The Answer to the Bandwidth Problem (Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 Ultra)

Member Name: thepanther

Product:	Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 Ultra
Date:	09/04/01 (256 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Memory bandwidth problem solved.

Disadvantages: Very expensive.

Nvidia have taken the critics views of the GeForce 2 onboard, and all credit to them for doing so. In case you have not read my review on the Geforce 2, the problem was basically that the memory on the original geforce 2 cards was far to slow. Or to put it another way as Nvidia would prefer, the chip was just to fast for the current memory available at the moment. Ever with DDR (Double data rate) technology the memory bandwidth was simply not there. All that has changed now with the release of the Geforce 2 Ultra.

Being lucky enough to be in the computer business, I have been able to make a system with the Creative Geforce 2 Ultra and its basically awesome without question. All the top games just fly without a stutter in sight. Frame rates you good never imagine in high res are finally being hit. It is obviously still down to the chip but I give the main credit to the new memory. Nvidia was able to get hold of 4ns DDR SDRAM this put together with the new core speed of a whopping 250MHz! This card becomes seriously desired. You probably don’t need that sort of power, but that it doesn’t mean you don’t want it. Would you settle for a ford when you could have a Ferrari, even though you still only wanted to go from A to B. of course the ford will do the job as well as you could want but the Ferrari would do it with more class and style. I think for a while that will be what drives people to buy the Geforce 2 Ultra card.

The bandwidth is now 6.9Gb/s up from the previous geforce 2 card that was limited to 5Gb/s to put that into perspective the original DDR geforce had a bandwidth of 4.5Gb/s, you see how little the Geforce 2 GTS had moved up in terms of memory. The power is now released.

It is reported that ATi's Radeon cards are also suffering the same problems as the Geforce 2 GTS, Any further step in 3D Graphics technology means that the memory must get faster as well, but how much faster can it go? And how quickly can
they implement the change. Nvidia has a 6-month policy where they either bring out a new card or an improved version of their previous card.

Do you think will we see a change in memory on the 3D cards from SDRAM to something like RAMBUS memory running at 800MHz+? The price of Rambus memory is coming down so you never know.

Until then enjoy this card it IS the quickest card on the market at this time of writing. Expect to pay a large sum of money for this little beast though.

The Geforce 3 will be making its debut soon and will be around the same price range that this started out at. The Geforce 3 will be fully programmable to allow developers more freedom, it wont have any more raw speed but if you were planning on buying the Geforce 2 ultra I would hold on for the Geforce 3

Summary: