Until the advent of the TNT by NVIDIA, ELSA products were targeted to a select few: those with professional graphics in mind. By appealing to 3D gamers, the TNT provided a larger customer base for ELSA to target. ELSA, a German based company, has continued this tradition of mixing professional graphics products with higher end gaming cards, a attribute that can be seen with their current range of products. With the production of the ELSA ERAZOR X, ELSA has once again created a niche for itself in the 3D graphics market by applying the newest NVIDIA chipset, the GeForce, to produce a quality 3D gaming card.

Specifications, courtesy of ELSA:
Controller: NVIDIA GeForce 256, First Graphics Processing Unit
Display Memory: 32 MB High Speed
Horizontal Sync Signals: 31.5 - 108.5
Vertical Refresh: 60-200 Hz
Bus System: AGP 2x/4x
Maximum Dot (Pixel) Rate: 350 MHz RAMDAC
API Support: DirectX 6, DirectX 7, OpenGL IDC
Other Standards: VESA Bios 3.0, DPMS, DCC2B, Plug & Play

When a company decides it wants to make a video card using the GeForce chipset, NVIDIA puts out a reference design for the graphics board itself, eliminating the need for manufacturers' tweaks.  Most of the GeForce cards that we see coming through the lab are essentially the same size with the same basic layout; all cards, that is, except for the ERAZOR X.  In order to produce a more universal card, ELSA decided to make the ERAZOR X in NLX form factor, disregarded NVIDIA’s reference layout and creating a card that can be used in virtually any machine with an AGP slot.

While the true value of having a NLX compatible card maybe debated by those of us with ATX cases, its value could not be any greater for NLX computer owners.  NLX is a relatively new case standard (seen to the left), set into motion in 1997 by Intel, that minimizes the amount of space that the case takes up, creating, in essence, a tiny, cute computer.  It accomplishes this by utilizing two methods commonly used to shrink computer size: a decrease in the size of the motherboard and a stacking of components.  In the case of the AGP slot, space is saved by placing bulky but vital motherboard components (such as ports) under the AGP card itself.  It is for this reason that the ELSA ERAZOR X has an abundance of free space between the case bracket and the bottom of the card.  When placed in a NLX case, this space is filled with ports rising off the motherboard, creating a stacked layout.

Producing the video card to fit NLX specifications is essential for use in NLX cases, as a regular AT or ATX form factor AGP card will not fit inside these boxes.  In addition, the NLX form factor cards work perfect in AT and ATX cases.  In fact, the increased open space created by using an NLX form factor card actually provides an advantage over normal AGP cards because the free space, in theory, results in increased case air flow (and also a nice place to run cables, if necessary).  Thus, by choosing to make the ERAZOR X fit NLX form factor, ELSA made a wise decision, attracting all types users, from NLX owners to crazy overclockers.

The card its self contains many of the components that we see on the SDR GeForces coming into the lab. ELSA chose to use 5.5 ns (183 MHz) SDRAM chips produced by Samsung. The quality of Samsung SDRAM chips has never been questioned, thus ELSA made a wise choice on this aspect of the card. The card contains 4 8 MB SDRAM chips placed on the front of the card for a total of 32MB of RAM.

One thing that sets the design of the ELSA card apart from some of the other manufacturer is the use of a comparatively larger heat sink. While most GeForce based cards have a 4 cm x 4 cm heat sink on them, ELSA uses a larger 5 cm x 5 cm heat sink. This more than thoroughly covers the GeForce processor and also leaves heat sink space around the approximately 4 cm x 4 cm fan (the same one used on many of the video cards we see in the lab). The choice to use a larger heat sink will find no complaints from us, as cooler is always better.

Finally, there is one additional unique feature of the ELSA ERAZOR X, a feature called ChipGuard. ChipGuard is an ELSA produced program that runs resident in the taskbar upon installation of the drivers (note that only the shipping drivers come with the ChipGuard program, all Internet based drivers will not contain this feature). The ChipGuard is a nifty utility that does two things: monitors fan RPM and also chip temperature. If ChipGuard detects an error in either of these two sensors, a warning screen will pop up, notifying the user of the problem. In addition, if the temperature threshold set is surpassed for a substantial amount of time, ChipGuard will actually shut down the computer, reset the clock speed of both the core and the memory to the base level of 120/166 MHz, and then reboot the machine to maintain these settings. These threshold values are very high, thus this safety feature of the card will only be activated if the card is about ready to become toast.

