Conclusion
Well what can you say after an exhaustive weekend of testing, the end result is clear, or is it ?.To compare the results, I've compiled some more graphs showing the different games and different results that each card achieved
First off Quake 3
I decided that if you want to play games then you want them to look as good as they can hence in the conclusion I have pitted the two cards against each other both in the highest quality settings in Quake 3. All 32 bit colour, with all details set to maximum, and dynamic light turned on.
| 640*480c | 800*600c | 1024*768c | 1280*1024c | 1600*1200c | |
| Extra HQ GTS | 143.3 | 135.7 | 105.2 | 61.4 | 41.4 |
| Extra HQ MX | 128.1 | 93.3 | 60.4 | 36.7 | 23.1 |
As you can see from the graphs, and the table, both of the cards manages to hit the magic 60 FPS in 1024*768 resolution, this is quite an achievement, no doubt being pushed along by a 1300Mhz T-bird helps, but still, for a budget card, 60.4 FPS is a very reasonable score, maybe not playable under a really heavy deathmatch, but still good. The Elsa Gladiac GTS on the other hand manages a very nice 105.5FPS in the same resolution, which makes this the ideal resolution to play Quake 3 in, above 1024 resolution and it drops to 61.4 FPS and under heavy multiplayer action, this might become a bit slow.
Whilst Quake 3 Timedemo001 is not the most demanding of benchmarks I chose to use it, because everyone with Quake 3 can replicate the benchmarks, and it requires no extra downloads to run it.
Using the highest detail settings it provides a fair comparison of how these two cards that are at very different price points, perform.
So with the Quake 3 benchmarks over lets move swiftly on to the D3D benchmark comparison
Unreal Tournament
I drew a graph comparing the two cards against each other on Unreal Tournament demo "UTbench.dem", Unreal Tournament is a very CPU limited game as it turns out so, maybe it wasn't such a good benchmark, but since it's a very good game, it seems only fair to see how it runs, on what is a gaming orientated graphics card.
| 640*480 | 800*600 | 1024*768 | 1280*1024 | |
| Elsa Gladiac GTS | 50.77 | 49.74 | 46.77 | 24.04 |
| Elsa Geforce 2 MX | 50.74 | 49.7 | 45.13 | 22.1 |
This time the results are hardly any different if you only played Unreal Tournament, then there isn't really much to choose between the results.
Unreal Tournament is one of my favourite games at the moment and I really couldn't tell which card I was playing on a £220 card or a £120 card. So in my eyes that makes the Elsa MX a pretty good buy at around £120.
For a final summing up I graphed the 3Dmark 2000 results from both Elsa cards, with the CPU running at 1300mhz.
| 640*480 | 800*600 | 1024*768 | 1280*1024 | 1600*1200 | |
| Elsa Gladiac | 10079 | 9271 | 7612 | 5513 | 4041 |
| Elsa MX | 8064 | 6360 | 4910 | 3309 | 2327 |
As you can see the Elsa Gladiac GTS takes a quite a commanding lead in 3Dmark 2000, now I know you can't play 3dmark 2000, as there are no games that actually use the Max FX engine yet, but it shows that the extra bandwidth in the Elsa GTS, does help, quite a lot, for games that may well turn up in the future.
So in conclusion, all the games I played on both cards, ran without problems at normal resolutions, the Elsa MX, had a maximum playable resolution of 1024*768Mhz, anything above this was just to slow and jerky for acceptable gameplay, the GTS managed to play up to 1280*1024, before it became that little bit to slow and jerky, neither of these cards had the brute power needed for 1600*1200 smooth gameplay. I suppose there's always the Elsa Geforce 2 Ultra for that though (O:.
If you have a 14" or 15" monitor then really the Elsa Geforce MX will play all the games that you could want to, If you have a bigger monitor capable of 1280*1024, then maybe you should be looking towards the Elsa Gladiac GTS, it manages quite well up to these higher resolutions.
Well after all that the decision is up to you. If you want the very fastest gameplay, without spending an absolute fortune on a Geforce2 Ultra then the 32MB Gladiac GTS is a very good performer, if your stuck with an older PC, then maybe the Elsa Geforce2 MX is a sensible upgrade
Final thought of the day, in another years time, there will probably, nope there will definitely be another, even faster graphics card out, and if you really are a hardcore gamer then you will simply have to get the latest shiny bits for your PC, but right now whichever card you buy you won't be disappointed, both these cards played anything I threw at them, the MX was slightly slower, but it is a much cheaper card. The GTS was just that bit faster and for a Top end gaming machine, it's a very worthy card to consider.
Well having said all that I suppose I should relax a bit and go and play some Unreal Tournament
Happy Gaming (O:
