Pimpin Pixel Pump (Pika Pika)
Written: Mar 11 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Performance, Good visual quality, Good framerates, Excellent Price/Performance Ratio, Decent features, Card will last for a couple years, Solid brand name
Cons: A professional might need mo juice, There *might* be some sort of revolution in graphics technology in the near future, but that is true for all tech, HOT
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| eeks's Full Review: Creative Technology 3D Blaster Riva TNT2 Ultra, (3... |
In economics, you always assume that Joe Average Consumer would seek to maximize his utility in all areas of his life. In this case, if you were Joe Average Consumer, and you were looking for a new video card that would allow you to utilize your computer to its non-professional fullest, then the TNT 2 Ultra cards would be the way to go. The "Pika" was just a little translation for my Pokéreaders, who don't understand english and it also allowed me to form a quintuple alliterated title. Pika.
Description
The Creative 3d Blaster Ultra is a 2D/3D video card based on nVidia's TNT 2 Ultra chipset. It is adept at gaming and at general computer graphical goodness. It has 32 megs of sdram and a S-Video TV Out. Before its release, people assumed that 3DFX's Voodoo 3 3000 would be the better card, as 3DFX had been the name in 3D cards, but the TNT 2 proved to be a Voodoo slayer, offering much better and much prettier performance. The "Ultra" flavor is a TNT 2 at a higher clock rate. Creative Labs is one of many companies providing graphical solutions based on the TNT 2 Ultra chipset.
Installation
This should be extremely easy for anyone who is not afraid to pull the hood off their comp, know which slot is their AGP one, and knows how to find/install the latest drivers (THE WEB is all you need ^_^). If any of these are beyond you, then e-mail me and I will help/explain. It comes with some graphical calibration utilities (Calorific and 3D Deep), none of which are very exciting, and neither of which seemed to provide any sort of noticeable benefit whatsoever. So I stopped using them.
The Lowdown
This card is excellent. It has a full 32 megs of ram and is capable of a lovely 32 bit color in 3D. The company that makes it (Creative) is a leader in Audio and Video cards, and offers excellent support and drivers (although I don't use their drivers I use the nVidia reference drivers). In fact, their drivers offer support for Glide based games, which is a plus if you plan on playing any games that are Glide only or if you plan on playing, Ultima IX:Ascension, which is much less painfully slow using Glide.
The Creative Blaster performed great in Quake 3. I usually play at the 800x600 Fastest, because when I am gaming, winning is more important than pretty pictures ("oh LOOK at that those pretty curves, I love Q3!" -> "Eeks was railed by 1337d00d"), but with my TNT 2 Ultra, I took the more lovely settings for a test drive and I was very impressed. The framerate is not even that bad at the higher resolution and the higher quality settings all things considered. The key is that the framerate is extremely smooth and high at Fastest and 800x600, because really, why are you playing Quake? To gib, or to look around?
The card's performance overall is great, and I am betting that it will adequately handle the demanding games to be released for a couple of years. On another note, one of the knocks of the Creative version of the TNT 2 Ultra is that it doesn't clock as high as some of the other TNT 2 Ultra's, but I don't think that is a big deal at all, since this card is one very overclockable card. At least mine is =p.
I never used the TVT Out, in fact I had nVidia's drivers installed and not Creative's, so my TVT Out would not have worked even if I had used it. TVT Out is the kind of thing that sounds nice on paper, but is not as useful as it sounds. If your computer is your only DVD player, then it might be useful for you. Otherwise, it's of negligible value.
Cons
I want my dual head display! It is just TOO cherry; if you ever get the chance to partake in some dual head display loving, I highly recommend it. If you don't know what dual head display is, then check out my Matrox Millennium G400 review.
This card is hot, I think even hotter than my Voodoo 3. This could be a problem for those of you with bad cooling in your computer case.
Conclusion
This is the card that makes the most sense for people who do more with their computer than word processing, surfing, and e-mails. In my book, this card has the best combination of price, performance and lifespan until obsolescence. While it has not been top of the line since nVidia released the Geforce line of cards, those cards are impossible to find and have a price that makes them NOT make sense for most people (all over $200). At ~$140-150 (I got mine for $105, but I am a fiend), this card is the way to go.
Note on nVidia:
This company has exploded with success in the last week. They are the company that will be in charge of the graphics of Microsoft's new "X-Box" video game system. nVidia's market cap has increased 6 fold in 4 months. They are the name in 3D cards now, which means that this card and all cards that utilize their chipset will be well supported with reference drivers for the foreseeable future.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
eeks
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Willy Holt
Location: Boston, Mass
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 157 members
About Me:
Wow--looking back on this half my articles were atrocious and embarassingly titled--all for the bling-bling.
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