We also ran Quake 3
Arena's Demo001 to further test the Elsa Gladiac
Ultra in OpenGL. Let's find out how it ran
using Quake 3's "Fastest" setting.
Quake
3 Arena (OpenGL)
Over
100FPS at 1600x1200 is amazing. Quake 3's
"Fastest" setting isn't very pretty
though. How does the Gladiac Ultra do at the
"Normal" setting?
Does
that answer the question? Again we're seeing
some very high numbers. Time to move on the
"High Quality" setting.
Not
only did we set Quake 3 set to "High
Quality", but we turned Geometry and Texture
Detail all the way up. The performance was
excellent, almost hitting the "magic"
number of 60FPS at 1600x1200x32. We also ran
this test with our board overclocked.
Overclocking
yielded small gains in performance, hovering
around 10% at the higher resolutions.
Now
for the dilemma. With blistering
performance, excellent stability and great
compatibility the Elsa Gladiac Ultra is an amazing
product. How much are you willing to pay for
this kind of performance? The Elsa Gladiac
Ultra alone has a suggested retail price of $549.
Add in the $39 video module and you're up to $578.
This is a hefty price to pay for a video card in a
time when 6 months down the road something faster
and probably cheaper will be available. If you've
got a ton of disposable income you won't be
disappointed with the Gladiac Ultra.
However, mainstream users should be very
comfortable with a standard GeForce 2, a Voodoo5
or Radeon. If you've got the money, go for
it. Otherwise we advise waiting for the next
generation of 3D accelerators. We give the
Elsa Gladiac Ultra a Hot Hardware Heat Meter
Rating of...
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