In The Box
GF 2 Ultra AGP Card
Drivers CD
Instructions
Creative Annihilator 2 Ultra

Written By:
Date Posted: July 17, 2001



Before the GeForce 3 this past Spring, nVidia dropped the GeForce 2 Ultra on the gaming market in late Fall 2000. At the time, the GeForce 2 and ATI Radeon were duking it out in the gaming market. 3dfx was a dissapointment, and gamers were left to these two giants. The GeForce 2 was top dog through the summer of 2000, but that changed with the ATI Radeon, whose Hyper-Z technology, and 183MHz core and memory slapped the GeForce 2 around at high resolution gaming.

With everyone expecting the next evolution from nVidia (the NV20), they instead tweaked the GeForce 2 to perfection, and released it an the Ultra. This was a bit of a surprise to the gaming community, because other than the increased core and memory speed, it really was just a GeForce 2. No new features here. No doubt, it was the fastest card around, but it was the most expensive as well. Today, you can probably find it for about 225$ US, but a GeForce 2 (non-Ultra) can be had for 100$ less, and a GeForce 3 for about 100$ more. I don't really get the pricing strategy, but nVidia is going to phase the GF2 Ultra GPU out of the market anyways, which is good. The Ultra doesn't provide a monumental leap in speed over the GeForce 2 at 1024x768 resolutions, which is what the majority of gamers play at (at the time of the Ultra's release). The GeForce 3, on the other hand, though not a lot faster than the GF2 Ultra, has image quality improvements the Ultra can't touch.

Saying that, people who are interested in the Ultra are those who don't have the 350$ or more for the GF3, and who want a faster card than the GF2. Don't get me wrong. The card isn't the best choice out there, but it certainly is not the worst. Let's get on with it, shall we?

Specifications

GeForce 2 Graphics Core at 250MHz
256-bit Graphics Architecture
64MB Ultra-High-Speed DDR RAM at 460MHz
350MHz RAMDAC
AGP 4X with Fast Write
Peak Fill Rate (Pixels/Sec) One Billion
Triangles Per Second (Peak Rate) 31 Million
Integrated T & L Engine
3D Rendering Pipelines 4
Texture-Mapped, Lit Pixels Per Clock Cycle 8
Single Pass Multi-Texturing Support Yes
Transform & Lighting Engine Second Generation
Graphics Processor Unit Yes
Render with Geometry Yes
Complete DirectX 7 Support
Max Resolution of 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz

At the time this card was purchased, about November 2000, it cost 500$. I remember opening up the box, only to find a video card, driver cd, and manual. Heck, there's not even TV-Out. A wise decision at that time, ...it was not. If anyone ever wondered what a "reference" card looks like, they need not look further then here.

One thing that took me by surprise was the size of the HSF on the GPU. Coming from a GeForce 256, I was pretty impressed by it. Also, the heatsinks on the ram were a nice touch, though I'm not sure how useful they'd really be, even when overclocking.

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Summary
Creative Labs


7/10

Pros: Very fast, near GeForce 3 speed at resolutions 1024 and lower. Relatively low priced for a high end card.

Cons: Deficiency shows in DX8 benchmarks. Not as fast as a GF3 at high resolutions. Price doesn't justify performance.


Copyright © 2001 Viper Lair. All Rights Reserved.