X-bit labs

Gigabyte GA-GF2560 Review

Category: Video

by FastSite

[ 03/20/2000 | 12:00 AM ]

This is one of the ordinary graphics cards from Taiwanese manufacturers on NVIDIA GeForce256 with SDR SDRAM. We tried to find something worth discussing. Look, if we succeeded.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• Overclocking
  
• Driver Installation
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusions
  

We continue our review series of GeForce 256 based graphics cards. Veering a bit away, we cansay that there are some companies in the computer industry famous for their non-standard approachto designing various basic boards and cards for PC. Of course, here we mean Gigabyte. Just rememberits mainboard innovations such as Dual BIOS, or Turbo mode of NVIDIA Riva TNT2/TNT2-A based graphicscards. When we tested GA-660 (Plus) graphics cards we pointed out that Gigabyte tried to create theirown card design with a number or new additional features. For example, a special jumper enabling thealready mentioned above turbo-mode, or a heatsink on the reversed side of the card increasing theefficiency of the chipset cooling. We should also note that all Gigabyte cards look very originalespecially due to unique sky-blue PBC color. This is a distinguishing feature of the latest Gigabytecards. Besides, all cards from GA-660 family can boast another important advantage: new drivers for themcome out regularly and are of very high quality. That is why in autumn 1999, when a lot of well-known graphicscards manufacturers announced the launching into mass production of new cards built on NVIDIA GeForce 256, westarted patiently waiting for a corresponding press release from Gigabyte as well. However, all our hopes werevain. Only in the very end of 1999 we got a message from Gigabyte saying that they announced a new GA-GF2560graphics card. Our first idea was that the guys woke up a bit too late already, because the prices on similarproducts with DDR memory began dropping, not to mention the cards with SDR SDRAM. Nevertheless, it may be stillquite interesting to take a look at a newcomer from Gigabyte.

So, we were lucky to get one Gigabyte GA-GF2560 piece for our testlab. This card is build on NVIDIA GeForce256 chipset and is equipped with SDR SDRAM.

Closer Look

Here is the list of Gigabyte GA-GF2560 main features:

• NVIDIA Geforce256, 256-bit 2D/3D graphics processor
• 32MB SDRAM
• AGP 2X/4X
• 350MHz RAMDAC
• 2D Video Modes:
  
  

  Resolution	Color Depth (bits)	Max Refresh Rate (Hz)
  640 x 480	8/16/32	240
  800 x 600	8/16/32	240
  960 x 720	8/16/32	200
  1024 x 768	8/16/32	200
  1152 x 864	8/16/32	200/200/170
  1280 x 1024	8/16/32	170/170/150
  1600 x 900	8/16/32	150/150/120
  1600 x 1200	8/16/32	120/120/100
  1920 x 1200	8/16/32	100/100/85
  2048 x 1536	8/16/32	75/75/60

Let' take a closer look at the card' features:

The card is based on AGP 2x/4x interface, has 2MB SDR SDRAM placed in 16 microchips on both sides of the PCB.

Memory microchips are made by EliteMT and feature 5.5ns access time, which denotes that this memory type supports183MHz working frequency. NVIDIA recommends using 166MHz memory in SDR-cards that is why the nominal memory working frequencyfor this graphics card (as well as for all the other cards of the same family) is cut down to 166MHz.

We would like to particularly stress that the chipset of this graphics card works at a standard frequency of all GeForce 256based cards, namely at 120MHz. Unfortunately, we failed to take a look at it, because the heatsink was fastened to the chipsetwith a sticky thermal tape.

If we compare the design of Gigabyte GA-GF2560 with that of the cards reviewed before (Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 256Annihilator, Leadtek WinFast GeForce256, ASUS AGP-V6600 SDRAM), we will see that it fully coincides with the reference design.All the other boards differ only by the PCB color.

The card is equipped with a nicely made cooler. The air flow from the fan cools the heatsink. We don't know what kind ofbearings are used in this cooler (if there are any at all), because there is no sticker on the cooler saying anything about it.As we have already mentioned above, there is a piece of sticky thermal tape between the heatsink and the chipset. However, we don'tconsider it the best solution, because according to our experience, thermal paste turns out more effective for heat dissipationthrough the chipset heatsink.

Then we can also notice that there are a few empty spaces on the PCB intended for an LCD-monitor output controller andLCD-output connector. However, the devices themselves are absent on this version of the graphics card. The card also has aTV-out with a BrookTree 869 controller microchip. To our great disappointment, the card we had at hand had only S-Video outand no composite connector. The package doesn't contain any converters that is why if your video equipment is quite outdatedyou will hardly be able to make real use of TV-out. However, as to the manufacturer, they also have some card revisions suppliedwith a composite TV-out and LCD-monitor output connector.

The box of Gigabyte GA-GF2560 is designed in Gigabyte's traditional way.

The package includes a CD-disk with drivers and utilities and a couple of game demos. The same disk contains a softwareDVD-player - PowerDVD and a universal CD-player - PowerPlayer II. There is also an S-Video cable, however, noS-Video-Composite converter, as we have already mentioned above.

