Written
: 6/28/2000
Written by:
MotoŽ
Price: $299.00US
Manufactured by:
Creative Labs
Creative uses a very simple marketing strategy to sell
video cards. It goes something like this; Take the hottest video chipset on the
market, make a video card out of it using the reference design to save some
money on R&D, sell the card for less than the competition.
Creative applied this strategy to the creation of the
Annihilator 2 to a tee. The Creative Annihilator 2 uses the GeForce2 GTS chipset
from nVidia, currently the fastest 3D chipset for the consumer market, loaded it
up with 32 megs of DDR RAM, priced it $50 below the next less expensive GeForce2
GTS card and voila! Instant hit!
At first glance the Annihilator 2 looks just like an Elsa
Gladiac. On second glance the Annihilator 2 looks just like an Elsa Gladiac.
Same for the third and fourth glance. Except for a few stickers here and there,
you can't tell the two cards apart. If I was to remove all the stickers from the
two cards, you wouldn't be able to tell which is which (unless you know the Elsa
has "REV B" written on its PCB).
This Gladiac sure looks a lot like the Annihilator2.
For a list price of $299.00 you don't get much of a
software bundle. As a matter of fact, there is no software bundle! Just the
drivers and some demos that everyone has seen or downloaded a long time ago.
Then again, Creative is selling their card cheaper than any one else so I guess
we can cut them some slack.
Unlike the Elsa Gladiac I reviewed last month, the
Creative Annihilator 2 comes with a nicely printed 24 page manual, instead of a
double sided pieces of paper like what Elsa did.
To keep cost down the Annihilator 2 doesn't come with any
fancy features like TV out, video in or 3D Glasses. It's just an insanely fast
video card meant for gamers who want the fastest speed and best graphic quality.
Most of the new found speed comes from the new GeForce2 GTS chip. The chip is
based on a .18u process rather than the older .22u used in the old GeForce 256.
By reducing the die size the chip runs cooler, thereby allowing it to running at
higher clock speeds.
The Creative Annihilator 2 runs its core at 200Mhz as per
nVidia recommendation. The DDR RAM runs at 333Mhz. The combination of the two
gives the Annihilator 2 a nice speed advantage over any non GeForce2 video
cards.
With a street price of $299 (you can find it for less
here), the Annihilator 2, while being the cheapest of the GeForce2 GTS
cards, is still among the most expensive video cards you can buy. No matter how
you cut it, $299 is a lot of money to pay for a video card. However, for that
price, you do get one of the fastest off the shelf game video card money can
buy.
Next page: Taking a closer look
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