NVIDIA GeForce SDR Roundup (February 00)

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ELSA's first stab at the GeForce market provided an interesting card. Rather than use the generic reference design, ELSA chose to make the ERAZOR X fit in NLX form factor cases. While this is essential for NLX case owners, it means less to AT and ATX computer owners as the card fits in all three form factor cases. One would suspect that the oversized heatsink would provide for a low heat card; however, the fact that the heatsink is attached to the GPU with thermal glue means that less heat can be transferred to the heatsink's large surface area. The 5.5 ns SAMSUNG SDRAM chips perform similar to the 5.5 ns EliteMT SDRAM chips.

Of the cards rounded up here, only ELSA took the reference drivers to a new level. By adding an advanced monitor mode, one can actually set the specifics of the monitor gun itself, proving the ability to make your own custom resolution. The tasbar resident driver utility can be annoying at times, as the most used features are found almost 3 levels deep. ELSA also includes their own type of hardware monitoring, provided via the Chip Doctor utility. Rather than include an extra chip to perform hardware monitoring, the ERAZOR X monitors the voltage that goes to the fan to ensure that the fan is functioning at the proper speed. Chip temperature is also monitored via a temperature sensor. This information is then passed to the Chip Doctor and if a problem occurs Chip Doctor will notify the user as well as shut down the computer in extreme cases. While this may all sound fancy, the driver implementation is rather weak, as the only information that is given is a small green light indicating that everything is functioning properly. It is not until an error has occurred do you see any type of box. No amount of clicking or pointing will show you chip temperature or fan RPM. An included overclocking screen allows for changes to be made to the core and memory speeds with relative ease.

Pros: NLX form factor, not reference design, large heatsink, powerful driver set, Chip Guard.

Cons: Drivers can be convoluted, thermal glue used for heatsink attachment, no TV-out, Chip Guard's implementation.