Hardware used
Pentium III Coppermine 500E @ 667 MHz, i820 133Mhz FSB

Software used
Windows 98 SE
DirectX 7.x
Detonator Drivers 5.16 

A prelude
Sitting on top of the world ... That's what NVIDIA must be thinking. With the recent release of their GeForce2 GTS videochip they once again have prolonged their life-span of being king in the 3D Graphics consumer market. With rumors floating around the web about the new 1.6 MPixel/sec GeForce3 we reviewed Creative's GeForce2 GTS based videocard.

Creative labs engaged the opportunity to include this brand new GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) in their new series videocards, the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2. (called 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS in Europe). I asked the PR staff from Creative why there are two names for this product on this globe. Well, it seems that the European section always have been calling their products the name of the chip set. Besides that the European dep. did not think that 'Annihilator' could be easily spoken by us 'non-English-speaking Europeans' (Huh ??) Anyway, they continued the tradition and called it the 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS. Don't get confused folks ! It's exactly the same product.

Creative Labs GeForce2 GTS

While looking closely at the 3D Blaster GeForce2 (GF2 from now on) we can see that it is a very close resemblance of the reference design GeForce2 GTS from NVIDIA. The card is equipped with 32 Mb DDR (Double Datarate) 6NS SGRAM. There is no TV/S-VHS Output available on this videocard. This GF2 comes in a nicely designed black box and includes of course the videocard, a huge and detailed manual, a driver CD, an NVIDIA technology demo demonstration CD and a full version of the Hardware T&L supported racing game 'Rage-Rally'. The game really shows of what the geForce can do. In 1280x1024 this game plays flawless in real-time. 

The GF2 is now actually equipped with a HDTV processor, a new standard that is introduced in the US at this time. The HDTV processor can be connected to a HDTV decoder. Now we should be able to watch Full-screen HD television. Unfortunately in Europe this new standard is not introduced yet, so it will not play a big role on this side off the world. However, what we found a tidbit disappointing is the simple fact of lacking to include DVD-doftware. The GF2 is an excellent card to show off and view DVD movies. It can decode in hardware MPEG streams in HQ and of course realtime. But, you'll need a DVD-player for that.

Coming up: the videocard review continued

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