Battle of the Titans 2: Creative Labs's Annihilator 2 vs. Absolute Multimedia's Outrageous GeForce2 GTS

Overclocking

I was slightly disappointed to have my AMM GF2 only achieve what my Creative Labs Annihilator board could do when it came to overclocking. Both were only able to reach some 380 MHz memory clock speed. This is about average,but the performance gains from upping the memory speed are well worth the trouble. The AMM GF2 was able to actually not freeze at a higher speed but the video was somewhat corrupt from being overclocked. To me that's not acceptable so I didn't count those tests as passed.

AMM had good intensions by placing such cooling solutions on their GF2 solution but its very unfortunate that it isn't able to buy them anything.

Overclocked BX Support

Both competitors were tested for an extended period on an MSI BX Master motherboard running at the out-of-spec AGP speed without any hitches. Quake 3 Arena Demo's played flawlessly for about an hour each with absolutely no video corruption. For those who don't plan to switch to a Solano platform anytime soon, it looks like you've be safe using either board on your overclocked BX monster.

Conclusion

With such a variety of GeForce2 based boards now, I felt that I actually had three categories to pick winners for. Top 3D performer, best 3D/Video solution combination and most "bang for your buck" are the categories I decided on.

Our first winner was a very easy choice for top dog performer. If price is not an issue and you want the fastest 3D possible, the Gainward CARDExpert GF2 GTS is the card to get. Equipped with the fastest memory possible (5ns DDR SGRAM) it was able to achieve speeds that are matched by no other GF2 and dominated the performance charts, hands down. Opening up the memory bottleneck was a tremendous boost that allowed it to topple the best boards around.

Next came the ELSA Gladiac as our Video solution winner. The optional video in/out module is inexpensive enough to match or beat any of the other competitors prices and to top it off, ELSA provides you with some excellent software when you pick up the video upgrade module. Toss in the ability to add 3D Revelator goggles and ELSA easily takes home the crown for this category.

Lastly (but not least), we have the Leadtek WFGF2 as our "bang for your buck" winner. Available for $289 it sells as cheap as the Creative Labs offering, but sports the video-out option that the Creative lacks. The Annihilator 2 does have a slightly better driver interface and the ability to run Glide games through the Creative Unified driver but I didn't feel it was enough to counter the video-out option, as Glide support isn't such a big deal anymore for most users.