Elsa Gladiac MX: Any comments?

[BoberFett]

I was thinking of picking up an Elsa Gladiac MX from buy.com, and was just wondering if anybody had any comments on this card, positive or negative?

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Search "elsa" in this forum, you'll see.

 

[bluemax]

In short, yes. It's probably the best QUALITY of MX card out there... not necessarily the fastest, but by far sharpest 2D desktop quality of all nVidia boards.
ELSA is tops for 2D.

 

[TheCorm]

Having only just got the GeForce2 MX, I am quite happy with it althugh the drivers have been annoying but I think thats something that just seems to effect me, typical!

Like I said in another forum discussion, comparing the elsa card to creative things look pretty good:

Core Clock: 166mhz(Creative) vs 175mhz(Elsa)
Memory: 64bit DDR(Creative) vs 128bit SDR(Elsa)
Heatsink: Nope(Creative) vs Yep(Elsa)
Optional Video I/o: Nope(Creative) vs Yep(Elsa)
Warranty: 3 years(Creative) vs 6 years(Elsa)

Thats what I compared the card to when I was trying to choose, one thing to point out that the Anandtech review revealed is that although creative make a big deal of their card being DDR, they fail to point out that the bits = half that of Elsa and DDR has inneficiency that makes it slightly slower than the SDR version.

Corm

 

[AL77]

I was also thinking about the Gladiac Mx as a recommendation for a friend. TheCorm, could you please tell us what monitor you are using; how is the 2D quality at various windows resolutions (e.g. 1024x768, 1280x1024). I've heard so many varying opinions on the quality/sharpness of the 2D image on various nVidia based boards (filters, quality of surrounding components?) that I'm wary of certain companies. But many here seem to agree that Elsa (Visiontek manufactured?) has good 2D quality at high res. Any comments appreciated.

Al

 

[TheCorm]

I am more than satisfied with the 2D quality of the elsa card, picture is a bit sharper than with my old Riva TNT. I am using a Belinea 103070 monitor which is a 0.25mm dot pitch triniton tube, so it's quite a good partnership.

For Windows based apps at 1280x1024 I think this card will perform very nicely, I was also impressed with smoothness on the 3D Mark 99 tests.

I think that for the price, the card excels very nicely, even if it had cost as much as the Radeon SDR, I probably still would have chose it.

Corm

 

[TheCorm]

NB BoberFett, I uploaded my new GeForce2 MX benchmarks to my Computers section of my website today, let me know what you think (link at bottom)

Corm

 

[BoberFett]

Thanks for the input fellas. I think I'll order that bad boy.

 

[RobsTV]

Why order the MX when you can get the GTS for about the same price or less ($125 delivered as per other posts)?

 

[AL77]

RobsTV has a good point. I just saw this thread in the Hot Deals forum: Elsa Gladiac GF2 32 DDR for $120

If you can't get the coupon or price match, Onvia U.S. and Computers4Sure has it for approx $160 and it's showing in stock. For this price, I'd take the GF2 over the GF2 Mx right now. Sadly, us Canadians get the short end once again. Onvia Canada has the Elsa Gladiac for a staggering $325 U.S., and it's not in stock! I called them in order to get an explanation but all their sales associates were supposedly in a meeting (and that's not the first time that happened when calling their sales line)!

Al

 

[bluemax]

Onvia Canada had the Elsa DDR card for a good price though... $225 for the Erazor X2. I also had a $50 off coupon (expired but I used it on a returned order.) So after taxes and such, it came to only $189 Canadian for a Geforce DDR. Not bad.
I tried the ASUS v7100 for the same price but the 2D sucked on it... I'm going with the many people who have said ELSA has the sharpest 2D of all nVidia cards - they'd better be right!

The only thing I'll miss out on compared to the MX/GTS is a bit of speed compared to the GTS (a bit faster than MX) and the colour shading thingy that so far isn't used by anything anyways. I plan on using trilinear filtering so I won't get the GTS's second texture unit anyways.

I think I'll finally be happy with this card for a while. About blasted time. *whew*
Now all I need is a zippy processor!

 

[AL77]

bluemax, good price after tax for that GF DDR. I'm still trying to get a response from Onvia.ca on the Elsa Gladiac price discrepancy (159.10 U.S. from Onvia.com compared to about $325 U.S. if you buy from Onvia.ca) as their sales staff have been in meetings two days in a row when I've called! The way I see it, even though the markets are different, it's just a video card and the price shouldn't be much more than straight exchange.

I hope the 2D quality on the Elsa cards being good is also correct. I've been jumping from GF2 (e.g. Creative, but then started to hear conflicting reports on 2D quality) to Voodoo5 (before the recent news) to Radeon 32 DDR to GF2 Mx (Elsa) and now back to GF2. The thing that got me thinking of the GF2 cards again is the recent price drop and the (hopefully) good reputation of Elsa that I've been hearing. I was about to go with the Radeon after 3dfx's demise, but the retail version is about $100 Cdn more (about $350) than the OEM and I am wary of this. Now, if I can only get Onvia Canada to drop the price on the Gladiac.

 

[PeAK]

I suggest you read the following three reviews:

1)Sharky's Value Roundup comparing MX and Radeon SDR and Radeon DDR
2)Radeon SDR review comparing MX and GeForce GTS
3) ELSA MX Review in December MaximumPC and
Radeon DDR Review in December MaximumPC

The last thing to consider is that PC Magazine picked the Radeon SDR
as its Editor's Choice budget card in December's issue.