Elsa/Visiontek owners, please respond

[RoboTECH]

Please lemme know how the 2d quality is. If possible, let me know what other cards you've owned, what monitor you have, and what resolution you use for windows.

The Ultras are coming down, and with the release of the NV20, I'm looking forward to seeing the price drop to $300 or so.

 

[bluemax]

I've said it before and I'll say it again;
of all the Geforce cards I've tried, ELSA was the best! (Which makes visiontek equal.)
I'm running Voodoo5's right now, and the ELSA DDR was only just barely different (and I'll admit, also faster on my Celeron 450A. T&L may be useful after all... I need a P3.)

Running from a Hansol 701P professional series. MINIMUM 1024x768 @ 100hz.

 

[PliotronX]

I'm currently running a Visiontek GTS 32Meg.. it has the worst 2D I've ever had to work with. I run at 1024x768*85hz on a Sony HMD-A200. My old Diamond Monster 3D II with the passthrough hooked up to a Matrox Millennium looked better than this.

I would advise practicing SMD soldering work if you plan on buying an NV20 and expecting good 2D, because you may have to bypass the RF filter.

 

[Scabilian]

Hey RoboTech, talk to TuOni. He has a Elsa GF2 Ultra. He's had alot of other video cards, so he could probaly give you a good opinion.

 

[SniperWulf]

I have a VisionTek Ultra and the 2D is OK, not as good as my V3 or V5 but its not bad. I do have the flickering and rolling lines issues and that sh!t is annoying... I've even tried getting a replacement and I got the same results

 

[RoboTECH]

egads. hopefully my replacement 5500 will overclock real well and I won't have to worry about it.

 

[WetWilly]

My Gladiac GTS was definitely not as good as the V5500 I'd had. I did the filter mod and the 2D was at least as good as the Radeon or V5500. The side effect was better 3D saturation as well, to the point the GTS is almost indistinguishable from the Radeon with a few gamma tweaks.

 

[Spoooon]

I've had, in this order, S3540, TNT2, VisionTek GeForce 2 MX, Radeon 32 DDR. I thought the VisionTek's 2D was the equal of the Radeon's. My monitor isn't all that though. NEC MultiSync 70.

 

[snow patrol]

I sent this in a PM to someone the other day:

I've had an Elsa Geforce 2 MX in my machine for a little while now and the 2d quality is good, but I'd have to say that it's not really up there with the Radeon or the Voodoo 3/5. I've actually found that I've needed to lower the resolution to 1280x1024 with the geforce, from my standard 1600x1200 with the radeon, because the 2d was just a little hazy and after a while my eyes were getting slightly strained.

Having said all this, my eyes aren't the best in the world, so you may find that the elsa geforce 2 is fine for you.

 

[loosbrew]

is the geforce 2d quality only noticed on anything higher than 1024x768x32? if it doesnt really make a difference at 1024 or lower, than i wouldnt care, i only use 1024x768x32.
loosbrew

 

[RoboTECH]

WetWilly, I'd love to do the filter mod, but I'd fu(k it up royally, since I wouldn't have a clue what I'm doing.

 

[WetWilly]

Robo,

It's not horribly difficult. A testament to that is the fact I did it myself with a large-ish Radio Shack desoldering iron, and I'm definitely not known for my soldering skills. It's amazing what you can do with a bit of frustration. It would have only taken 10-15 minutes or so if I didn't accidentally squeeze the bulb with solder over a set of memory chip leads - that took an hour or so to clean up. For me, the trepidation factor had been on a sliding scale:

1) GeForce2 MX - would do it in a second and not had a single regret throwing the board out if I screwed up
2) GeForce2 GTS - had to think about it, finally reconciled myself to the prospect of throwing the board out if I screwed up, and barged ahead
3) GeForce2 Pro - ummm ... I don't think so
4) GeForce2 Ultra - no way in hell

After doing the procedure, I think I might do it on an Ultra if the 2D was poor. I should also add here that, from what I've read, MINOR screw ups are fixable. I can personally tell you that removing a large blob of solder from a memory chip's leads without desoldering the memory chip itself is doable with little experience.

In retrospect, if the $82 32MB DDR Radeon LEs were available way back then (wait - that was only two months ago), I'd have probably gone with that and not even bothered with taking a desoldering iron to a brand new board. Got to admit, though, I've been pretty happy with the modded Gladiac GTS. The 2D is nice and sharp even on my FD Trinitron, and the 3D is really within spitting distance of a Radeon - before, you could DEFINITELY tell the difference. Anyway, if you're interested, full details and additional links to the procedure are in this thread.

All of that said, I still think I liked the V5500 better than the GeForce2 or Radeon, for all the reasons you know so well.

BTW, from the picture of the reference GeForce3, the filter circuit looks awfully familiar. I sure hope nVidia figured out the proper values for the capacitors and inductors this time.

 

[Smbu]

The 2d of my 32mb Elsa Gladiac Geforce 2 GTS was alright. I had no problems with it at 1280x1024x32bpp@85hz on my IBM P96 19" FD Trinitron monitor, but I still did the rfi filter mod. I don't really see a difference between my Gladiac and my Radeon in terms of 2d quality at the resolution listed above.

I've also used an ATI Rage Pro, Intel i740, i752, TNT2 M64, and my current ATI AIW Radeon.

 

[RoboTECH]

well, I've never used a soldering iron before in my life, so I'm a bit apprehensive.

 

[Compellor]

The 2D on my Visiontek GeForce 2 GTS was better on my older Mag 17-inch shadowmask monitor. The text was really sharp. After that monitor died, I bought a cheap 17-inch KDS FD Trinitron monitior, and the 2D wasn't as good. It's a little blurry, but not terrible. I think it has to do more with the monitor than the video card.

RoboTECH: Why not just buy a Radeon?

 

[Taz4158]

Now I may have lucked out but the Elsa GTS I had was frankly not that bad. My Radeon is better but textwise it wasn't night and day. Now the Asus I had made text at anything approaching high resolutions virtually unreadable. I don't think pigeonholing nVidia is any more productive than typecasting Radeon or 3DFX.

 

[WetWilly]

Relatively, Elsa/Visiontek are better than average for GeForce 2D. I'd had a Creative MX that was REALLY bad.

I don't think pigeonholing nVidia is any more productive than typecasting Radeon or 3DFX

It's not a matter of pidgeonholing nVidia. It's fact that:

1) Some of us are real - no, REAL - picky about 2D. I've used Matrox a lot, and after you get used to Matrox, you notice less than optimal 2D real fast. In fact, if the G800 had been out last fall when it was supposed to be out, I'd probably have one of those in my computer now.
2) The 2D quality varies widely between nVidia-based boards and manufacturers
3) The Matrox cards, V5500, Radeon and Kyro don't have nearly as many complaints about 2D. Yes, I know nVidia doesn't make their own boards, but PowerColor makes Voodoos and Kyros and there don't seem to be disparities between those boards and the 3dfx and Vivid! cards). Better yet, look at comments on the quality of the second head of TwinView cards, or nVidia TV-out compared to Matrox or the Radeon.
4) Considering how well the filter circuit mod fixes the problem (and I know this first hand, having swapped out an unmodded then modded Gladiac GTS with a Radeon countless times during my decision period), then nVidia either picked a poor set of default values for the capacitors and inductors on the reference design, or many of their OEMs are doing a poor job of following specs. I'm particularly baffed by this because of the difference the filter mod made even with 3D. A friend who had been watching me swap cards for three weeks thought the display from the modded GTS was the Radeon's.

 

[WetWilly]

well, I've never used a soldering iron before in my life, so I'm a bit apprehensive

There's a little-documented brute force approach of using wire clippers or a small, yet controllable, blunt instrument to chisel the capacitors off

 

[RobsTV]

Visiontek GF2 GTS 2D looks better than the 18 month old 3dfx V3 3000 AGP it replaced.
17" generic monitor, normally used at 1024x768x32 @ 85Hz, but when internet browsing switch to 1600x1200.

Now have V3 in wifes machine, along side mine. 17" generic also. As I said, and can see right now, Visiontek has noticably better 2d at same resolutions.

 

[RoboTECH]

Compellor:

I have a Sony monitor, and the last 3 nvidia cards I've owned (TNT2U, Ge2-32MB, Ge2-64MB) have looked like bloody hell on that monitor.

As far as the Radeon, I don't want a Radeon because its not much faster than a 5500 (which I already have) in a best-case scenario, and significantly worse (Win2k, 16-bit games) in many other cases.

 

[jpprod]

Hmm... The importer of Elsa here in Finland has promised GeForce3 cards to be available within a week for about $650. They're supposed to be the first brand of GeForce3's to hit the shelves. Still torn whether I should pick one up.

 

[Ajay]

My Elsa GF2 was fine up to 1024x768, after that it quickly deteriorated to the point that I found it unusable. I'm a programmer and work out of my house one day per week, so I had to replace it since I run 1280x1024 on my 17" and 1600x1200 on my 21" (both aperture grill monitors). My Radeon is great, just a tick below the 2D quality of my Matrox G400. My Radeon looks good all the way up to 1920x 1440 on the 21", the text is too small at this resolution, but graphics work would be fine.

-AJ