Superb quality and magnificent performance
Written: Jun 25 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: You get what you pay for (amazing performance)
Cons: You pay for what you get (a wee bit expensive)
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| puter's Full Review: Elsa GLADIAC, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
Unfortunately, I do not actually own a Gladiac myself. However, I did have one for about a week when a friend of mine had me perform a major hardware upgrade on his system, and one word pretty much sums up my reaction to the performance of this card: "Wow!"
The Elsa Gladiac was the first GeForce 2 GTS card on the market, but it still delivers top-of-the-line performance when compared with other GeForce 2 cards that have been released more recently.
The Gladiac comes with several demos from Nvidia that demonstrate the capabilities of the onboard texturing and lighting (T&L) effects. One of the most impressive demos is the "reflecting pool." In this demo, there is a little ball of light hanging from a string above a pool of water. You can create ripples in the water, as well as move the ball around and dip it into the water. The most amazing part about this demo is that the rendering (including light reflections on the surface of the water) is performed in real-time, and still runs at around 60 FPS on a 600 MHz Athlon. The same demo runs at around 20 FPS with the Gladiac on a 400 MHz K6-III. Just for comparison, I also tried running the GeForce 2 demos on my computer (the K6-III 400) with my Diamond Viper V550 16 MB, and obtained 1 to 2 FPS in the reflecting pool demo. The other demos either barely ran or didn't run at all on my machine.
As you may already know, the "GTS" stands for "Giga-Texel Shading," meaning that the card can output 1,000,000,000 texels per second. The card can theoretically pump out 1.6 gigatexels per second, but it is probably unlikely that you would approach that figure under most circumstances. Still, the image quality is magnificent, and the performance is unparalleled.
There are certainly some downsides to this card, however. First of all, the price is a little bit steep for many people. Most 32 MB GeForce 2 cards cost $250 to $300 right now, and the newly-released 64 MB cards cost an additional $100 or so. Secondly, you'll want to make certain that your computer has enough horsepower to drive the video card. My K6-III 400 was obviously choking the performance of the card when I ran benchmarks, because the Gladiac actually performed slightly worse, overall, than my Viper V550 (except, of course, in the demos that made use of the Gladiac's onboard T&L). This may have actually had more to do with the Riva TNT's mature drivers vs. the Gladiac's relatively new drivers, however. (I used Nvidia's revision 522 reference drivers for both cards.) In short, anyone who already has a decent gaming machine but craves more performance--and happens to have $300 just lying around--would benefit from the Elsa Gladiac. I'd probably recommend at least a 600 MHz Athlon or Pentium !!! (haha) to really get your money's worth out of this card, but I've read that not even a machine with a 1 GHz processor pushes the card to its limits.
My friend actually chose the Gladiac over the other GeForce 2 GTS cards for a couple of reasons. First, the Gladiac comes with a much better software bundle than the others. Originally, the software bundle included two Elsa screen savers, your choice of two free games (full versions, not demos), and the option to buy up to three additional full-version games at "insanely cheap" prices. Recently, Elsa stopped including the two free games, but you may still buy up to three games at very low prices. There are 12 games to choose from; you can check them out at <a href= http://select.etoll.com/elsa/software >http://select.etoll.com/elsa/software</a>. My friend also chose the Gladiac because of its proven performance and its widespread availability. The setup he replaced was an S3 ViRGE 2 MB and a Canopus Pure3D (3dfx Voodoo Graphics 6 MB). Needless to say, he likes the new setup. :-) One final good thing about this card is that Elsa stands behind it all the way with a 6-year warranty.
The Gladiac, unlike some other GeForce 2 cards, does not come in the box with TV-out, because that was one of the features they had to skip in order to get the card out on the market weeks ahead of the competition. However, Elsa will have a daughtercard available for the Gladiac, which will allow video-in and video-out. In addition, the Gladiac is compatible with Elsa's 3D Revelator glasses, though I have not yet used the glasses myself.
Overall, the Gladiac delivers about the same performance as all other GeForce 2 GTS cards, but according to professional hardware reviews, the Gladiac can be overclocked higher than the competition's cards--as if it really needs to be overclocked. ;-) If you're a die-hard 3dfx fan, then by all means go ahead and buy a Voodoo5, because it supposedly delivers comparable performance but without the onboard T&L. If you're already planning on buying a GeForce 2 GTS, then the only thing you need to really think about is which card comes with the extras that you prefer most. Some cards come with hardware monitors, others come with software bundles, and yet other cards skip the frills in order to be sold at a lower price.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
puter
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Member: Rob
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 5 members
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