Price: $250+ street
Availability: Now
ELSA is a company known for building quality high-end 3D video cards using NVIDIA's video chips. ELSA, with their years of experience in both high-end 3D hardware and software, manages to ship compelling 3D solutions that deliver both software and hardware features that often cannot be matched by other 3D card makers. We recently took a look at one of their newest cards, the GLADIAC GeForce2 GTS, running a full test suite to see how the card stacks up. Do we think this ELSA card should be in your future? Well, yes. In fact, we gave this bad boy an Extreme Hardware Award. Read on to find out why this is probably the best GeForce2 GTS you can buy.
The 32MB GLADIAC GeForce2 GTS
The GLADIAC GeForce2 GTS is based on the NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS GPU and, for the most part, does not vary from NVIDIA's reference design in any way but one. The GLADIAC GeForce2 GTS comes with an expansion port than lets you install a module. ELSA will be offering a $40 VIVO Module (for Video-In Video-Out) for sale on their web site. With this card, you can add TV-out as well as video recording much like that included with the ASUS V7700 Deluxe.
VIVO
We really like this option as it provides more flexibility than the ASUS method of offering a card that has video and a card without but no in-between. And for the hard core gamer, this also lets you put the VIVO upgrade on a ELSA's 64MB GLADIAC GeForce2 GTS. The V7700 Deluxe only comes with 32MB. This is what we call innovation. If you want it you can buy it, otherwise, you aren't stuck paying more for something you don't want.