The Board

Board Layout

In the past, Elsa has used their own design for their final product. As we mentioned earlier, this is not the case for GLADIAC as Elsa decided to stick with NVIDIA's reference design. We've included pictures of both boards as proof.

The Elsa Gladiac

Gladiac back

GeForce 2 GTS reference board

reference back

The card reviewed here today is the 32MB DDR model. Like our GeForce 2 reference board, our GLADIAC came with 6ns memory manufactured by Infineon.

Infineon RAM

If you look closely at the pictures above, you'll notice the small printed circuit board on the left side of the GeForce 2 GTS chip. You're probably wondering what that is, aren't you?

The video module

That's the video module. For budding home video enthusiasts, Elsa will offer their VIVO (video-in, video-out) module as an add-on which will interface with the card.

With the VIVO module plugged into the GLADIAC, your gaming system will instantly transform into a video editing machine. Of course, the VIVO module will also fully support video chat, video email, and video capture functions as well. We haven't received specific pricing information but the VIVO module will be offered exclusively on Elsa's shopelsa.com website.

A small Millennium Electronics heatsink/fan cooler is used to keep the GeForce 2 GTS chip cool - just like our reference board provided by NVIDIA. When designing the GLADIAC board, Elsa definitely decided to stay as close to specs as possible!

MEI fan

"Best Select"

We mentioned the game bundle earlier, but we didn't give you the specific details. Rather than include demos or full titles that their customers may or may not be interested in, ELSA will pick 10 of the hottest games on the market. Out of those games GLADIAC customers will choose two free titles!

These games aren't time-limited or shareware versions either, these are the full retail versions and, on top of that, GLADIAC customers will have the option to purchase up to three more titles at extremely discounted prices.

We're really looking forward to the list of games customers can choose from, but ELSA's "Best Select" program is shaping up to be the best software bundle we've seen yet!