Pure power in one small card!!!! (Elsa Gladiac 920)

Member Name: flymo

Product:	Elsa Gladiac 920
Date:	07/06/01 (140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: FSAA at high speed, Vertex and Pixel shading., Power!!!!!!!!!!!

Disadvantages: price, No real games for it. , Bottlenecks on slower CPU.

This card has been long overdue for release and finally it's started to dribble out shipments.

After having a great time with a Voodoo 5 5500AGP card i knew that the essence in major gaming was becoming more power hungry.
Frame rates are now a key figure in having a system capable of delivering your graphical needs. My V5 was getting left behind by the power of the Geforce GPU systems.

The new games incorporating Direct3d and OpenGL need something with performance capabilites that put lower cards to shame. The Geforce 2 Ultra has been the leading card for a long time and reached its peak a few months ago.

The gaming community has been anticipating the Geforce3 for a while and after sorting out chip problems, nVidia finally released the chips to card producers.

One of the first cards to reach our shops is the Elsa Gladiac 920. Elsa, well known for producing quality hardware in many forms, inc graphics cards and modems, have one hell of a package here.

The card is smaller than a GF2ultra with a nice heatsink with fan on the GPU and heatsinks on the DDR ram. Nice looking but thats only for the lover of an open case PC.
The card is as easy to install as any other, slotting straight in with no problems. The package includes: card, tv-out wire, Giants game(GF3 version), DVD software playable on the TV-out, Demos, drivers version 11 and 3dMark2001 Pro. Also on the cover of the box is a holographic mouse mat(watch out all intellimouse optical users it sends it funny).

Straight away you will not notice much difference if you are an average gamer but those who look with a fine eye will.
The major usage of the card wont be utilized till there are DX8 games available to use them. At the moment thought you have the FSAA which can be played at 2x or 4x with no real hinderance in your games speed. The Quincunx FSAA is top quality but hinders more on performance.

The added support and effects of pixe
l and vertex shading make some games look really good with great realism becoming more possible and gives you an idea of future gaming. TV-Out is easy and looks great, you have 800x600 available to your TV.
A note though to people looking to buy one, it would be best to have a 800mhz plus CPU if you want to use it to its full ability, because anything lower decreases the speed throughput. This is the best card i have seen for a while and my games have been re-vitalised by it. The price can be off putting but if you can afford one, get one! Any GF2Ultra owners may wait a while until games are limited by your card, but until then there is no real need to upgrade.

I would recommend this card to the hardcore right now and then for anyone wanting the best.

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