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Inno3D Tornado GeForce 2 Ultra in the test: Price drop of the GeForce 2

Inno3D Tornado GeForce 2 Ultra in the test: Price drop of the GeForce 2

Foreword

Innovision, a still little known manufacturer of graphics cards from Hong Kong, has made the Inno3D Tornado GeForce 2 Ultra available to us. Inno3D is perhaps already a household name here in Germany, as they were the first to introduce a GeForce2 MX PCI and a graphics card with a Kyro chipset. The Inno3D Tornado GeForce2 Ultra is the current top model from Inno3D until the delivery of the Tornado GeForce3, which will appear in the next few weeks. As you can see in the picture, the Inno3D Tornado GeForce2 Ultra corresponds exactly to nVidia's reference design. 4ns DDR RAM from Elite is hidden under the green heat sinks. This is where the GeForce 2 Ultra stands out from the GTS and the Pro, as the higher specification and the associated heat development of the Ultra variant mean that a larger graphics chip fan and heat sink for the graphics memory are unavoidable>

Front
backside

Scope of delivery

The scope of delivery of the Inno3D Tornado GeForce2 Ultra is very generous held. The software is next to a CD with tools andDrivers and nVidia 3D Demo also include 3DMark2000 Pro, Adobe Photo Deluxe Home Edition, WinDVD2000 as well as Rage Rally and Midnight GT. As a nice bonus you also get a nice original Innovision mousepad. Only the optional TV output module is not included in the scope of delivery, but is available separately.

Technical data

Comparison of the different graphics chips
Performance data GeForce2 GTS GeForce2 Pro GeForce2 Ultra manufacturing process 0.18µm 0.18µm 0.18µm rendering pipelines 4 4 4 texture units 2 2 2 chip clock 200 MHz 200 MHz 250 MHz memory clock 333 MHz 400 MHz 460 MHz memory interface DDR DDR DDR memory bandwidth 5.3 GB/s 6, 4 GB/s 7.3 GB/s Memory bus 128Bit 128Bit 128Bit Memory access 5.5ns 5ns 4ns Pixel filling rate 800 MPixel/s 800 MPixel 1000 MPixel/s Texel filling rate 1600 MTexel/s 1800 MTexel/s 2000 MTexel/s Polygon/sec 25 million 27 million 31 million power consumption 9W 9W 9W

TV output

With the TV output of the Tornado GeForce2 Ultra, which, as already mentioned, is not included in the scope of delivery of the card, a well-known problem arose: The Broktree 869 chip has been used on the nVidia reference design for some time. But unfortunately this is only poorly supported by the driver, neither with the Detonator 6.50 nor with the 11.01 was a good TV picture possible. But thank goodness there is still the TV tool , with which an excellent picture could be achieved.

To point out again, the problem with the driver and the TV Output support is the case with many GeForce cards and does not only apply to the Tornado GeForce2 Ultra.

Test configuration

  • Software
    • Windows 98SE
    • DirectX 8.0a
    • Detonator 6.50
    • Detonator 11.01
  • Hardware
    • Abit KT7-Raid
    • 950MHz Athlon (9.5x100MHz)
    • 256MB RAM (2x128MB)
    • Western Digital WD400BB
    • Guillemot Maxisound Fortissimo
    • Hewlett Packard CD Writer 8100
    • Logitech Cordless Desktop I-Touch
    • Unex network card ND010
  • Test cards
    • Inno3D Tornado GeForce2 Ultra
      • GeForce2 Ultra
      • 64MB Graphics memory
    • Asus V6800
      • GeForce256 DDR
      • 32MB graphics memory

You can almost say on purpose that this time the comparison was not made with an equivalent graphics card, but with the Asus V6800 DDR and a GeForce256 DDR, the fastest available graphics card around a year ago A little over a year ago almost as expensive as a GeForce2 Ultra is today, but at least the Ge Force256 DDR cards even faster than the GeForce2MX cards that are almost standard equipment today. With today's high-end graphics cards, if you compare the GeForce2 Ultra cards with each other, you will only notice a few percent performance difference.

On the next page: Benchmarks