Good but a bit fuzzy in very high 2D resolutions
Written: Apr 10 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Blazingly fast, good & stable driver pool, supports 3D glasses
Cons: Picture fuzzy in high resolutions and high refresh rates
The Bottom Line: Delivers what you expect, 3D performance is great. Unfortunately, image quality in 2D is not top of the line for very high resolutions like 1600x1200.
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| d_gently's Full Review: Elsa Gladiac Ultra |
I recently upgraded from a now quite old Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra to the Gladiac Ultra (Geforce2 Ultra).
My basic intention was to get a Geforce2 Ultra card. Since the Elsa's price had already dropped (after Geforce3 release) I went for the Elsa. According to many reviews I read, all of the cards (at that point) are near exact copies of the Nvidia reference board. So it doesn't really matter what which one you choose (my girl friend would most likely argue that my choice was influenced by me being German).
Since I already had the latest NVIDIA drivers installed (TNT, TNT2, Geforce & Geforce2 all use the same driver) upgrading my system was simple. I switched to the Elsa drivers (which are slightly modified Nvidia drivers) afterwards since you have a bit more control over your settings.
You can read all about the 3D performance of this card on countless web sites and these people are more qualified than me to say something about it. Ergo, I won't bore you with the stuff here and as I said before all of the Geforce2 Ultra cards are pretty much the same.
Another important point that is most frequently missed is the picture quality of the cards for simple 2D usage. My monitor (a 19" Sony CPD-G400) can display 1600x1200 at 85Hz and I used to use that resolution on my old card but at 75Hz. The picture quality was great. Crisp clean cut pixels. When switching to that resolution on my new Elsa but at 85Hz things were quite fuzzy. Well, that could be the monitor, I thought. Unfortunately, after switching down to 75Hz the picture was still not as clear as the one I was used to. Tweeking the monitor settings didn't bring much improvement. After trying a couple other things (like switching back to Nvidia drivers) I gave up and increased the font size in my terminal windows and web browsers. Now the blur is not so noticeable anymore.
The problems with the image quality only occur at very high resolutions greater 1280x1024. 1280x1024 and below are crisp and clear (as expected).
My final conclusion is. The Elsa definitely satisfies my childish playing needs but I am disappointed with the 2D image quality. This is my reason for giving it a three star rating only. It is average in it's class (of Geforce2 Ultra cards). I'd recommend it to everyone not trying to work in 1600x1200.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 345
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Epinions.com ID:
d_gently
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Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Geek who likes to eat well.
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