128MB of Memory for NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200: Chaintech A-G321 Review

by FastSite
05/16/2002 | 12:00 AM

Time doesn't stand still. As soon as new graphics cards based on GeForce4 Ti and GeForce4 MX appeared, the solutions on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500, GeForce2 Ti and GeForce2 MX will little by little leave the graphics market.<%BANNER[article]%>

The only solution from the old cavalry, which isn't going to retire yet is NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200. Why? Well, this solution and the graphics cards based on it boast a simply excellent price-to-performance ratio. Besides, NVIDIA is not acting confidently enough now: the graphics cards on GeForce4 MX460 and GeForce4 Ti4200 are just starting to sell in the mass market, and they seem to be the only ones capable of competing with GeForce3 Ti200 in terms of price and performance. That is why we wouldn't turn our back to GeForce3 Ti200 based graphics cards now, especially since some of them are far from being called a standard solution and hence deserve our scrupulous attention.

We decided to write this review only for one single reason: we got hold of a very unusual graphics card based on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200. It is Chaintech A-G321 equipped with 128MB DDR SDRAM instead of the common 64MB.

We were very curious to see what it was worth, thus we suggest evaluating the advantages of larger graphics memory in modern and upcoming games together.

Closer Look

The Chaintech A-G321 graphics card we had at our disposal was shipped in a retail package:

We were pleased to see no ugly monsters, airplanes or spacecrafts on the box. It boasts a very stylish outlook, making a much more favourable impression than any wonder-beasts could have made :) A transparent plastic window, where you can actually see the card is another point in Chaintech's favour.

Besides the graphics card, the package also includes an S-Video cable, a user's manual and a few CD-disks with the drivers, utilities and games (Aquanox and MDK2). The CD-disks and the user's manual are packed into a plastic box looking very similar to boxes for DVD-disks:

The graphics card complies with NVIDIA's reference design and boasts the full set of Outs: VGA, TV- and DVI outs:

 

The graphics core and the memory chips are hidden under a big gold-colored heatsink. Note that thermal paste is used only for the graphics chip, the memory chips are not covered with any paste at all:

   

Here is the NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 chip our graphics card is based on:

The clock frequency of the chip also meets NVIDIA's recommendations and equals 175MHz.

The major peculiarity distinguishing Chaintech A-G321 graphics card from many other solutions on GeForce3 Ti200 is 128MB of DDR SDRAM by Samsung featuring 5ns access time:

The memory works at 400MHz (200MHz DDR), which also meets NVIDIA's requirements.

The rest of the graphics card design is just the same as by many other similar products: the TV-Out signal is produced by Bt869 chip from Conexant, TMDS-transmitter is implemented via Sil164CT64 chip from Silicon Image.

Drivers and Utilities

The software bundled with A-G321 graphics card includes the following utilities: 3Deep E-Color, software InterVideo WinDVD player, BIOS reflashing utility and Chaintech's brand TurboGfx utility.

The most interesting utility of all, is certainly the last one, which turns into a nice-looking tray icon once installed. By clicking this icon, you get access to the simplest overclocking and adjustment settings:

This is a very nice program. It offers everything you should have at hand. For all other needs, you can always use RivaTuner :)

Graphics Memory: a Bit of Maths

Now let's figure out if the graphics cards really need 128MB of graphics memory. Here we will have to do some calculations, though we will not go too deep into details, don't worry. So, we suggest calculating how much memory we may need for different tasks.

The total memory capacity used in 3D applications is made of several parts:

• Frame Buffer. This is what we actually see on the screen. The information about the pixel color taken from the frame buffer is used for analogue or digital signal going to the display. The size of the frame buffer depends on the screen resolution if the 3D application works in full screen mode, and on the window size, if it works in window mode:
  

  Frame Buffer size = X-size x Y-size x Bytes/pixel

• Back Buffer. In fact, this is a second frame buffer. While we are watching an image built in the frame buffer on the display, the construction of the new image is in full swing in the back buffer. As soon as the new image is ready, the buffers will swap places and we will see a new picture. So, the size of the back Buffer is equal to the size of the Frame Buffer:
  

  Back Buffer size = X-size x Y-size x Bytes/pixel

• Z-Buffer. This is a buffer of the same width and length as the Frame Buffer. Z-Buffer stores the distances from the pixels to the viewer (camera), i.e. one value for each pixel of the built frame. The Z-Buffer size equals:
  

  Z-Buffer = X-size x Y-size x Bytes/Z

• Textures. No difficulty here: the texture size depends on the particular applications.
• Geometry. Here we mean the vertexes describing 3D primitives. As a result, the memory required to store all geometrical data also depends on the applications.

