Lurking within this unassuming black box.. is an even more unassuming cardboard one.
Once again OCAU has been graced with a video card combination from NVIDIA and Creative Labs. This is the third generation of GeForce cards from Creative that we've reviewed here - we checked out their original GeForce DDR card here about a year ago here and more recently their GeForce2 GTS based unit here. Both of those cards were impressive so I was pleased to accept this evaluation unit of their new Ultra offering from Creative Labs Australia.
As with the previous cards, in the US market this product is called the Creative Labs 3DBlaster Annihilator2 Ultra 64MB GeForce2 Ultra. I wonder how much of the box real estate is devoted to this name. Anyway, in Australia the Annihilator part is dropped. This is the third generation of cards that Creative have done this with and I really wonder why they feel the need to make the distinction.
The card itself is quite striking looking with green-adonised heatsinks on the ram chips and a huge heatsink/fan unit over the Graphics Processing Unit. However, the heatsink has dissapointingly thin fins and I have to wonder how effective they would be. Surely a smaller-diameter fan in a heatsink with longer fins would cool better? The GTS chips pump out a fair bit of heat and I would expect the Ultras to be even worse.
The earlier GTS card used 6ns DDR SGRAM, while this Ultra unit uses 4ns (!) DDR SDRAM. The Ultra GPU is essentially identical to the GeForce2 GTS part used on the previous card. The 'Ultra' parts are bin-sorted out, in that NVIDIA test them to higher speeds and the ones that work reliably are badged as Ultra units. This is essentially the same process that CPU manufacturers use when rating their products to a given core speed - but it makes me wonder how well the Ultra units will clock over a conventional GTS one, given they are already to some extent overclocked. The Creative GTS we reviewed earlier had a default core/ram speed of 200MHz/333MHz - this Ultra unit is 250MHz/458MHz out of the box. For a full technical dissertation on the wonders of the GeForce2 Ultra, I recommend this article on AnandTech. For more information on this particular card, check out www.3dblaster.com.
Anyway, apart from the green heatsinks, this card looks pretty much like every other NVIDIA-based videocard made in the last year or so, as it follows NVIDIA's reference design. Given that this is a 64MB unit, I was a little surprised to see no RAM chips on the back of the board. I guess less chips is a good thing, makes it easier from a cooling perspective at least..
Included inside the box is an installation CD full of the usual drivers and demos, another CD containing WinDVD2000, an installation guide, warranty information sheet and a small sticker for putting on the front of your computer case. Oddly, the one included with this Ultra unit said "GeForce2 GTS" on it - not sure if that is because I got an early review unit and the stickers weren't available yet, or if it's deliberate, or what. Creative include their Lava! program which I believe is some kind of MP3 player with visual effects. No games are included and the card lacks TV-out, 3D glasses or other gimmicky features - this again is in line with the previous cards, Creative keeping the price of the package down by not including things of dubious interest to the high-performance users they are aiming this card at and thereby increasing the bang for the buck. You do get AGP4X support with FastWrites, 64MB of DDR SDRAM, all the benefits of GeForce2 such as hardware T&L and some reassurance of reliability and compatability in that you are buying from one of the major players in the market. Creative have been shipping a serious number of video cards for a long time now and it's pretty rare to see any real issues with them. In case anything bad does happen, you're covered by a 3 year warranty anyway.
Right! Let's jump straight into the numbers. I thought it would be interesting to test this card against a few others both in a high-end machine (TBird 950MHz) and in a perhaps more common-spec machine, a P3-550. Comparisons with GeForce2 GTS, GeForce SDR and TNT2U are on the next page.