Houston, we have lift-off (or is that a problem?)!
Written: May 14 '01 (Updated May 29 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sizzling graphics performance and stunning realism.
Cons: Stability issues on SS7 mainboards.
The Bottom Line: For the best graphics performance for the money, this card is worth it.
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| solrosinberg's Full Review: Elsa GLADIAC, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
After much waiting and putting it off, I decided to upgrade my video card from a Voodoo 3 3500 to the Elsa Gladiac with the Geforce 2 GTS chipset and 32 MB DDR RAM. I have been impressed by this card's performance, however it does take a little tweaking to get working.
My System (the test lab...)
The system upon which this is being ran is currently an AMD K6/2 450 on a MSI MS-5169 mainboard. The hard drive is a Maxtor 30 GB drive (7200 RPM spin speed, dualwave twin processors, and Ultra ATA/100) hooked to a Promise Ultra66 (I haven't upgraded that yet). I am running a Sound Blaster Live sound card as well as a F=Ma 10/100 ethernet card. The system has 256 MB PC133 RAM in it as well.
Performance to spare
Although I have not tried it using Win ME (which is SUPPOSED to improve overall system performance), its performance in Windows 98 SE has more than impressed me. The quality of its detail and speed have definitely made this card worth what I paid for it. I can run Quake 3 in 1024x768 resolutions with high detail, and only experience lags in some of the high triangle areas (this I believe is more of a processor problem than one of the video card). The detail of the textures is stunning to say the least. A sample screenshot may be found at http://members.nbci.com/solrosinberg/shot0016.jpg and http://members.nbci.com/solrosinberg/shot0002.jpg (the second screenshot is Nvidia Bunker...which of COURSE will look nice). I never knew the pylons in the end level reflected like that. Unreal Tournament is another game which has definitely improved in image quality due to this card.
Hark! Tis the sound of a crash!
This card has one minor problem, and I don't believe it's the card itself. For some odd reason, if the drivers are not thrown into a Super Socket 7 compatibility mode, the system will lock up terribly. After searching web resources as well as Geforce FAQ's, I found a registry tweak which enabled this mode and definitely took care of the crashing problem. This was quite obscure and if I was not determined do-or-die to make it work, this card would have been going back. Be wary if you try to use this card on a Super Socket 7 system, as that you may need to find this registry patch ahead of time.
*UPDATE*
You may not need Super 7 Compatibility mode...it appears it was just the upgrading of my AGP driver that actually fixed it. I disabled the Super 7 Compatibility mode last night to see if I had changed too many things at once, and it seems to work without Super7Compat enabled. In case you have any large amounts of problems, however, still look to that as an option.
Driver Caveats
One thing that I noticed with the upgrade to the Detonator 3 driver was that after having major problems with Blood 2:The Chosen, it seemed to fix all of the problems I had with it. Apparently the new Nvidia reference driver fixes MANY bugs, so be sure to always get the newest Nvidia reference driver instead of relying on Elsa's driver support (laughable).
Overall impressions
The Elsa Gladiac is a good card, just with some poorly written drivers. Experimenting with several options is always the key to making any piece of hardware work, and this one is no exception to that rule. Aside from one minor caveat with the system crashing until I installed the appropriate AGP driver, this card is one of the best I have seen since the original Geforce 256 (which also had problems on my system, however even after installing the AGP driver).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 240.80
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Epinions.com ID:
solrosinberg
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Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 2 members
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