Creative Annihilator Geforce 2 Ultra 64MB DDR

URL: http://www.creative.com

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Rating: Excellent!

Review:

I recently purchased the Annihilator 2 as the first step in my upgrade process, and installed it in my PII 400 Mhz Dell computer with 128 MB of PC 100 RAM. I didn't expect to get much of a performance increase over my old Voodoo 3500 but the Geforce surprised me.

2D graphics are sharp and colorful with no problems I could detect, no slowdowns anywhere due to the graphics display. But 3D graphics are where this card absolutely shines. With the Voodoo 3500 I used to run games in minimal detail and still get some stutters, but suprisingly even in the older computer the Geforce 2 Ultra runs all my games smoothly in full detail at 800x600 with 32-bit color with anti aliasing on. A remarkable feat for a computer of that speed. The quality of the graphics is excellent, not quite as good as an ATI Radeon but a very close second.

The DVD playback features work without flaw and provide excellent quality, the PowerDVD program included with my DVD drive works very well with the graphics cards hardware features.

The control software for the graphics card is excellent, intuitive, and easy to use. A nice feature is the preset color settings for movies, DirectX, and OpenGL. Using the correct setting really makes a huge difference in quality.

The only shortcoming on this card was the fan unit. It's rather noisy but so is the one on my ATI Radeon. I managed to lubricate the fan unit to some extent and it helped tremendously, but you'd think for 500 dollars they could afford a better fan unit.

I might add that the Geforce 2 Ultra has a slightly less brilliant picture than the Radeon on my computer, however the Geforce 2 Ultra runs at much higher detail settings and approximately twice as fast. The GeForce 2 Ultra also has a far superior picture, brightness and gamma controls than the ATI Radeon. I tested both cards on my Dell PII 400 with 128 MB RAM, the ATI Radeon 64MB DDR and the Creative Annilator 2 Ultra 64 MB DDR. For people with the lower end systems like mine, the Geforce is without a doubt the only way to go and breathe new life into the PII systems. New games such as Sacrifice, Giants, Project IGI, and Unreal Tournament run great now.

Submitted by: William C.