Textures and geometry can be physically placed into local graphics memory as well as into RAM that is why we will not take them into account when calculating the total memory capacity. Although we will still keep them in mind, as later we will need this information.

So, the data to be stored only in the local graphics memory of the card are: Frame Buffer, Back Buffer and Z-Buffer. They require so much memory: Frame Buffer x 2 + Z-Buffer.

Now let's set a bit more complicated task: we enable full-scene anti-aliasing.

NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200/Ti500 perform FSAA with multisampling algorithms. Once we enable multisampling by NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200, the card builds images in the additional Multisample buffer. Multisample buffer is actually a combination of two buffers saving the sample colours and Z-values. Moreover, both buffers are larger than the frame buffer and Z-buffer. They are enlarged in proportion to the number of samples.

Of course, in case multisampling is activated, all these buffers should be also located in the local graphics memory. In this case the size of the local graphics memory will comprise: Frame Buffer x 2 + samples x (Frame Buffer + Z-Buffer).

Now that we have derived these formulas, let us calculate the minimum graphics memory required for our needs in each particular case (note that it is the minimum, remember that we still keep in mind textures and geometry!):

The table below contains only the calculations for 32bit modes (32bits or 4Bytes per pixel and per Z value). I didn't include any 16bit modes here, as we can now luckily forget them like a nightmare of Riva TNT2 epoch in case we have a GeForce3 Ti200 based graphic card.

So, what have we finally got?

With 4x FSAA in 1600x1200 we need at least 76.8MB of local graphics memory, which means that 64MB graphics cards are simply unable to work in these conditions. In all other modes, the memory reserved by 64MB cards for textures and geometry may vary from huge (58MB) to relatively small (12MB).

In those cases when there is not so much local graphics memory left for textures and geometry, they have to be partially stored in RAM and then transferred via a pretty slow AGP bus. This is one of the cases when we should be able to notice the performance difference between 128MB and 64MB graphics cards. In order to illustrate the possible advantages of 128MB local graphics memory, I will offer you some gaming tests in all possible modes in the next chapter of this review.

And now let's suppose what else could we store in the spare 64MB of local graphics memory once we've got a card equipped with 128MB. And what the outcome will be :)

• First of all, large memory capacity will allow enabling high resolution modes with FSAA. However, as we all know and will see again on the diagrams below, NVIDIA GeForce3 based graphics cards are running at the top of their power and fail to provide enough fps for good gaming, because of insufficient fillrate and low memory bandwidth.
• Secondly, additional 64MB of graphics memory could be used to store geometric data and textures. Ok, let's suppose that today's games and those coming out in the nearest future have around 100,000 polygons in a single scene. Then these geometric data will occupy around 5-10MB (50-100Bytes per polygon). If the geometry grows up to 20-40MB, GeForce3 will turn out simply unable to process scenes with such high complexity fast for normal gaming. Maybe NVIDIA GeForce4 chips with twice as powerful T&L and vertex shaders unit compared with that of GeForce3 could cope with such a huge geometry, however, we are not talking about them now. It is all about GeForce3 Ti200.
  As a result, there remains only one single solution. The extra 64MB of graphics memory could be occupied by large textures. Here NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 should have absolutely no problems: smart memory controller architecture together with multi-level texture caching will prevent the card from performance losses.
  The only problem here is that the game developers do not feel like loading the graphics cards with textures that huge. And I do understand their point: most mainstream graphics cards today feature 64MB or even 32MB of graphics memory onboard that is why they don't want to develop games with huge bunches of high-quality textures intended for 128MB graphics cards as in this case they will lose a good deal of users. The situation like that is very unlikely to change soon. Only when 128MB become standard graphics memory capacity, things may change.

