ELSA GLoria II Quadro SDR

The Card

The ELSA GLoria II is a very compact AGP graphics card whose main components are a NVIDIA Quadro chip, hidden under the fan/heatsink, and (8) 64 Mbit Samsung (SEC) SDRAM memory chips.  Four of the memory chips are on the front side as shown in the photo below and four are on the reverse side.

The card itself adheres to the NLX form factor specification for a peripheral card, which explains its odd shape.  The layout closely resembles that of ELSA’s ERAZOR X, their SDRAM based GeForce 256 product.  Adjusting the ERAZOR X design for use with the Quadro most likely required very little effort as the Quadro/GeForce chips should be virtually interchangeable in designs.

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The notch on the lower back of the GLoria II card is for an AGP card retention latch that some motherboard vendors (i.e. Intel) have started to provide.  The card has 64 Mbytes of Single Data Rate (SDR) SDRAM on the card, which is twice the amount on the current production GeForce 256 cards.  The memory bus architecture appears to be the same as that on the GeForce 256 cards.  The RAMDAC is a 350 MHz unit and resolutions to 2048x1536 at 85 Hz at truecolor are supported. The card only supports normal analog video output and no LCD digital outputs are provided. The GLoria II supports AGP 2X/4X (AGP Spec. 2.0).  The card’s warranty is specified at 6 .

According to the GLoria II spec sheet on line at the ELSA Europe web site, the GLoria II is provided with a comprehensive software bundle:

• High-performance graphics drivers for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows 2000
• User-friendly tools in ELSA WINmanSuite
• OpenGL drivers optimized for professional graphics applications
• Dedicated applications driver for AutoCAD 2000/R14 and 3D Studio MAX/VIZ R3/2.x
• Contains software DVD player ELSAmovie