The ELSA ERAZOR III
TNT2 32Mb AGP graphic card

Monday, June 28, 1999

Introduction

Since several years now, ELSA had made of Nvidia one of its favorite graphic chipset provider. As a matter of fact, ELSA used the Riva 128 and Riva TNT graphic engines with a very good success. Thus, it's not a great surprise to see them use the TNT2 graphic engine, isn't it? Coming in several versions, the ELSA ERAZOR III TNT2 is available with Video-In & Video-Out k (TV Display & Record) (32MB Video Version Only) and with 16Mb or 32Mb of video memory in retail or OEM versions.. On the technical side, the ELSA ERAZOR III TNT2 32Mb uses a 300Mhz RAMDAC and is clocked at 125Mhz while its memory is clocked at 150Mhz. The ELSA ERAZOR III TNT2 is supporting AGP 4X as specified by Nvidia (the manufacturer of the TNT2 chipset) but this feature will not be available for as long as Intel doesn't release the Camino chipset this autumn. Until then, the ELSA ERAZOR III will remain a standard AGP 2X graphic card like any other one.



The TNT2 graphic chipset

Before to look at the ELSA EREZOR III, let's get a better idea of the Nvidia TNT2 graphic chipset by looking at its specifications:

  • Triangles/sec 9 Million
  • Pixels/sec 300 Million
  • Memory Bandwidth 2.9GB/sec
  • RAMDAC 300MHz
  • 2nd Generation 128-bit TwiN Texel architecture
  • 2 Pixels/Clock
  • 24-bit or 16-bit Z-buffer (floating point or integer)
  • 8-bit stencil buffer
  • Anti-aliasing: full scene, order independent
  • Single-pass multi-texturing
  • Optimized Direct 3D and OpenGL acceleration
  • Pentium III and K6-2/K6-3 3DNow! Optimization
  • Maximum 3D/2D resolution of 2048 x 1536
  • Complete DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL support
  • WHQL certified for Windows NT 4.0, Windows NT 3.5, Windows 98, and Windows 95 display drivers
  • 32MB frame buffer
  • 32-bit color
  • 32-bit Z/stencil buffer
  • AGP 4x/2x
  • AGP Texturing
  • Digital Flat Panel support with scaling, centering,

    The software bundle

    The software bundle coming with this graphic card seems to be the same than the ERAZOR II version as both drivers as well as drivers for several other ELSA graphic cards are included on this CD. Other than the drivers, the applications included on this CD, are: Microsoft DirectX 6, ELSA Winman suite, Microsoft Media Payer, Intel Indeo 5 media player and an offline ELSA WWW browser. There is also a directory on the CD named Elsaware where you can find and install several other application demo such as: 3DMax2, Autocad 13 and 14, Allplan, DosTools, ELSA View 3D for Win NT, Guardian, LogoCad and many other various applications to name only these ones. An Acrobat version of the users manual can also be found as well as the Acrobat Reader of course.

    The ELSA Winman suite is a very handy feature allowing you to access all of your ERAZOR III settings as well as any of your display settings. It also gives a lot of information for various parameters of your system.


    Continued on the next page with: The performance tests results


    TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

    Bus System: AGP, AGP Interface with full side band support
    Graphics Controller: NVIDIA TNT2
    Display Memory: 16MB or 32MB
    Pixel Clock: up to 300 MHz
    Video Inputs: PAL/NTSC/SECAM, (S-Video) and (Composite)
    Video Outputs: PAL/NTSC, (S-Video) and (Composite)
    Other Standards: VESA BIOS 2.0, DPMS, DDC2B, Plug and Play,VBE 2.0/3.0 supported
    Dimensions: 157 mm x 104 mm (not including the mounting bracket) Minimum System Requirement: Intel Pentium® II, AMD K6-2 or compatible CPU, 32MB RAM, one available AGP slot

    SOFTWARE SUPPORT
    • Windows® 95 & Windows® 98
      Windows® NT 3.5, 4.0 and 5.0 display drivers
    • OpenGL® (Installable-client driver)
    • DirectDraw™ Direct 3D™, DirectVideo, ActiveX, DirectX and PC98 compatible
    • Software MPEG, Software DVD (optional) Windows® 3.x display drivers
    • Open GL ICD® for Windows® 95 and Windows® NT
    • Designed to WHQL compatibility standards

    WARRANTY & SUPPORT
    • The ELSA ERAZOR III is backed by a 6 year warranty
    • On-line registration www.elsa.com
    • Technical support five days a week by phone
    • FAQs at www.elsa.com in the Support section

    Legal
    Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Pentium is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. ELSA reserves the right to change specifications without notice. All trade names referenced are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. ERAZOR and the ELSA Logo are Trademarks of ELSA AG. ©1999 All Rights Reserved.