Don't put gold rims on a Pinto
Written: May 26 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Outstanding 3D graphics for gamers, enhanced lighting effects over competitors
Cons: Need the power of a P-III quality processor 100-MHz front side bus or better
The Bottom Line: Great card if you have to power to push it; save your money if you don't and upgrade all at once.
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| prapresident's Full Review: Elsa Erazor X |
And that's what I did.
This card is a follower; much of what it can do is dictated by the machine pushing it. I've worked on computers for eleven years, including Technical Support and Information Technology at Gateway, Inc. In all my years, this is the first card I've seen that caught up with and passed it's "pushing" system technology; e.g. the system that it runs on.
My System
I run an AMD K6-2 350 on an AOpen AX59-PRO motherboard. This motherboard has a 100MHz front side bus and a 2x AGP slot to run the Elsa Erazor X. I use 196 MB of PC-100 RAM, and against my better judgement, I let windows 98SE manage my virtual memory. (I've tried it both ways with the Elsa; no difference).
What the Elsa replaced
Before, I was running an AOpen 2x 8MB PG-80 AGP 2D card alongside a Diamond Monster Voodoo II 8MB 3D card. Believe it or not, I was happier with the results of that combination than this card.
Why?
The graphics change for the better from the Elsa was limited to lighting and shadowing. What gamers want is FPS, or frames per second, to dramatically increase when we go out to buy a new 3d card. Mine did not. The way to tell is to get a program (shareware--in my case, it was included with the card) called 3D Benchmark. You can grab this at www.download.com if you don't have it already. It runs a series of 15 tests for you, and gives you the results. Well I didn't have the luxury of time to run these tests on my old setup, but I can promise you that the Elsa Erazor X didn't fare much better on these tests. And the website is confusing (we're coming at you direct from Germany) and the focus of the company seems to rest in "new" cards, not supporting older ones. So be careful.
What is at fault
Actually, this card is a high-end card that simply needs a high end system to push its capabilities. Now, as I stated, the support is weak (or the site interface as a minimum) but generally this card shouldn't NEED support. The chipguard is fantastic (mine has only alerted me once when I was running a 3D game for over 7 hours straight) and the graphics "want" to be astonishing, but you have to have the CPU speed and FSB speed to run it.
Some of the games I've played with it are Quake II, Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life, Diablo II, BeachHead 2000, CounterStrike for Half-Life, and Thief II among others. They run smoothly, but as stated, not much differently than my old AOpen/Voodoo II setup. I also recommend using DirectX 7.0a with this card until Elsa puts some serious effort into upgrading their drivers. I've had mixed results with other versions (including 8.0).
Overall, if you have a system that runs at least a 100MHz Front Side Bus, 64MB ram, and a PIII class processor at 500MHz or more, this card is a good deal. It's going for about $110.00 at your average Mom&Pop, and even cheaper at various places on the net.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 129.00
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Epinions.com ID:
prapresident
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Location: VA, USA
Reviews written: 139
Trusted by: 22 members
About Me:
Fight the power!
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