We were interested to find out how the fan monitoring works, considering that the fan only has two wires going to it. Most of the fans on the market have three wires going to them: two for power and one to monitor the fan RPM. Speaking to ELSA we learned of a different monitoring option used here. Instead of having the RPM signal mounted on the fan, the ELSA ERAZOR X uses the power draw of the fan to monitor the fan speed. A power draw that is above or below the normal draw indicates a problem with the fan. When ChipGuard detects this, a window pops up and notifies the user of a potential fan problem.

While the safety of the ChipDoctor software is pretty cool, the usability of the utility leaves something to be desired. This is due to the fact that the sensor inputs are not able to be seen by the user. The only sign and use of the ChipDoctor running under normal conditions is a small green icon on the taskbar. No amount of clicking or searching will allow the user to see just how hot the chip is running or how much power the fan is using. The ChipDoctor utility is cool but additional utilities could make it even cooler.

Upon placing the card in our test system, the first thing that we did at the lab was to download the latest drivers for the card and put them to work. While the install went seamlessly, the usability of the task bar driven interface was less than desirable. While almost every video option that we look for could be found in the driver release (including a cool overclocking utility), the navigation using ELSA's WINman Suite was often tedious. None of the most commonly used menu items were available on the first level of the pop-up screen, and in some cases access to the settings lied 3 levels deep in the cryptic menu system. After a bit of use, we found ourselves going the the display properties to change the settings rather than using the WINman icon. The ChipDoctor utility included in the software is cool, however the only features of ChipDoctor are noticed when there is a drastic problem with the card, making the utility useful only when the card is about ready to die.

A bit confusing? You bet!

One of the better features of this driver set is the ability to change the refresh rate of the screen in increments of .1 Hz. Most likely an idea carried down from ELSA's workstation roots, this is great for not only the professional out there but also can take eye strain off the avid gamer. In addition, a plethora of monitor settings can be tweaked in the advanced mode, allowing the user to even set his or her own resolution by changing how the monitor gun fires. Very cool for advanced users out there.

Advanced monitor mode: powerful stuff.

Color settings and DirectX settings are easy to find and tweak:

Overclocking was a breeze:

On the positive side, the manual included with the ERAZOR X was one of the most comprehensive that the AnandTech lab has ever seen. ELSA cut no costs here, as the manual is 30 pages long and covers everything from installation to an extensive description of how the 3D pipeline functions. Not only is it very complete, the manual speaks in modest language and does not try to impress the reader with confusing information. While in other situations, this tone of narrative can make the reader feel as if the text has been 'dumbed' down, the ERAZOR X manual explains concepts on a basic level at first and then extensively covers the advanced principals involved. The only feature not discussed in the manual was the ChipGuard aspect, initially leaving us wondering what the small green dot in our taskbar was. Other than that, kudos to ELSA on a job well done here.

As can be seen in the above graphs, overclocking the card to a 160 MHz core clock speed and a 183 MHz memory clock speed did improve performance a substantial amount in Quake III Arena.

(Look for reviews of the other video cards seen here in the near future)

Because Unreal does not respond well to the 3.53 refrence drivers, 3.65 drivers were used in its place. This provided a substantial speed gain over the 3.53 drivers in higher resolutions and colors. Take note that the Unreal engine does not appear to be able to take much advantage of the higher clock speed as much as Quake III, as can be seen in the graphs above.

A while back at the lab we were a bit surprised to learn that NVIDIA would begin producing the powerful GeForce chip to run a a 'slow' 120 MHz core clock speed, a speed even surpassed with the release of the TNT2 chipset. The reason that the speed of the GeForce is a bit low considering the increase in technology is due to the increased number of transistors in the GeForce chip, resulting in a hotter running temperature. By sending out the GeForce cards with anything more than a core speed of 120 MHz, NVIDIA faced overheating problems in poorly designed cards. It appears, however, that the ELSA board is not one of these inferior products, as overclocking abilities of the card were impressive, most likely due to the overly large heat sink placed above the processor.

