by FastSite
10/16/2001 | 12:00 AM
Although the story of VisionTek Company started in 1988, many people consider it a relatively young member of the graphics community. And it is not for nothing, actually. For a long time no retail products from this company (namely the boxes with graphics cards) appeared in the market, even though the company had production capacities in the US. Only recently, in early 2001, when VisionTek working closely with NVIDIA turned out one of the first to launch GeForce3 based graphics cards, its popularity started growing.<%BANNER[article]%>
Some time ago, graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce3 from American VisionTek Company were the first to enter the graphics market, and this time VisionTek prepared us another pleasant surprise. First of all, its products have finally acquired their name instead of the faceless "VisionTek GeForce3". And secondly, VisionTek cards are the first mass products based on NVIDIA Titanium solutions, which we managed to get hold of.
The new graphics cards family from VisionTek based on NVIDIA Titanium chips is called Xtasy and its members differ by the numeric indexes: Xtasy 6964 is based on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500, Xtasy 6564 - on GeForce3 Ti 200 and Xtasy 5864 - on GeForce2 Ti.
The box with VisionTek Xtasy 6964 boasts a very original design: there are a lot of rising hands painted on it, so to tell the truth, we can hardly guess what the whole thing means :) But, anyway, we liked the design very much as it doesn't follow the standard cliches and the non-edgy border of the image goes very well with NVIDIA Ti 500 logo:
The box with this graphics card as those with the other Xtasy ones we are going to open today, doesn't contain too many things. The package includes the user's manual and two CDs with the drivers and software DVD-player.
The graphics card follows accurately the Ti 500 reference design, which we have already described in our NVIDIA Titanium Graphics Cards Family Review. As you remember, it is slightly different from the regular NVIDIA GeForce3:
The card is based on the regular NVIDIA GeForce3 rev. A05 chip:
Unlike the reference card equipped with 3.5ns graphics memory, VisionTek Xtasy 6964 features 3.8ns memory by ESMT:
We believe that many graphics card manufacturers will follow VisionTek's example and will equip their solution based on GeForce3 Ti 500 with 3.8ns graphics memory, to reduce their cost, because these microchips support a wide range of working frequencies up to 526MHz (263MHz DDR), which allows clocking it at 500MHz (250MHz DDR) easily.
The core and the memory of VisionTek Xtasy 6964 work at 240MHz and 500MHz (250MHz DDR) respectively.
There are blue heatsinks stuck to the graphics memory chips. They look very stylish as they are of the same color as the VGA-connector. The core is equipped with a heatsink and a cooler of the same blue color, which are placed onto a thin layer of thermal paste and fastened to the card with special pins:
All VisionTek Xtasy graphics card feature this kind of cooling, even though the cards based on NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro do not usually have memory cooling, as the memory there works at 200MHz. This way, NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200 based graphics cards may do without the memory heatsinks as well, because their memory works at 200MHz, however, VisionTek still provided these solutions with memory heatsinks. Of course, it will do the cards only good, as it may greatly increase the overclocking potential of the memory chips.
But, let's return to VisionTek Xtasy 6964. This graphics card is provided with a TV- and DVI-Outs. The image is encoded into TV-formats by the widely spread BT868 chip from Conexant, which doesn't support Macrovision write protection technology, unlike Bt869:
The image display via DVI is done by Sil165CT64 TMDS-transceiver from Silicon Image:
VisionTek Xtasy 6564 graphics card is packed into a similar looking box:
It is absolutely identical to the NVIDIA GeForce3 reference design:
It is equipped with the same NVIDIA GeForce3 rev. A05 core. Feel free to compare this pic with the one we have already put above:
And as for the graphics memory, it is slower than in the previous case. The card is equipped with 64MB 5ns memory from Hynix (former Hyundai):
VisionTek Xtasy 6564 features layout and spots for both: DVI and TV-Out, however, it has only the latter. The TV signal is encoded into TV-standards by the same Conexant Bt868 chip as on VisionTek Xtasy 6964.
The core of VisionTek Xtasy 6564 works at 175MHz and the memory at 400MHz (200MHz DDR).
This is the youngest brother in the VisionTek Xtasy family:
The card is based on the GeForce2 Ultra reference design:
However, the GeForce2 Ti core put onto VisionTek Xtasy 5864 isn't marked with either "Ultra" or "Ti", although it also has a metal lid like GeForce2 Ultra:
The card is equipped with the same memory as VisionTek Xtasy 6564, namely with 5ns memory chips from Hynix:
It is also provided with a TV-Out implemented via Conexant Bt868 chip. This time it is put onto a daughter card, however:
The card working frequencies comply with NVIDIA's official specs and equal 250MHz for the core and 400MHz (200MHz DDR) for the memory.
Now that we have already got acquainted with VisionTek Xtasy family, we suggest checking what their performance is worth. Let's go!
The tests were run on the following system:
We used the following software and benchmarks:
We used Detonator XP driver version 21.85 for Windows98.
