The Creative Price Point

So how cheap is cheap?

So why should anyone go with the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Riva TNT2 Ultra? Well, if you like incredibly long product names, you're set with this card! In all seriousness however, the key for Creative is price. Do a search on any of the major pricing comparison engines for "TNT2 Ultra," and the 3D Blaster will come up every single time. OEM versions (with a full 32MB) sell for as little as $175, and fully boxed retail versions are available for around $185.

Besides being available at a great price, a lot of folks probably like the piece of mind which comes from buying "big name." While we've found Guillemot to be a great company with great products, they haven't had a name in the US video card marketplace before their TNT2 product. Diamond's recent acquisition by S3 is making them more unlikely a candidate for TNT2 purchases every day, and if you believe all the whispers of Hercules' imminent demise, they'd be out of business from rumor alone.

Bundle? What bundle?

I don't know anyone who uses the Colorific 3Deep color calibration software that's bundled with the 3D Blaster, but it's a utility that might come in handy for the more anal…er…discriminating user. Other than that, there's no included games bundle, which is becoming less of an issue since very few games today are not 3D accelerated. You do get a black and white installation pamphlet that serves its purpose, but for the most part the card is plug and play.

What about the driver situation?

Will Creative ever be able to match Nvidia's driver revision pace? Well, no, by definition. It's true that big vendors like Creative and Diamond have a history of seriously lagging behind in official driver releases for their products. With issues like customization, WHQL certification, and extensive beta testing, it's common to see a few weeks' or even a few months' delay to catch up with the latest reference drivers.

Fortunately, virtually every TNT2 made adheres closely to the reference platform, and thus can be used with Nvidia's latest reference drivers. The 3D Blaster is no different, and we were able to install and use 2.08 detonator for our benchmark tests without problem.

And of course we push the card to its limits

There are benefits of using Creative's included utilities however. For one, Creative has included on the installation CD an overclocking utility (fairly standard with today's TNT2 Ultra cards). For those who don't want to bother with a 3rd party program such as Powerstrip, this is a boon, and it's good to know that Creative is providing for tweakers and hardcore gamers.

The utility included on the Creative Labs CD only allowed for overclocking of the memory bus. At first, we thought this might be an overclocking cop-out, but as it stands, you can head on over to Creative's website to download the latest utility, which allows for overclocking of the graphics core as well.