For the person who wants speed and great
visual quality without any fancy TV out, video in, 3D glasses or any of that
other stuff, the Elsa Gladiac is as good as it gets. This card is super fast.
However you won't really notice it untill you start running your games at ultra
high resolutions.
The Elsa Gladiac is the first GeForce2 GTS video card to hit the
market. Should you run out and get it? That depends. Owners of GeForce 256 cards
may want to hold out untill the next generation of video cards is introduced.
The performance advantage of the GTS over a standard GeForce really only shows
up at higher end resolutions(1600X1200). If you don't run or if your monitor
can't run at this resolution then it doesn't make sense to buy a card that your
monitor can't handle. If you're still getting by with just a TNT2 or Voodoo 3
then a move to the Gladiac is well worth it. The speed difference is like night
and day.
The 5.22 drivers I used supports FSAA. While this is a nice
feature to have I found the performance hit to be too great to use. Given a
choice between running 1600x1200 without FSAA or 800x600 with FSAA, I take
1600x1200 any day.
The Gladiac is highly overclockable. Both of the Gladiac I had
for testing were able to run rock stable at 235Mhz core and 375Mhz memory. I
can't wait to remove that stock heatsink and get some RAM sinks on it to see how
much power is left.
The only really bad point about the Elsa Gladiac is price. At
$349, it's among the most expensive video cards on the market. And a video card
is all you get. Sure there are optional add-ons like video in/out and 3D glass
but they all add to the cost. I also don't like the use of the create your own
software bundle. I doubt many users will bother going to the Elsa site to order
it. Elsa would have done its customers a better service if they had just
included a game bundle with the card. Another gripe is the one page installation
sheet. It's not even in color. Just a black and white photocopied piece of paper
folded inhalf. You think they could have included a nice printed manual at this
price.
Those gripes aside, I really like the Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS.
This is the fastest video card The Tech Zone has ever tested. Running Quake 3 or
UT has never been so much fun. The games looks simply amazing at 1600x1200
resolution. Makes the $2,000 I paid for my 21" monitor seem worth it.
The Goods
-
Really really fast
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It's a GeForce card
-
Very overclockable
The Bads
Our Rating: 8.5/10
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