Try to guess what was the first question we asked ourselves when we got our hands on the first mass NVIDIA Titanium graphics cards? Of course, the first thing we longed to do was to find out their overclocking potential!
To estimate whether the cards work stably at higher frequencies we decided to run the complete 3DMark2001 set in all resolutions. The cards were tested with their authentic cooling. However, bearing in mind that every true overclocker will definitely take care of some extra cooling inside the PC case, we placed a standard 80mm fan 10cm far from the graphics cards to imitate this kind of air flow.
So, here are the results we obtained:
Well, what can we say here? Look, both Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500) and Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) showed overclockability typical of GeForce3. It means that Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500) and Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) are most likely to feature the same NVIDIA GeForce3 chips onboard. That is why the overclocking potential of the Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500) already working at higher frequencies appeared not very high, to put it mildly. While Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200), which nominal frequency is lower than that of GeForce3, overclocked just impressively, which isn't at all surprising.
As for the graphics memory overclockability, it appeared quite predictable: 560MHz is a typical top for GeForce3 based graphics cards with 3.8ns memory chips. 440MHz-460MHz obtained on Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) and Xtasy 5864 (GeForce2 Ti) are really good results for 5ns memory with the nominal frequency of 400MHz.
Here we can also add that if the graphics card manufacturers use normally working GeForce3 chips on their GeForce3 Ti 200 solutions and equip their cards with high-quality memory chips, like VisionTek did, then overclocking Ti 200 will let us get a card faster than NVIDIA GeForce3. You should also bear in mind that NVIDIA GeForce3 architecture is much better balanced than that of GeForce2. Therefore, overclocking the core on GeForce3 Ti 200 based cards will grant a much higher performance increase compared to that on GeForce2 GTS/Pro/Ultra/Ti.
Well, now it's high time we paid a bit more attention to the performance of our today's heroes. To test our graphics cards we took Quake3 Arena v.127 and 3DMark2001. In Quake3 Arena the image quality was set to the maximum, tri-linear filtering and texture compression were enabled. The tests were run in demo127 included into 1.27 patch. As for 3DMark2001, the cards were tested in two different modes: with 16bit color, 16bit textures and 16bit Z-buffer, and with 32bit color, 32bit textures and 24bit Z-buffer.
To test VisionTek Xtasy graphics cards we didn't take 800x600, because in this mode the CPU limits the performance of fast cards like these. In 1024x768 the performance difference between the testing participants was also hardly noticeable sometimes. For the same reason in the gaming benchmarks of 3DMark2001 we tested only in High Detail mode.
Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500) appeared a bit faster than GeForce3, and Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) - a bit slower. However, overclocked Xtasy 6564 easily beats GeForce3 and comes close to Xtasy 6964 working at the nominal frequencies.
As for Xtasy 5864 (GeForce2 Ti), it falls behind more progressive Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200), even though the latter boasts lower working frequencies.
As we have expected, the highest performance growth belongs to Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200). In fact, it would be much easier for you to see the performance growth provided by every card on the following graphs:
This gaming test includes the calculation of the objects physics and movements as well as some randomness. Therefore, the results of the tests even repeated in absolutely similar conditions will differ a bit greater. So, the whole picture is not that illustrative here.
There are no hidden rocks here and the cards show very clear results: first comes Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500), then follows Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) and the last one appears Xtasy 5864 (GeForce2 Ti).
In 1024x768 the performance of Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500), GeForce3 and overclocked Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200) is limited by the system CPU that is why the performance difference can be seen only starting from 1280x1024.
Xtasy 5864 is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti chip that is why it didn't go through this benchmark. All the other cards lined up in size order starting from 1024x768. In other words, pixel and vertex shaders of this benchmark can load quite heavily even an overclocked Xtasy 6964 (GeForce3 Ti 500), not to mention Xtasy 6564 (GeForce3 Ti 200).
VisionTek graphics cards boast excellent 2D image quality. We estimated it using Samsung SyncMaster 900 IFT and Hitachi CM776ET monitors.
Here please take note that 2D image quality as well as overclocking potential are individual features of each graphics card, so they can differ by different graphics card pieces.
We can state that VisionTek took the best components for its Xtasy graphics card family and made high-quality and beautifully designed products.
Xtasy 6964 showed brilliant performance though its overclocking potential wasn't that high.
Xtasy 6564 boasted great overclockability due to high-quality graphics memory and "proper" NVIDIA GeForce3 core. And now we can only hope that all other graphics card makers will follow VisionTek's example here.
Xtasy 5864 works at higher frequencies than Xtasy 6564, however, it was totally defeated by the latter, as Xtasy 6564 is built on a more advanced chip. Therefore, we wouldn't dare make any definite forecasts about the popularity of Xtasy 5864 solution. Anyway, the lower gets the graphics card cost, the higher rises its popularity, so VisionTek has a good chance to make Xtasy 5864 a popular product.
Highs:
Lows: