Creative
Labs
3D Blaster
Annihilator Pro DDR
The first
thing that people usually notice about the Creative Labs 3D Blaster
Annihilator Pro DDR is the exceptionally long name : ). Aside from that,
the Annihilator Pro is a standard GeForce DDR board, based very closely
on nVidia's reference design. The GeForce 256 GPU (Graphics Processing
Unit) is clocked at 120mhz. While this rather slow speed may seem odd in
view of previous generations, such as the 175mhz TNT2 Ultra, the GeForce
makes use of four pixel pipelines, greatly improving performance in
multi-texturing games. The Annihilator's 32MB of DDRRAM is clocked at
the default 150mhz (150 x 2 = 301mhz). The Annihilator Pro does not
truly excel in any areas except its low price, which is significantly
below that of most competing boards of the same
performance.
Reviews
are available at:
AnandTech
Gamespot
Sharky
Extreme
3D Blaster
Annihilator
The
Annihilator is a standard GeForce SDR board, based very closely on
nVidia's reference design. The GeForce 256 GPU (Graphics Processing
Unit) is clocked at 120mhz. While this rather slow speed may seem odd in
view of previous generations, such as the 175mhz TNT2 Ultra, the GeForce
makes use of four pixel pipelines, greatly improving performance in
multi-texturing games. The Annihilator's 32MB of SDRAM is clocked at the
default 166mhz. It would naturally be desirable to get the faster DDR
version, but the speed advantages do not show up very well except in
high-resolution 32bit graphics, of with a very fast CPU. The Annihilator
does not truly excel in any areas except its low price, which is
significantly below that of most competing boards of the same
performance.
Reviews
are available at:
Sharky
Extreme
3D
Blaster Riva TNT2 Ultra
The
Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra, like all of Creative Labs' recent
boards, is based very closely on the original reference design. The
board consists of a nVidia TNT2 Ultra chip clocked at the default
150mhz, a Brooktree TV-out chip, and 32MB of SDRAM clocked at 183mhz.
The TNT2 Ultra is the big brother of the TNT2, and, actually, both are
exactly the same design. After manufacture, the chips are tested, and
those capable of higher clock speeds are dubbed as TNT2 Ultras, while
the rest stay TNT2s. The TNT2 Ultra is still a very powerful chip, and,
until the introduction of the GeForce/Savage 200/Rage Fury MAXX
generation, was the king of the industry. The 32MB of Hyundai 5.5ns
SDRAM is divided up among 8 chips. This is excellent memory, and, with a
little over-clocking, it can reach an astronomical 220mhz. The Brooktree
BT869 TV-out chip does a credible job of displaying game graphics on a
TV set with reasonable quality. The Riva TNT2 Ultra is an average TNT2
Ultra card that, although it doesn't have the performance of the
Hercules TNT2U, doesn't have the price either.
Reviews
are available at:
AnandTech
3D Blaster
Riva TNT2
The
Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2, like all of Creative Labs' recent boards,
is based very closely on the original reference design. The board
consists of a nVidia TNT2 chip clocked at the default 125mhz, a
Brooktree TV-out chip, and 32MB of SDRAM clocked at 150mhz. The TNT2's
big brother is the TNT2 Ultra, and, actually, both are exactly the same
design. After manufacture, the chips are tested, and those capable of
higher clock speeds are dubbed as TNT2 Ultras, while the rest stay
TNT2s. The TNT2 is still a very powerful chip, and, until the
introduction of the TNT2U and GeForce/Savage 200/Rage Fury MAXX
generation, was the king of the industry. The 32MB of Hyundai 5.5ns
SDRAM is divided up among 8 chips. This is excellent memory, and, with a
little over-clocking, it can reach at least 183mhz. The Brooktree BT869
TV-out chip does a credible job of displaying game graphics on a TV set
with reasonable quality. The Riva TNT2 is an average TNT2 card that,
although it doesn't have the performance of the Hercules TNT2, doesn't
have the price either.
3D Blaster Savage
4
The
Creative Labs 3D Blaster Savage 4 is based on S3's Savage 4 chipset, as
is the Diamond Stealth III S540. Although it features 32MB of SDRAM, the
Savage 4 is meant to be a value card. Like its brother from Diamond, the
Savage 4 runs at a solid 125mhz for the core, and 143mhz for the SDRAM.
This yields fair performance for a low-end system, provided you are
willing to live with low resolutions. About the maximum playable res in
modern games is 1024 x 768 in 16bit color. Although it is capable of
rendering 32bit color scenes, this feature limits the resolution to 800
x 600. The figures, however, show that the Savage 4 is way behind the
TNT2's in performance and price.
Graphics
Blaster Riva TNT
The
Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Riva TNT is an exact copy of the nVidia
TNT reference design. As is standard, the core was clocked at 100mhz,
and the 16MB of SDRAM at 110mhz. In its time, about a year and a half
ago, the TNT was the hottest thing going, except for the 3dfx Banshee.
Nowadays, its old hat. Very old hat. At the time of its conception,
there was some controversy as to whether the TNT of Banshee was faster.
The Banshee posted higher scores in 16bit games, but was incapable of
32bit color. In the end, the TNT won out. As much as I'd like to, there isn't really anything special
I can tell about this very basic TNT card.
Reviews
are available at:
AnandTech
Gamespot
3D
Blaster Banshee
The
Creative Labs 3D Blaster Banshee is a standard 3dfx Banshee-based board.
The Banshee chipset is a modification of the Voodoo 2 chip, with one
texture pipeline removed, and a 2D core added. Another change in the
chip was the clock rate being upgraded to 100mhz over the 90mhz of a
standard Voodoo 2. The board also carried a standard 16MB of SDRAM, over
the V2's 8 or 12MB. These changes allowed the Banshee to out-perform the
Voodoo 2 in most tests except those in multi-texturing games, where
the Banshee's lack of a second pixel pipeline is felt. In these modern
times, there is really no use for the 3D Blaster Banshee except in a
value, low-end system.
Reviews
are available at:
Gamespot
3D
Blaster Voodoo 2
The 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 is Creative Labs' 3D-only accelerator based
on the 3dfx Voodoo 2 chipset. For the most part, the 3D Blaster V2
performs like any other Voodoo 2. Also, like most Voodoo 2's this card
sports 12MB of onboard memory. Because of it's old architecture and slow,
90mhz clock speed, this board is best used in the SLI (Scan Line Interleaving)
configuration. In this setup, two V2 boards are connected together by an
internal cable, effectively doubling the processing power. In this setup,
the boards are capable of 1024x768 pixel rendering, while a single board
can only manage 800x600. A SLI setup can surpass the V3 2000 and 3000
versions in Glide rendering, but falls short of the 183mhz V3 3500TV. A
3D Blaster Voodoo 2 can make a worthwhile edition to gamer's rig who
wants both compatibility with nVidia's latest offerings, and full compatibility with Glide
games.
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