Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 GeForce 2 GTS

Conclusion

With such a dominating market presence, Creative Labs' products have always appealed to the masses. Creative does not only go after the hard core tweaker who is prone to mail order his/her video card, rather Creative Labs attempts to appeal to every consumer: newbie to techie. By having such a large market span (including mail order stores as well as retail locations), Creative Labs has the means to deliver a product to both types of consumers. The question is, does the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 appeal to both? To answer this question, we must look at what the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 has going for it.

The most important aspect of the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 is the incredible price of the card. At a retail price of $299, the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 undercuts the competition by $50. Although this price decrease may be a result of less eye candy on the card (no fancy heatsinks or tweaking tools), the Annihilator 2 is by no means an ordinary card. This was demonstrated by our ability to get to get the card to 250 MHz core and a resulting 2 Gigatexels per second. At such high speeds, only the highest quality components will survive, proving that the quality of the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 is definitely above par.

You may be wondering if there are any other catches, besides the lack of additional features, to such a low priced card. The answer is yes, however the problem does not lie in the 2D resolution (as we have seen in the past). Instead, the problem lies with the software bundle, or, more specifically, the lack there of. In order to be able to sell the 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 at such low costs, it was necessary to pretty much kill any bundled games or applications. The 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 comes with little more than demos, as the package includes, LAVA (a "Music video player"), Media Ring Talk, Colorific, 3Deep, and the GeForce 2 GTS demo CD. All of these titles are not only unimpressive but they are also unnecessary. This is especially disappointing when we have seen many GeForce 2 GTS cards come with choose your own software bundles with impressive selections to choose from.

Besides this down point, does the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 appeal to almost every user? The answer is yes. While the low price of the card may prompt other GeForce 2 GTS manufacturers to cut prices, it is unlikely that many cards will be able to compete with the price of the Annihilator 2 as those other cards pack in additional, and often times useless features that only increase cost. By keeping it simple, Creative Labs was able to manufacture a winner as well as "AnandTech's First 2 Gigatexel Game Accelerator."