Many graphics card manufacturers today spend a lot of time and effort to make their products attractive and unique. They resort to all possible means to achieve their goals: some of them try to save on everything reducing the prices, others - equip their cards with huge heatsinks, third ones experiment with the boxes design and textolite colour, fourth ones - add some free games to their hardware, etc.

The Korean SUMA Company, which has become very familiar to us already due to its graphics solutions on NVIDIA GeForce2 and GeForce3 chips (see our Video section for more reviews of SUMA products), chose its own way with the Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE and Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE graphics cards. The letters "SE" (Special Edition) imply that these products have some remarkable features to boast, which distinguish them from the regular NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200/Ti500 based graphics cards made by SUMA.

Well, let's find out what cool features hide behind two letters "S" and "E" :)

Closer Look

SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE and Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE are shipped in transparent gold-colored plastic boxes:

The package contents is similar for both graphics cards. The box contains a card, user's manual, a CD-disk with the drivers and utilities, a brochure describing step-by-step installation and adjustment of the graphics card settings and S-Video-to-RCA converter:

The graphics cards are made according to NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 reference design, which is not at all surprising for SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE, but is quite outstanding for SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE. SUMA engineers were probably trying to add a bit more overclockability toe their NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 based graphics card this way. As a result, these two graphics cards from SUMA look as like as two peas, only the stickers are different and allow to distinguish between the two "twin-brothers" from Korea. :) If you don't believe me, please, take a look yourselves:

SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE	SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE

Of course, of we take a closer look at the two products, we will see the differences. For example, SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE graphics card is based on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 chip, while SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 - you won't believe this! - on GeForce3 Ti500 :)

   

Both graphics cards are equipped with 64MB graphics memory. However, the slower card is equipped with faster memory chips. SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE features 3.6ns memory chips from Hynix (left). Although they are much faster than necessary for operation at 400MHz (200MHz DDR), it justifies the "Special Edition" in the graphics card name. SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE uses EliteMT chips (right) with 3.8ns access time, which are quite common for this solution:

3.6ns chips by Hynix		3.8ns chips by EliteMT

The graphics cards work at the following frequencies: 175MHz chip and 400MHz (200MHz DDR) memory for SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE; 240MHz chip and 516MHz (258MHz DDR) memory for SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE. As you see, the memory frequency of SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE is a bit higher than the recommended nominal for this solution: 500MHz (250MHz DDR), which also explains why it has this "SE" in the name.

Both graphics cards are equipped with similar coolers for chips and heatsinks for graphics memory. Note that the coolers are fastened to the PCB with special pins and use thermal paste for better contact with the chip surface. The heatsinks however, are placed onto special sticky thermal pads:

 

Testbed and Methods

Together with NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500/Ti200 based graphics cards from SUMA we tested similar solutions from the American VisionTek Company:

• VisionTek Xtasy 6564: NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 175MHz core and 400MHz (200MHz DDR) memory frequencies.
• VisionTek Xtasy 6964: NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 240MHz core and 500MHz (250MHz DDR) memory frequencies.

Our testbed was configured as follows:

• AMD Athlon XP 1900+ CPU;
• MSI K7T266 Pro2 v2.0 (VIA KT266A) mainboard;
• 2x128MB PC2100 CL2 DDR SDRAM by Nanya;
• Fujitsu MPF3153AH HDD.

Software:

• Detonator 27.70 driver for Windows XP;
• Windows XP;
• Quake3 Arena v1.30.

Overclocking. 2D Image Quality

SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE

We managed to overclock this board up to 270MHz chip and 580MHz (290MHz DDR) memory frequencies without any additional cooling. With the extra cooling we managed to reach 275MHz core and 590MHz (295MHz DDR) memory frequencies. Too improve the cooling efficiency in this case we used a standard 80mm fan blowing the air onto the front of the graphics card from 10cm distance.

As you can see, despite the big number, the chip overclocking potential of SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE is not that high: 275MHz against the 240MHz nominal frequency. In fact, this is typical of all graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500, as their core already works at frequencies close to the top. Read our article called "NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 and Ti200 Based Graphics Cards Extreme Overclocking" for more details on that.

As for the memory, it proved highly overclockable: 590MHz without any "extreme overclocking methods" is an excellent result. :)

SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE

SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE graphics card managed to reach 275MHz chip and 520MHz (260MHz DDR) memory frequencies with additional cooling. Without any extra means, the chip reached 240MHz and the memory 510MHz (255MHz DDR).

The graphics core of this card reached the same frequency as the Ti500 solution, even though without the additional cooling devices the obtained maximum frequency was not that high. It looks as if more complex reference design used for this graphics card were bearing its fruit. Of course, it is not just a whim of the engineering team: a 100MHz frequency increase during chip overclocking is really impressive, don't you think so?

The graphics memory overclocking results by SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE can be estimated twofold. On the one hand, 520MHz is an excellent result for the graphics memory installed onto NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 based graphics card. On the other hand, memory chips with 3.6ns access time are initially designed to work at frequencies up to 550MHz, so that 520MHz deserve no admiration at all.

SUMA explains it by the fact that the memory timings set in the BIOS as well as the PCB layout (GeForce3 Ti500 reference design) were initially intended for EliteMT memory chips. However, SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE graphics cards are equipped with chips from Hynix. For a while they are offering a new BIOS version on their Company web-site, which allows setting "sparing" memory timings and hence increasing the memory overclocking potential. However, as the tests showed, the performance of the card with the new BIOS is just the same as that of the card with the old BIOS, that is why reflashing new BIOS will satisfy an overclocker just formally.

The 2D image quality proved to be typical by both SUMA graphics cards. For NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500/Ti200 typical means good, as we could notice some slight blurring only in 1600x1200. For evaluation purposes we used Viewsonic P775, Hitachi CM776ET and SONY GDM-FW900 monitors.

Performance

SUMA GeForce3 Ti500 and Ti200 based graphics cards working in the nominal mode will hardly differ from the whole bunch of other similar solutions by different manufacturers. That is why we ran only Quake3 Arena to test their actual performance.

During our tests the graphics quality was set to its maximum, tri-linear filtering and texture compression were enabled, texture color depth and frame buffer depth were set to 32bit. To test the cards we used a standard four demo included into Quake3 Arena 1.30 Patch:

Well, the difference between the results shown by SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE and VisionTek Xtasy 6564 lies within the measuring error. SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE appeared a bit faster than VisionTek Xtasy 6964 due to a bit faster graphics memory frequency.

During overclocking the performance of SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE gets 10%-15% higher. The maximum performance gain is obtained in 1600x1200 and makes 13.7%.

Overclocked SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE outperforms NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 based graphics cards. In the highest resolution, 1600x1200, where the CPU doesn't tell the much on the results, its performance grows by up to 38.8%.

Conclusion

So, we have just reviewed two SUMA graphics cards. The most interesting product of the two is of course, SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti200 SE, due to its extremely high overclocking potential and very reasonable price.

As for the SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE card, it also proved very well overclockable, however, its price makes this card far not the best buy: graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 cost about the same money but boast higher performance and richer set of functions. Bearing this fact in mind, we would call SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE a "dead" product. Actually, the same thing will happen to any other GeForce3 Ti500 based graphics card, because NVIDIA is ousting these solutions from the market with their new GeForce4 Ti440/Ti4200 really rapidly now.

Highs:

• Stylish looks, excellent mounting quality;
• High overclocking potential;
• Perfect 2D image quality.

Lows:

• High price of SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE making it uncompetitive against the background of emerging NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti440 based products.