560, which isn’t bad at all considering that this card already stresses the boundaries of the GeForce3 core. It was also only using the default cooling, so it you throw on a Crystal Orb and some ramsinks you might be able to get it even higher, although the GeForce3 Ti500s aren’t really known to be great overclockers due to their already high speeds. To test the overclocked speed, I ran all the same tests as before, so you can compare the different scores. Here are the results:
Again, we’re starting off with Quake 3 Arena. I’ve noticed Quake 3 to be pretty good in telling how much of a performance boost you can expect from an overclocked card:
Hmmm, only 176 FPS at 640×480? I honestly have no idea why it went lower after overclocking. It might be a driver issue. I tried to keep all system variables the same for all tests, but I may have messed with something that affected the score. Let’s see how the other tests go. Anyways, we can see at the highest resolution that the score is a little bit higher than the default speed, readying us for the other tests.
Next up is Serious Sam. Let’s see how the card handles the high quality graphics of this game while being overclocked:
We see that at lower resolutions the overclocking really doesn’t help, because it is more CPU limited at those resolutions, but when we get into 1024×768, we can see a considerable difference.
Next on our list of fine software we have 3DMark2001SE:
We see a small increase in the 3DMark score, about 200 points, not much but decent.
Here we have 3DMark2000, a very good indicator of 3D processing power for today’s games:
Here we see an increase in score of about 400 points which isn’t too shabby, although not really worth the extra effort it takes to overclock the card.
Last up we have, again, Vulpine GLMark. This benchmark is really pretty CPU limited, although it can be helpful in determining whether or not the extra risk and work of overclocking are really worth it:
Here we see the average frame rate go up, which is really what matters most, but we see the max and minimum frame rates decrease, although not by much.
Well, now that we have all the facts, let draw some conclusions!
I had a great time testing this card out. It uses the renowned GeForce3 Chipset, runs every game I could throw at it wonderfully, and the price is mind blowing. The only real qualms I have with this card is in the overclocking department, where it seems to sag a bit. But if you read other reviews of similar cards, I’m sure you will find that not many GeForce3 Ti500s are great overclockers anyway, instead it is quite the opposite. And when you have the 3D crunching power that this bad boy delivers, you really won’t have a need to overclock it, because it will fulfill your needs impeccably. I am giving this card a 9 out of 10, and the OCmodshop seal of approval, since it is fast, stable, and very reasonably priced. I would really like to thank XFX Graphics for sending this card over for review, head on over to their website and you can pick up any of their video cards from their online store.
Pros
- The power of the GeForce3 Ti500 core
- Great stability
- Great price
- Runs any game with the smoothness
- Great nVidia drivers
Cons
- Overclocking doesn’t affect performance as much as it should