Creative Labs 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra

Creative Labs sells several different video cards, but the 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra is the best in its arsenal. The 3D Blaster sports NVIDIA’s RIVA TNT2 Ultra graphics chip (obviously), and is an AGP 2X compatible card. The 3D Blaster has 32MB of SDRAM, which is probably more than many computer users really need.

The 3D Blaster’s maximum resolution is 1,920 x 1,200, and the available refresh rates range from 60Hz at the low end to a liquid smooth 200Hz at the top end. The 3D Blaster also has a 32-bit color depth and a 300MHz RAMDAC. The 3D Blaster is compatible with Win9x and WinNT4.0 and uses the Direct3D and OpenGL APIs.

Creative Labs 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 Ultra

We unleashed the SYSMark 98 test on the 3D Blaster, and it immediately cried “Uncle.” The 3D Blaster finished last with an overall score of 181. The office productivity score was 178, and the content creation score was 185. These are not horrendous scores, but it’s clear that the 3D Blaster lags behind our other contestants when it comes to 2-D applications.

It was our hope that the 3D Blaster would manage a little better in our 3-D tests, and it did—marginally. We opened up Quake II and ran our frame rate test. At 640 x 480, the 3D Blaster rang up a total of 85.3fps, good enough for fourth place. We turned up the resolution to 1,024 x 768, and the 3D Blaster scored a frame rate of 64.3fps. We were pretty impressed by such a high frame rate at this resolution, even though it was only the third best among the video cards we reviewed.

We figured that, because the 3D Blaster finished in the middle of the pack in our first round of 3-D tests and would end up about as well in the 3D Marks test. Not so. The 3D Blaster scored only a 4,234, second to last.

The 3D Blaster is a capable card, but several others we reviewed outperformed it. It also seems a bit pricey to us, given the test results.
 

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By: Lacey