Summing up this discussion, I would like to conclude that NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 based graphics cards may need 128MB of graphics memory one day, but it will happen not so soon.

However, you should remember pretty well that similar situation took place when the first cards with 32MB and 64MB of graphics memory appeared. At that time this seemed to be a really huge memory. And now we all see that 32MB are just a necessary minimum, and 64MB - a standard.

Well, now let's find out what are the advantages of so much graphics memory onboard for the today's games. We will test GeForce3 Ti200 with 128MB and 64MB memory.

Testbed and Methods

Together with Chaintech A-G321 graphics card we tested VisionTek 6564 (NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 175MHz core and 400MHz (200MHz 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;
• Max Payne;
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter;
• 3DMark 2001;
• Quake3 Arena v1.30.

We ran these applications in the following modes:

Max Payne

The cards were tested with the maximum graphics quality: disabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, 32bit texture and frame buffer.

In the Max Payne test we used benchmark mod and PCGH's Final Scene No1, which are described in detail on the 3DCenter web-site.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

When testing we ran add-on program aka "GFX: Extreme Quality" enabling the "extreme" quality settings. The tests were run for 32bit modes. For this test we launched a standard "The Grand Cathedral" demo.

3DMark 2001

The tests were carried out only for 32bit modes: 32bit frame buffer, 32bit textures and 32 (24) bit Z-buffer, D3D hardware T&L mode.

Quake3 Arena v1.30

All tests were run with the highest graphics quality settings, with tri-linear filtering and texture compression enabled. The textures color depth and the frame buffer were set to 32bit. We tested with a standard four demo included into Quake3 Arena 1.30 patch.

Performance

Of all 3DMark2001 tests we chose Nature, as it most overloaded with textures and polygons. The results showed that 128MB graphics card outperformed the 64MB one only in case FSAA was enabled. However, this victory doesn't have any practical value as you will hardly ever try to play at 5-10fps.

In max Payne the results are not so killing as in the previous test, but the advantage of the 128MB card over the 64MB one is nearly negligible.

Again the additional 64MB of graphics memory start working only when FSAA 4 is enabled, that is when the cards are running really slowly. In all other modes, the performance difference is within the measuring error.

Quake3 Arena features the fewest textures and the least geometry of all. As a result, we see no performance difference between the graphics cards in all modes.

Let's sum up the results obtained. Contemporary games do not need the additional 64MB of graphics memory on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 based graphics cards. Even if we see some performance improvement provided by the larger graphics memory in certain modes, the overall performance of GeForce3 Ti200 makes it impossible to play in these modes anyway.

2D Image Quality. Overclocking

The 2D image quality provided by Chaintech A-G321 graphics card is a bit worse than the quality shown by similar solutions on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200. We could notice a slight blurring effect in 1280x1024x85Hz already.

And as for the overclocking potential of this graphics card, we were happy with what we saw. The card worked stably at 220MHz core 510MHz (210MHz DDR) memory frequencies. Although the overclocking potential of the graphics core didn't turn out too high, 510MHz shown by Samsung memory with 5ns access time, was a really cool result.

Conclusion

Well, the results obtained give us every reason to say that your GeForce3 Ti200 based card doesn't need 128MB of graphics memory onboard in the today's games. However, in the future, when new games with larger textures come out, 128MB of graphics memory may turn out a really good advantage. By the way, you may remember that when the first graphics cards with 32Mb and then 64MB graphics memory came out we were making the same conclusions about the onboard memory as we do now. As the time passed, we see that 23MB of graphics memory are sometimes not enough for the contemporary games. Moreover, most today's graphics cards are equipped with "absolutely useless64MB graphics memory" as we thought then.

As for the particular Chaintech A-G321 graphics card, I have a few subjective comments to make.

Although this graphics card differs from the similar solutions only by the larger graphics memory, we liked everything about it: box design, package, exterior looks, PCB mounting quality, software bundle. I would only like to ask Chaintech guys to include an S-Video-to-RCA converter into the package. After that it will be close to ideal :)

Highs:

• Perfect looks and box design;
• Good PCB mounting;
• Large graphics memory;
• TV-Out;
• Nice overclocking potential.

Lows:

• No S-Video-to-RCA converter.