It Doesn't Have To Be Ti: Abit's Siluro GeForce3 Vio
The recent popular fascination with ATI's Radeon 8500 has created a serious threat to Nvidia's supremacy. Nvidia's response is to replace their GeForce2 and GeForce3 models with slightly modified versions, and give them the attractive Titanium suffix 'Ti'. The intention was to make everybody believe the Titanium chips would be significantly better. However, regardless of the newer-and-cooler name, there is nothing really exciting behind this - Nvidia simply combined the release of a new and considerably faster driver version (the Detonator 4) with a slight modification of their GeForce3 chip.
While the GeForce3 Ti500 is definitely faster because of a faster chip clock (240 instead of 200 MHz) and a slightly increased memory clock, the Ti200 comes with reduced clock speeds (only 175 MHz core / 200 MHz memory), which makes it resemble the less interesting GeForce3 product. The GeForce3, as we know it, is destined to vanish, and that's why the prices for these cards, unadorned by the fancy "Titanium" title, could drop considerably.
If you can live with that, you will be very happy with a GeForce3 model like Abit's Siluro GeForce3 Vio - it doesn't carry the fancy name Ti, but it comes with lots of interesting features. Obviously, Abit also seems to believe that the "normal" GeForce3 will not be outdated as soon as Nvidia would like it to be.
