By Lars Weinand - Editor In Chief RIVA Station / Editor Tom´s Hardware Guide

Graphics cards using NVIDIA's GeForce 3 chips had only been available at retail for a few weeks when the company released its next chip update. The Titanium series was right on time, following the schedule to which NVIDIA has been adhering very successfully for the last few years. This strategy calls for the introduction of a new chip in the spring, which is then followed up with a refined and tweaked version toward the end of the year.

This year's fall update saw only moderate changes, and the chips belonging to the Titanium series - the Ti200 and Ti500 - only differ from the original GeForce 3 in memory and core speed. NVIDIA also claims to have been able to refine and optimize the manufacturing process.

• GeForce 2 Ti: The successor to the GeForce 2 GTS/Pro - a pure die-shrink of the GeForce 2 from 0.18 to 0.15 micron. Runs at 250/400MHz.

• GeForce 3 Ti200: The new mainstream board, basically a GeForce 3 light. Sells at half the price of its big brother and comes with a full set of GF3 features, including Pixel and Vertex shaders. Runs at 175/400MHz.

• GeForce 3 Ti500: The replacement for the old GeForce 3. Old price, new speed: 240/500MHz.

The GeForce 3 Ti cards differ from their predecessors in more than just clock speed. The new models also use a refined layout. The most visible change is the new power supply which uses fewer components. Also, the Ti500 boards use eight-layer PCBs, instead of the current six-layer design, although some companies have also started using these PCBs for their Ti200 models. While this may give the impression of a higher quality product, we were unable to make out any differences between the six- and eight-layer models in operation. Theoretically, it would even be possible to use a Ti500 on an "old" GF3 PCB without any problems.

Chip Name
Core Designation	NV 20	NV 15	NV 20	NV 20
Manufacturing Process	0.15 Micron	0.15 Micron	0.15 Micron	0.15 Micron
Core Frequency	200 MHz	250 MHz	175 MHz	240 MHz
Memory Frequency	460 MHz (DDR)	400 MHz (DDR)	400 MHz (DDR)	500 MHz (DDR)
Memory Type	SDRAM	SDRAM/SGRAM	SDRAM	SDRAM
Memory Bus	128Bit DDR	128Bit DDR	128Bit DDR	128Bit DDR
Memory Size	64 MB	32/64 MB	32/64 MB	64 MB
RAMDAC (S)	350 MHz	350 MHz	350 MHz	350 MHz
Bus Interface	AGP 1x/2x/4x	AGP 1x/2x/4x	AGP 1x/2x/4x	AGP 1x/2x/4x
T&L	3rd. Generation	2nd. Generation	3rd. Generation	3rd. Generation
DirectX Generation	DX8	DX7	DX8	DX8
Pixel Shader	YES	No	YES	YES
Vertex Shader	YES	No (Emul.)	YES	YES
Render Pipelines	4	4	4	4
Textures per Pipe	2	2	2	2
Texel/s	1600 Mio	2000 Mio	1400 Mio	1920 mio
Memory Bandwidth	7,4 GB / sec	6,4 GB / sec	6,4 GB / sec	8,0 GB / sec

 NVIDIA´s Graphic Chip Comparsion

Copyright: 18.12.2001 -   RIVA Station 2001 - Lars Weinand
No Copy without Permission!

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