Elsa Gladiac MX

The world of graphics cards has gone completely mad in the past few months. We've seen faster and faster products appear from many different companies, but the top end of the market has also become extremely expensive. Currently, the latest and greatest graphics card will set you back about £230, which is more than you'll pay for a dedicated games console. As always, however, if you're prepared to sacrifice some speed, there are options for those looking to upgrade that don't involve taking out a second mortgage.

Elsa's Gladiac MX is based on nVidia's latest GeForce 2 MX chip. This is a cut-down version of the GeForce 2 GTS that appears in the fastest cards currently available. It is still pretty nippy, though, and has nVidia's fancy Transform and Lighting (T&L) engine on board. This, with the right game, takes some of the pressure off your processor.

The GeForce 2 MX chip also helps the processor out when it comes to playing DVDs, and Elsa bundles a copy of its own DVD player software with the card. If you have a DVDRom drive in your PC, you'll be able to watch films, but only on your monitor as there's no TV-out connection. An add-on module with video-in and out ports is available for an additional £30.

In common with other cards based on the GeForce 2 MX, Elsa's uses slower, cheaper memory than the more expensive cards. There's 32Mb of it on this board, however - enough to keep the card ticking over at the speeds it was intended for.

If you play games at resolutions up to 1024 x 768 pixels, then the Elsa Gladiac MX could be a good option. We ran the Elsa through our standard set of performance tests. We used a fairly fast PC - a 733Mhz processor with 128Mb of memory. Our tests showed that, if you use 16bit colour, you'll have no problem. Switch to 32bit colour and the weaknesses of the Gladiac MX become apparent.

There's another card on the market, Videologic's Vivid!, that runs faster in 32bit colour than this one. Given the choice, we would always prefer to play using 32bit colour than 16bit. If you're not too fussy about such nit-picking, however, the Gladiac is still a fine choice as a budget upgrade. That is especially true now that the company has just decided to reduce the cost of the card to a mere £100.

Contact Elsa 08000 563445