Overclocking

A few words about overclocking. The tests carried out for Gigabyte GA-GF2560 showed that the chipset could beoverclocked to 150MHz and the memory only to 183MHz. Frankly speaking, this is far not the absolute top and of coursemuch lower than the values achieved on some other competing products (for example, ASUS AGP-V6600 can overclock to 160/220MHz).The cause is most likely to be not very optimal chipset cooling and not very fast memory used on GA-GF2560. Nevertheless, eventhis slight frequency increase should undoubtedly tell on the card's overall performance.

As we have already mentioned in our ABIT Siluro GT2 Review, a lot of i440BX mainboards owners are always curious if thesegraphics cards work at the increased AGP frequency. As we all know, i440BX chipset can send to AGP either 1/1 or 2/3 of thesystem bus frequency, which prevents these mainboards from supporting FSB higher than 100MHz. That is why the users are veryoften disappointed and upset if most graphics cards fail to work at AGP higher than 75MHz. If you set the FSB frequency of youri440BX board to 133MHz, you will get 89MHz on AGP, which is fatal for some graphics cards. Nevertheless, our experience showsthat some cards can stand this AGP frequency. So did Gigabyte GA-GF2560: this card performed just perfectly and we didn't haveany problems at all.

Driver Installation

Well, we are through with the main peculiarities of Gigabyte GA-GF2560 graphics card. And now let's go over to the benchmarksand quality tests. first, take a look at our testbed configuration:

• Intel Pentium III 600MHz CPU:
• ASUS P3B-F (i440BX) mainboard;
• 128MB PC100 system memory;
• Quantum FB CR 6.4GB HDD;
• ViewSonic P810 (21'') monitor;
• Windows 98.

Well, the first step to make with a new graphics card is the drivers. Let's take a closer look at the drivers fromGigabyte. We used Gigabyte driver version 3.65:

As you can see on the screenshot, these drivers are a real copy of NVIDIA's reference drivers of the same version,that's why all the screenshots of the driver properties pages given below are absolutely the same as those of NVIDIAreference drivers.

You can get there from the Display Properties page. There you can change 3D functions settings and control TV output:

One of the pages is devoted to chipset and memory frequency setting:

Here we can increase the chipset working frequency up to 150MHz, and that of the memory - up to 210MHz.

Since Gigabyte didn't introduce any serious changes into the reference drivers they used, we won't compare theirefficiency to that provided by the reference drivers as we usually do. For all our tests we will use Gigabyte driverof the latest version 3.65.

Performance

At first, we will mention a few things about 2D graphics. If you have read our previous reviews of the graphics cardsbased on NVIDIA GeForce 256, their 2D speed and quality are up to the most pretentious demand. And this graphics card is notan exception.

We will check the 3D performance of our hero in the following two games:

• Rage Expendable (Direct3D, multitexturing);
• id Software Quake3 v.1.16h (OpenGL, multitexturing).

These tools are more than enough to illustrate the card's performance. To make a better comparison we provided on ourdiagrams the results for another graphics card on GeForce 256 with SDR SDRAM - ASUS AGP-V6600. Besides, we will also take alook at Gigabyte's performance when overclocked.

You see that Gigabyte GA-GF2560 is a really worthy product on NVIDIA GeForce 256 chip with SDR memory. However, it alsoinherited all the drawbacks of similar graphics cards, such as significant performance drop in 32bit color. Another displeasingthing is a relatively low performance gain shown by the overclocked card, because the memory used on it was not that overclockableat all.

If you are a DVD-Video admirer, you will be glad to hear that NVIDIA GeForce 256 chipset has everything necessary forhigh-quality DVD-movies playback. Besides, the graphics card goes together with a software PowerDVD 2.0 player (with a30-day free trial).

In fact, we were a bit disappointed with the playback quality of the supplied player. Moreover, the CPU utilization duringvideo playback was 100%, which meant that PowerDVD didn't utilize the card for MPEG2-video decoding (such features as, forinstance, Motion Compensation).

Besides, we have also tested Gigabyte GA-GF2560 with WinDVD 2.00 player, supporting GeForce 256 in a much more efficient way.Then the DVD playback was up to our expectations. The CPU utilization remained about 44% all the time.

Unfortunately, we can't say anything about the preinstalled TV-out, because there was no Composite on the card. :-(

Conclusions

Summing up we can say that Gigabyte GA-GF2560 doesn't yield to its competitors at all. However, the general impression isslightly spoilt by the fact that this NVIDIA GeForce 256 based graphics card is equipped with slow SDR-memory. Besides, we didn'tnotice any peculiar features so typical of Gigabyte. In fact, it is pretty strange that the company launched a graphics card muchlater than its competitors but still didn't do anything to show off a bit against the general background.

We also don't know anything about the price of this graphics card because it is not so widely spread yet. We suppose that if itsprice is quite low, or even lower than that of the competing products, the card will undoubtedly be a success. But we have to notethat the triumph won't last long anyway, because the cards with DDR memory are getting cheaper and cheaper and the gap between thecards with SDR and DDR memory is getting smaller and smaller… Very soon buying a card with SDR memory will be a total waste of money,don't you agree?

Highs

• Relatively high performance, quite acceptable in games
• Good set of the accompanying software, including game demos, a CD-player and a DVD-player
• High quality mounting, which secures reliable and stable performance

Lows

• No TV-Out Composite and no LCD-monitor out
• No unique features from Gigabyte seen on the previous cards