By poking around the driver utilities, we eventually stumbled upon ELSA's included overclocking utility which allowed us to push the card to a core of 150 MHz and a memory clock of 150 MHz. This should suffice for the cautious users out there, but we at the lab always want more, thus necessitating an install of the powerful Power Strip utility for further overclocking. At the stock speed of a 120 MHz core, the maximum temperature reached under extensive 3D gaming was about 69 degrees Celsius. In the lab we were able to push the core speed up to a blazing 150 MHz (proving that ELSA made a wise choice when making this the limit of the included overclocking program), a full 30 MHz above the stock speed. Any further increase in core speed resulted in system failure after a few 3D runs, partly due to the fact that at 150 MHz the chip was reading a not so cool 79 degrees Celsius.

The overclocking of the 32 MB of SEC SDRAM was typical of other 5.5 nanosecond (183 MHz) SDRAM chips in GeForce cards. In the AnandTech lab we were able to push the RAM speed up from a stock 166 MHz to 183 MHz, providing a nice improvement in card speed. Thus, by utilizing the cool running temperature of the testbed system, the ELSA ERAZOR X was able to clock in at a very fast 150/183 MHz. The high core speed achieved can be attributed to the rather large heat sink and fan placed on the card, in fact it is the largest heat sink seen on any GeForce video cards that have passed through the lab, measuring 5 cm x 5 cm (the other GeForce cards have a 4 cm x 4 cm heat sink on them).

In general, the GeForce cards that are on the market today are all targeted at gamers with higher end systems. Due to the extreme speed of the GeForce chip itself, a card such as the ERAZOR X would provide little improvement over a TNT2 based card in slower systems where the GeForce would be able to work faster than the CPU could put out. Once this factor has been taken into account, the second issue to think about is whether buying a SDR GeForce is worth it with the recent arrival of DDR GeForce cards. It is true that an SDR GeForce card, such as the ELSA ERAZOR X will run $50 to $100 dollars cheaper than its DDR counterpart, but in this case price does dictate performance. Often, if having the fastest card possible is not of main concern, a TNT2-Ultra or a TNT2-Plus based card can provide almost comparable performance to the GeForce in slower machines. On the other hand, if your machine can keep up, the GeForce SDR does provide some bang for the buck (when compared to the DDR version).

As far as SDR GeForce cards go, the ELSA ERAZOR X is middle of the range, both performance wise and utility wise. The card does come boxed with a game demo CD, however it does not come with any full game titles, once again placing the card in the middle of the pack. As far as performance goes, all GeForce cards tested with 183 MHz SDRAM (5.5 Ns) appear to perform almost identically. ELSA appears to have done a good job in making its own reference design, an engineering feat that is not a trivial matter. This excellent design is reflected in the high overclocking speeds reached in the card. In addition, the ERAZOR X has support for ELSA's own 3D Revelator glasses, LCD based glasses that enhance the 3D images seen in Direct3D game. It does this by rendering alternating frames at different angles, a quality the glasses make up for by opening and closing one eye at the same speed (using LCD technology, like polarizing glasses but much faster). In theory, the net effect is a 3D image created by each eye viewing a different frame and angle. If you are looking to use these glasses, ELSA suggests you use their card for best results, making the ERAZOR X a prime choice. In theory, however, ELSA does provide Revelator support for all NVIDIA processor based cards.

The choice to buy the ELSA ERAZOR X over a comparable GeForce SDR card is not an easy one to make. On one hand, the ELSA card contains excellent monitor tweaking utilities, the ChipGuard utility which prevents the card from ever becoming a coaster, and fits NLX form factor. On the other hand, the drivers are a convoluted and the ChipGuard feature is not that useful in normal circumstances. Then there is the final line: price. The ELSA ERAZOR X actually runs on the more expensive side of SDRAM based SDR cards with no video features. This is most likely due to the high quality of products that come out of ELSA, making a first time buyer a life long supporter. In addition the price increase may be due to the design and test processes that come along with the production of a board. Most companies simply use NVIDIA's reference design, however to make the card NLX form factor ELSA had to produce and test their own design.

As far as NLX case owners go, this card is nothing less than a blessing. It is often difficult to find powerful components that fit this form factor, yet ELSA delivers, providing an essential upgrade for aging NLX form factor graphics cards. For the rest of us out there with ATX or AT cases, the ERAZOR X is a nice purchase, if you are willing to pay the price for the name. The ability for an overclock assures that some extra performance can be squeezed out of the card, which brings us to the final conclusion: if you want the fastest and best card on the market now, get a GeForce DDR; if you want a solid second best performer that has overclocking potential and good brand name recognition at a higher price, the ELSA ERAZOR X is worth a look; if you want a high performance NLX form factor card, the ERAZOR X is a gift from above.