Geeee.... IT's got the FORCE
Written: Nov 18 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: awesome performance, user friendly
Cons: it's aging too fast
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| maciek's Full Review: Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator |
I bought my Annihilator back in March 2000, together with the rest of my current system. It's found a comfortable place in the AGP slot of my mainboard and runs @ 100 MHz, accompanied by my pIII 550, 192 MB RAM and 30,6 GB drive.
I have the Annihilator PRO, which is supplied with the renown DDR memory, that boosts the card's performance to a level noticeably higher that the one of the regular Annihilator's. Choosing the PRO version is a good way to spend some extra money.
As usual in my opinions I will now present the strengths and weaknesses of this product.
The pros:
- performance/price ratio; back in beginning of the year there was nothing that could beat the Annihilator in this respect. Back then the $300 would hardly get you anything better in terms of picture quality and speed. Now it's a different story.
- picture quality; the quality of games is incomparable to anything I have seen before. Colors are bright and live, the lines are fine. Picture is clear and very crisp. And oh, did I mention all the special effects like the advanced T&L (transform and lightning) engine (requires DirectX) or bump-mapping?
- power; back then it was unquestionably the fastest piece of graphics hardware for this kind of money could get you. But life likes to surprise you, and so do game manufacturers. There's no way that your hardware is going to keep up with their pace. Those software and graphics magicians will always come up with something that'll make your system choke. Once I found a full screen bump-mapping demo on the Net I started to treat the GeForce with less awe. It wasn't able to produce more than a frame per second. But hey it was a 32bit color, 1280x1024, 3D object. The machine had lots to process, so I can understand. But when it comes to regular gaming (let's be honest professionals use much better cards than the GeForce) the card performs marvelously. In the Unreal Tournament I manage to get over 60 fps in 1280x1024 in 16 bit color (no use going into 32 bit color as there's hardly any difference). That's more than enough. What's more interesting this figure remains virtually constant even in the middle of a fierce battle with all the lights and flares all over the screen. Even with 10 bots you're looking at over 40 fps.
- compatibility; despite what I have heard from friends and read in the reviews I have never experienced any problems with my card. Every game I tried to run cooperated with my card showing no signs of any sort of conflict. I have never experienced any lock-ups or hang-ups, no game has ever refused to run. So from my point of view this is a very strong advantage of this card.
- user friendliness; this card is as easy to install and use as it gets. You simply put the card into the AGP slot and that's basically it. Once you turn your system back on Windows will (mostly likely, you never know... it's Windows after all....) detect the card and install its drivers either the ones the card comes with or the ones you have previously downloaded from the net (I recommend doing the latter). You simply reboot once again and then you're ready to go. Can it get simpler than that?
Now the weakness:
- aging; the card is getting old pretty fast. I only had it for a couple of months and they announced a newer GeForce 2. Today there is a number of new versions: GF2 Ultra, GF2 GTS and the latest GF2 MX (a value version for those who are not willing to pay $500 for the Ultra). nVIDIA will not make us wait too long before they come up with ever newer successors of the original GeForce.
That's it. No more bad sides as the one mentioned above tells quite everything which means the card will have more and more difficulties coping with ever newer games and applications. I suppose there's a sort of a secret agreement between game and gaming hardware manufacturers. The former make ever more demanding software. The latter make ever faster hardware. And so the business goes well for both sides. And us, poor gamers, only have to look deeper and deeper into our pockets for those extra dollars to buy what we need.
To conclude: the Creative's Annihilator PRO will continue to deliver astonishing performance over the next few years (or so I hope). So if you can't afford the GF2 this is the best choice for you.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
maciek
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Member: Maciek Winnicki
Location: Warsaw, Poland
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 8 members
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