The card of unparalleled graphical might but for a price!
Written: Dec 31 '00 (Updated Jan 05 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The most powerful graphics card period (at this time, Dec 2000), VIVO add on card, 3D Revelator glasses support, constant driver updates, Currently the be all and end all of graphics cards (Dec 2000)
Cons: The ridiculously high price!
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| yusakugo's Full Review: Elsa Gladiac Ultra |
Updates
I will try to keep pricing updates on GeForce 2 Ultra boards (not just Elsa's board) for the next few months.
January 5, 2001- Creative's Annihilator 2 Ultra 64MB DDR board for $369 at www.newegg.com.
It's funny that I bought both a GTS and Ultra card from Elsa and within a week of each other. I already have computers with a GeForce 256(a PIII 650), one with a TNT card (a PII 450), and one with a GeForce 2 MX (a PIII 500). All the computers were made by Dell by the way. I had been searching through my regular sites for news on technology bargains and stumbled upon a ridiculously low price for an Elsa Gladiac Ultra 64MB card at www.dartek.com. The price was $120.19 before S&H! I quickly bought one (If I had thought about it, I should have bought a few more :) and waited to see if they would honor the price. (They had discovered the price error later that evening and put up the actual price which was $549.00) I received the card for the $120.19 price tag! So that's how I came to get a GeForce 2 GTS Ultra board... otherwise, I wouldn't have one to play with as I write this review.
Regardless, with the Ultra chipset, nVIDIA has solidified its position as the king of the graphical processor hill for 2000... at least until somebody knocks them off that hill (most likely nVIDIA will do that themselves with the NV-20 chipset). At this time (December 2000), there is no other card that comes close to the Ultra chipset in raw graphical power... absolutely nothing! That is quite a feat by nVIDIA to accomplish. Add to the fact that nVIDIA has either created a new chipset or significantly tweaked their current chipset to produce processors for new cards in no more than 6 month intervals. nVIDIA also recently bought out most of the intellectual properties and most of the hardware division of 3dfx (also causing 3dfx to fold... so no more 3dfx boards and no 3dfx board support when 2001 starts.) nVIDIA has also gained major market share in retail and OEM sectors.
So, what makes the Ultra any different than the GTS? Well, the answer is very little. The same basic graphics processor and chipset are being used in both the Ultra and GTS. The clock speed of the Ultra is a bit higher and the memory is of better quality and of higher speed.
You can take a quick look at my review of the GeForce 2 GTS chipset here
<a href= http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-7D28-3914A64A-3A4F8545-prod5 >Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS graphics card review</a>
Since this is nVIDIA best chipset (for the time being at least), it will command top dollar. The average street price is around $499 give or take $150 in either direction depending on brand and the store you buy it from (whether it be online or retail brick and mortar store). Dartek.com sells the Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 Ultra board for $549 before S&H and tax if you're in Illinois. If you are looking at this card and have the money, don't bother looking at any other chipset. This card was built for anyone with graphics intensive programs which include gamers and engineers and other people who use programs like autoCAD and the such. There really isn't any real competition to this card at a comparable price range.
At $499, what you do get?
Well, that's a bit of a problem. You get nothing extra except the board, an instruction manual, utilities for the card, and a catalog of games you can get for a special price. The catalog is near useless with the quick decrease of prices of most games. Unless a game is extremely popular (Baldur's Gate, Diablo II), the price of the game has usually dropped significantly within a three month period from the game's release date. MDK2 was a brand new game a little more than 6 months ago selling for $49+. Now it is $19.99 in the bargain bin. These prices usually beat the prices of games in Elsa's special catalog.
The Ultra card has the same 2nd generation T&L engine, the same ability to utilize Elsa's 3D Revelator Glasses, add on slot for the VIVO (Video In and Video Out) add on card (it's the same card for the GTS), needs an AGP slot and is compatible with 2x and 4x AGP, supports up to 2048x1536 with 32-bit color, and supports FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) with a performance hit (although the raw speed and power of the card makes this less of an issue).
