Press Voices about the ELSA ERAZOR II

PC WEB 6/99

"Well first off Erazor scores high, by ELSA providing a fan/heatsink on the cards. The images on the Erazor II are smooth. Colors are vibrant and edges are refined, unlike some other cards. OpenGL support comes with the drivers, so Quakers will be very happy. Couple of tweaks and you are shooting monsters at an incredible speed."

Overall Rating
4.9 out of 5

PC Magazin (Germany) 4/99

    Graphics Board of the Year 98/99

(First place in the readers' choice "Products of the Year 98/99", category "graphics boards")

Installation: 7 out of 10 points
Handling: 9 out of 10 points
Hardware quality: 9 out of 10 points

+ Speed
+ Good drivers

Overall rating: very good

Computer easy (Germany) 7/99

Buying Tip

PC PLAYER (Germany) 3/99

Buying Recommendation in the hardware hit list, category 2D/3D accelerators

PC-WELT (Germany) 3/99

"A fast 2D/3D board with a solid driver and two games at a reasonable price."

PC PROFESSIONELL (Germany) 2/99 and 3/99

First Place in the TOP 10 list of graphics boards

PC Games (Germany) 2/99

Equipment: 86%
Features: 85%
Performance: 89%

Plus: SGRAM, customer service

Overall rating: 89% (highest rating in this review)

GameStar (Germany) 1/99

Pro:
+ very fast
+ 3D display quality
+ convenient drivers
+ good equipment

Performance: 1,5
Quality: 1,4
Equipment: 1,9
Overall rating: 1,5

  Test Winner

WIN (Germany) 1/99

Equipment: 5 out of 6 points
2D ergonomics: 5 out of 6 points
3D performance Win98: 5 out of 6 points
3D performance NT: 5 out of 6 points
Overall rating: 5 out of 6 points

  TOP PRODUCT

ComputerBILD (Germany) 1/99

Visual quality in 3D games: realistic
Max. resolution with 256 colors: very high (1600 x 1200)
Max. resolution with 65,536 colors: very high (1600 x 1200)
Max. resolution with 16.7 mill. colors: very high (1600 x 1200)
Gaming with AMD K6-2 300 MHz: fast (39 frames/second)
Gaming with Pentium II-300: very fast (45 frames/second)
Video: very fast (99%)
Working: fast (86%)
Installation: easy
Manual: comprehensive, easily understandable

+ good visual quality in 3D games
+ very high resolutions possible
+ high gaming speed with Pentium II-300 and AMD K6-2 processors

  Test Winner

PC-SHOPPING (Germany) 1/99

+ Multi-texturing performance
+ Software equipment

Rating: good

"Outside of Europe, German-based ELSA has yet to establish a big name for itself in mainstream graphics. But the company is definitely on the right track with the ERAZOR II, a solidly engineered product that offers the best price value in the roundup."
"[...] the ERAZOR provides excellent image quality in both 2D and 3D. The windows desktop was displayed cleanly and glitch-free even at high resolutions and color depths, and 3D games ran trouble-free under both Direct3D and OpenGL."
"Of the cards we evaluated, the ERAZOR is the only one to use SGRAM memory rather than the less expensive SDRAM."
"ELSA has taken several steps to ensure stability with its card, and we laud the company for its efforts. [...] ELSA is also the only cardmaker to include a voltage regulator in its AGP card. This is a welcome addition, because there have been reported problems with some motherboards not providing RIVA TNT with enough power to run smoothly."
"[...] ELSA does include precise controls for screen gamma as well as refresh rate. You can also modify screen resolution in 32-pixel steps; [...] we welcome the configurability."

GameWorthy

"The board itself is actually quite small for all the power it holds, and is noticeably smaller than the STB Velocity TNT board, to put it simply, you'll have no trouble finding room for this little morsel."
"The ERAZOR II really shines when it's drivers are brought out into the light. As well as their WINman Suite which sticks an ELSA icon in your system tray for access to 2D and 3D settings, ELSA has included a set of very nice tweaking programs to nip and tuck your OpenGL and Direct3D settings. One of the nicer niblets of these drivers is the availability of custom refresh rates through 'Graphics Fine Tuning Mode'. This lets you tinker around with your monitor's refresh rates, along with Horizontal Scan Rate, and Pixel clock."
"Simply put, the ERAZOR [...], gives you phenomenal 2D. With the addition of custom refresh rates, you can tweak your display to your individual specifications, which gives it a small advantage over some other TNT's. The image quality [...] should give you all the 2D goodness you need, even at 1600x1200 in 32-bit color."
"Incredible speeds in Direct3D, and very respectable OpenGL performance. I've been a die hard believer in my SLI 12MB Voodoo2 setup for gaming, and this was the first board that I actually liked playing better than SLI with."
"While having Voodoo2's running on one machine running next to the test machine with the ERAZOR II in it, I noticed how faded out everything running off the Voodoo2's looked. Even with both systems running in 16-bit rendering, the TNT looks noticeably better, and has enough speed to satisfy most anyone. The Pentium II 350 box we put the ERAZOR on cranked out a very respectable 47 FPS in 800x600 in Quake II [...]"
"Even though your eyes can't see over 30 frames per second, there is a definite look of 'smoothness', when you're running over around 45 FPS. And in all of my tests, the ERAZOR performed smooth enough to where I enjoyed playing the game, not having to worry about video slowdowns, which makes it a definite winner in my book."
"This is simply a top quality TNT board, which lives up to every one of my expectations and beat some of them, I was very impressed."

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10 points

PC DIREKT (Germany) 12/98

Price/Performance: very good
Overall rating: very good

Editor's Choice

PC PLAYER (Germany) 12/98

Handling: 80 out of 100 points
Equipment: 80 out of 100 points
Speed: 90 out of 100 points
Overall score: 86 out of 100 points

  Test Winner

CHIP (Germany) 12/98

+ Super-fast card
+ Very good 2D values

  Overall rating: good (1,99)

Performance: 98%
Software/drivers: 95%
Price/performance: 81%
Equipment: 98%
Overall rating: 95%

Conclusion: The fastest graphics board currently available

PC PROFESSIONELL (Germany) 11/98

Performance: 5 out of 5 points
Equipment: 5 out of 5 points
Quality: 5 out of 5 points
Service: 5 out of 5 points
Overall rating: very good

  Editor's Choice - Winner in a review of 25 graphics boards

WIN (Germany) 11/98

Equipment: 4 out of 6 points
2D ergonomics: 6 out of 6 points
3D ergonomics: 6 out of 6 points
Price/performance: 5 out of 6 points
Overall score: 5 out of 6 points

  TOP PRODUCT

PC INTERN (Germany) 11/98

Installation: good (1,5)
Hardware equipment: very good (1,2)
Software equipment: good (1,9)
2D performance: good (1,9)
3D performance: very good (1,4)
Overall rating: good (1,5)
Price/performance: good (2,3)

PCgo! (Germany) 11/98

  Overall rating: very good