Creative Labs Annihilator - If U R Not a Computer Expert
Written: Jun 12 '00 (Updated Jul 02 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great card and GPU unit, Reference card for NVidia chip
Cons: Compatibility with older software - esp. 3DFX Glide games
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| defilm's Full Review: Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator |
Why write when everyone else already rated this card GREAT! ???
I have an advanced EE degree and I am one of those people that upgrade
with parts rather then replace by buying an entirely new computer.
Rather then telling you about all the great features of the Annihilator and Annihilator pro, and frame rates, (Which you can get from reading
others e-pinions, and I suggest you do!) I want to tell you about upgrading and some of the issues experienced. This does not mean you can't get things to work, but the new GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) is new and will take time to get the bugs worked out between the software
now in firmware, and the driver software that interfaces with the new
GPU software in firmware. Things can go wrong more often than they go well in many cases. I want you to be armed with this when you consider an upgrade verses buying it working.
Why a GPU card is different than existing 3D accelerators:
Basically there are four things that need to happen before you get a 3D image. TRANSFORM the image, SETUP, LIGHTING and RENDERING. Before the
new GPU, SETUP and RENDERING were done by the video card, while
TRANSFORMATION and LIGHTING were done by the CPU. In the GPU,
all four are done on the card. This allows for nearly 480 megapixals per second processing. Let me tell you folks, there is not a game out there that even comes close to having anywhere near that number of pixal rate. But, the cool part is indeed higher, better quality images at higher resolution, full screen, and moving the other two pipelines to the card frees up the CPU. Now you are likely to get better video from a AMD K6-2 350 with a Nvidia 256 GPU based card than a Pentium III 500 with a older dual pipeline card.
SO, What's Wrong???
I read other fellow epinion opinions on the card, and I rated several highly recommended, even though my opinion descents somewhat from theirs. I wish to warn you, that if you are not a computer expert, or (In my case, even if you are), be very careful with this new wonderful product.
First off, others recommend the card highly, and as far as it doing what you want it to do, and if you want to stay close to the company that makes the main chip on the card (GeForce 256 chip.) I highly recommend it. As the name implies, it processes information 256bits wide. (Note that a Nintendo 64 is 64 bits wide (well sort of), and others are 128 bit systems. Well this powerhouse if 256bits wide. In addition the Creative card is the "Reference" card NVIDIA uses to test their driver upgrades, so in a sense, reference drivers that are in "Beta" pre-release will likely run on the Creative Card first if you choose to run the reference drivers. (Many times if one of you newly acquired games don't work, the company's tech support will recommend that you try the reference drivers off the www.nvidia.com website it all else fails.
I noticed the other writers have the cards working in somewhat specific situations. One runs many OpenGL Sims and Action (The Sims, Quake II, III, etc). Another wrote a brief one on plugging it in and it worked perfectly. This too can happen if you have the right hardware and software combinations, but that information was not provided. Here is a summary of my attempts to get the card working.
WHY WOULD I WANT A GPU BASED CARD ANYWAY? I HAVE A FAST CPU!
Right now gaming is only beginning to take advantage of the 3D accelerated boards.
(Hence smooth video at 1024x768 full screen!). But the cool is yet to come. With the four pipelines on the video card, it frees up the CPU utilization. If is not unreasonable to see the CPU usage drop from the pegged 80-100% utilization to 20-30%. This frees up the CPU to do other things, such as build in more controls and intelligence in games.
(Ever notice if you play some sims, action games, etc, you will see 4 guys guarding something, then as you come out, one notices you and you kill him with a gun or knife but the other three just stand there and keep guarding??? Once the first one is dead, another breaks off. You blast his guts all over, but the other two remain completely oblivious to it all? Like shotguns and particle beam blasts don't make noise?
Well, you will see that change as programmers are more free to put more intelligence in to the games since the LIGHTING and RENDERING are now in hardware on the card. We are talking much more realistic products and we are talking about full frame rates at resolution better than High Definition television.
WHY MY TWO $249.95 ARE SITTING BOXED AND UNUSED:
Yes, I own two cards. They are the SDR, not the DDR. Here is the difference from the empirical perspective… It is in how the RAM on the card is accessed. You would buy the PRO DDR if you were buying today, but If you don't bother to try to over-clock the chipsets running in your computers, and don't know how
many megapixals are being processed, and don't really care if you are getting 40 frames per second or 48 frames per second, and you already own a SDR board, don't go cough up the money for a DDR board!
Here is part of the issue:
My hardware: An IWILL's XA-100+ with AMD K6-II-450 and K6III-400. Well, first off I couldn't get the Demos to run without spontaneous reboot. Creative tech support indicated the IWILL was a 1 X AGP and the Annihilator 4X. They also said the new GPU didn't really like ALI chipset motherboards. OK... They recommended a Non VLI Super 7 Socket (The socket AMD's, running on 100Mhz PC RAM, and often allow you to run the memory bus at the 66Mhz AGP bus rate, or the faster 100Mhz CPU clocking rate.)
Taking in to consideration that the AMD II-450 and III-400 were more than enough power to run anything with the new Creative Card, and in fact was doing quite well with the existing 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 2X AGP cards, I purchased two new motherboards. One SOYO with ETEQ chipset, and a Tyan 1598 with VIA chipset. I got different results. The card was running the rull 3D demos now, but gagging on simple DirectX Vers. 7A video test. And of course the reliable spontaneous reboot. (I think it sounds just like the one PCGamer has defined when trying (unsuccessfully) on many upgrades to get the AMD Athalon working with the NVidia GEForce cards. (They still have not been successful in print to date). The Creative tech support tech I was working with pushed me up the ladder to a technician closer to engineering. The new engineer then acknowledged they had not very good results with AMD product based motherboards, or the VIA chipset. They of course asked me to upgrade all drivers, and even run the reference drivers. No difference. Then Creative's tech support recommended a paired Intel motherboard with a Intel Pentium III CPU, 133Mhz Ram, and a 440BX chipset, as they had the best luck with the BX chipset and Intel motherboards with Intel Pentium processors. Bypassing the Super Socket 7 motherboards, the Celeron processor motherboards, going for a Slot 1 motherboard and Pentium III. (Of course I knew from the last two months of PCGamer to avoid the AMD Athalon chip and Slot A motherboards that they run on).
Why didn't they tell me the board really only works well with the newest OpenGL software out there and the BX chipset (in general)? After upgrading the systems, CPUs, drives, etc. I spent $2000 a PC. Now they wanted me to replace my Super 7 board, CPU for a PIII, 256MB 133Mhz RAM. Yeah, just another $1300 per PC. I gave up and still have my AMD and Voodoo3 3000 systems until I must upgrade. When I do, I will likely replace the Motherboard, CPU and RAM all at the same time. This is generally highly recommended, since you are in reality replacing the entire computer leaving only the peripherals. Well, it looks like I will have to replace the HardDrives as well. I have two 10.2 Gig Maxtors in each of the two systems, but it looks like I will need two 30 Gig drives. (Ever notice that games used to require 60-100MB of disk space and now
they require 200-300MB each??? At that rate you will fill up a 10 Gig drive with Operating System, drivers, Browser, with less than 20 games over time.)
Please see update to this review if you are upgrading to this board!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 249.95
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Epinions.com ID:
defilm
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Location: Long Island, New York
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 7 members
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