What is different is the speed of the processor, which is 250MHz (up from 200MHz from the GTS), and the memory. The memory is now 64MB DDR SDRAM with 4ns access time and running at an effective speed of 460MHz (230MHz DDR SDRAM). The GTS I believe is running 5.5 ns 32MB DDR (or 64MB DDR depending on card configuration) at 166MHz which has an effective speed of 333MHz. These two changes give the card is rather large boost in power (especially the memory more than the processor speed increase).
I believe is card is overclockable but then again, I'm not the right person to ask. Again, look at stevelarrison's review about overclocking.
Again, I don't do numbers testing with graphics card since I'm not familiar with the programs and not entirely sure what all the numbers mean. I usually go with site information from www.tomsharware.com, www.firingsquad.com, and www.eVGA.com (a store with many nVIDIA article links) to name a few. With my most powerful system (a PIII 650 with 512 MB of RAM), I don't notice any major differences from a GTS board except at high resolution. Otherwise, the Ultra is overkill for my use of the computer. Oh well, at least Ultima IX is now animating smoothly and playable (this is the only game I had where there was some improvement over the GTS board).
My Verdict
A great card for sure, but with one reservation. Price! I can think of many other ways to spend $400-$600 other than on a graphics card. For less than $200, you can get a GTS board. For about $100, you can get a MX or Radeon board. Unless you truly desire this much graphical power or you just have the money to burn, I can't really recommend this card because of the extremely high price. Heck, the price of the Ultra can buy a brand new Celeron computer! On top of that, nVIDIA plans to release an even more powerful chipset in Spring 2001 that demolishes the GeForce 2 Ultra card (I'll believe it when I see it). So this card is due for some major price cuts in the near feature. In my case, I was extremely lucky. I doubt anyone will find this card for under $150 anytime in the next year to year and a half. I would tell you to got back to my GTS and read that review and some of the other Elsa Gladiac reviews and think about that board instead. Despite the awesome graphical abilities of this card, I can not justify paying that much money for any graphics card. Save your money for later when the Ultra price drops or just buy a GTS board and overclock that.
Here are my GeForce 2 MX reviews
<a href= http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-7D36-4A8EBFD-39D2D552-prod1 >Guillemot 3D Prophet II MX</a>
<a href= http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-7B-161CB3DA-39D40165-prod2 >Elsa Gladiac MX</a>
I am also creating a Savings page with links to get discounts and information of where to find the hottest technology deals. I should have it up soon so please be patient.
Update on the pricing for only January 2001!
Because of the pricing fiasco at Dartek.com where the Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 Ultra card was priced at $120.19, dartek canceled nearly all but the early orders for this card. Only a few very lucky people who ordered very early on Dec 28, 2000 got the order filled before Dartek.com found out about the pricing error. Dartek.com as an apology will sell the Ultra card at their bulk purchasing price (i.e. they supposedly will make no profit on the card) of $489 with slight variation depending of the cost their supplier sells the Ultra card to them. This price is only good for the month of January 2001! After this, the price goes back to $549. This is still a very good price for the Ultra card if you are looking for it (still expensive for a graphics card). I can't blame them for not honoring the price of $120.19, I was pretty sure that the at cost price of the card was at least in the $350 ballpark to begin with. Dartek.com is an old catalog (20 years) and e-tailer (last couple of years) but doesn't have the money reserves like Dell and others. I mention this because the same problem occurred at Dell where the price of a Pentium III 800MHz (I think) desktop for one or two weeks was in the $600 (much below Dell's regular selling price) and canceled thousands of orders. The story was covered in News.com and many customers complained to Dell and other news sources. Dell honored the below cost price a few days afterwards (to build customer goodwill and also because they had the cash reserves to support that move). Dartek.com doesn't have that kind of cash reserve and from what I've heard, had at least 5000 orders for the Ultra. If their at cost price is correct, they would lose $350 per card sold. If each of the 5000 orders only had 1 Ultra card for order, the loss to Dartek.com would have been $1,750,000. Something I'm pretty sure this e-tailer couldn't afford.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): look in review details
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yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
Reviews written: 399
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Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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