So the Annihilator 2's hardware does not stand out from the crowd, but what about the software? Well, Creative's drivers are essentially reworked NVIDIA reference drivers. As is usually the case with reworked reference drivers, we recommend you use the real reference drivers instead, in order to be sure you're getting the newest version with the latest feature support. What the Annihilator 2 is missing is DVD playback software. We don't know why Creative cut this out but we find it rather disappointing. The GeForce's DVD playback quality is probably its best non-3D feature.

The Annihilator 2 also comes with Lava!, an MP3 player with 3D effects to go with music. It also provides news feeds. You may feel that Lava! rates right up there with Colorific's 3Deep (also included) on the list of "software I never use that my video card company made me pay for." The Annihilator Pro also comes bundled with Media Ring talk and the always cool NVIDIA Demos. But there is a silver lining to the cloud that surrounds the Creative drivers. It's a handy utility called "AGP Wizard," which lets you adjust your AGP speed to 1x, 2x, or 4x as well as turn on and off sidebanding and fastwrites. We wish we had this utility for other video cards as it's a very useful tool.

Of course, there is much more to the GeForce2 GTS technology than we have listed here. If you would like to read more about the GeForce2 GTS architecture, please read our GeForce2 GTS Guide. But for now, let's see how the Annihilator 2 performs.