Manufacturer: Absolute Multimedia

Homepage : www.absolutemm.com

Bonjour tout le monde. Today's lesson is one of discovery and enlightenment. We shall lead you into the world of the super-overclocker, a world populated by half-wits and imbeciles (read Chillblast crew). The first inkling of this yet-to-develop journey, was the communications bat (re-employed after the reptilian crew suffered a small pyrotechnical accident - I was only trying to warm them with the blow torch) crashing through the window. Actually, that was what would have happened had he not impacted into the (electrified) razor wire, before an unfortunate ricochet into the acid moat (you need a reasonable level of home security when living the chemical high life!) Luckily we managed to fish his skeleton out and I'm sure he will make a full recovery. Now I think you can see where this is going, can't you?

Exactly. A huge shift in the earth's magnetic field must have disrupted Torquil's navigation senses (or the tiny crack pipe that was later recovered from the acid) resulting in well, you know. The big question is....how are we now going to import high quality coke from Colomb... erm I mean what sort of calamity would cause this terrible event? We immediately sat down to "brainstorm" hoping to avoid the inevitable but a brilliant piece of visual dexterity from yours truly, resulted in the bat's pipe being circulated. At this point, it all got a bit hazy. I assumed that the subsequent fleeting memories were just bad dreams until I found "Trevor" tattooed to my left buttock. Don't strippers have funny names these days! The upshot of our quest to save the world/get high was pretty poor. Nothing concrete had been achieved but that it isn't to say that we had failed. Oh no, in fact we had er....not failed?

Not really, failure was ensured the very second we were conceived. So, we were forced to console ourselves through the medium of prosti....review!?!! A quick trip to the butchers (and one less staff member) and we were flush with cash. Another call to Big Dave and we erm...were back to square one (albeit it with a more streamlined posse). As illustrious leader, I took it upon myself to re-establish the Chillblast reputation so after a short wait in a dark alley (no, not for that) I was able to locate a suitable benefactor who was willing to supply us with a chunk of hardware. Said unfortunate was more than happy for me to prise the article from his hand and even shouted a "thank you" as I sped away, at least I thought he said thanks.

Once safely ensconced back at HQ, we all marveled at this week's victim. I had miraculously stole.. been given a Nemesis GeForce2 MX 400 Pro!! Jesus, pay dirt! This little beauty is made by Absolute Multimedia and is squarely aimed at the overclocking market. Check the natty wooden box that they ship it in...

Made from fast growing trees (I made that up) but it is a smart looking box. Be thankful that companies have recognised what a valuable market overclocking is, it means that we can all enjoy the benefits including fashionable packaging. Wooooo.

Pluck the little baby from it's static protector and stand back. I've lit the fuse and this looks like it's super fly T.N.T.

Sometimes we file the use of flash under the heading "bad".

Yes ppl, that's right, they have coloured the PCB black! Kewl with a capital Q! This is a great looking card and it is even colour coordinated with our Soyo Dragon (extra respect). The only thing to note at this stage is that there are no RAM sinks. This was a pre-production sample and the full retail version will have ALL the bells and whistles attached. The card has the ridiculously sexy looking little blue orb-like fan on the GPU. Close-up.

Worth the money/effort alone. It is a clip-on fan so you can change it if you want, but frankly, unless you like rooms with rubber floors, I'd keep it.

The Pro part of the card comes in the form of 64 MB of high performance RAM which is 4.5 NS - very nice.

You can make out the 45 at the end of the bottom line just to verify we aren't lying (you really do need to).

The lovely box contained a line out TV jack to support the cards TV out (Svideo)

and also a CD which a choice of games. Half Life was on the list, fear not brethren.

The company recommends using Nvidia's own drivers, thank God.

Installation

Pull out old card (throw away) insert Nemesis.

Performance

This is or at least should be the part that you should really care about. Eventhough we are magpies and shiny things attract us, looks have to take a backseat over the king of the hill - performance.

We will use the stalwarts of VC benchmarks - MadOnion's 3D Mark 2000 and 2001 and also Vulpine GL. All the benchmarks were run using the default settings except we ran Vulpine at 800 x 600.

Our overclocking tool of choice is PowerStrip. We tried CoolBits but it did not recognise the memory speed correctly, supposedly the latest version does.

We picked the Elsa Gladiac MX as the featured opposition. It is a standard unit with only a passive heatsink to shift some of the excessive heat generated by the Nvidia processor.

First we benchmarked both cards at their stock speeds which are:

                    Nemesis                                                                                                                Elsa

                        6106                                                                                                                    5189

An 18% increase in 3D 2000 is a promising start.

                        2919                                                                                                                       2376

Following up the power start with an even more alluring 23% increase in performance over our female friend.

Vulpine GL

Again 18% in our FPS test. The next chart looks like gibberish (and probably is).

The points of note here are the frequency that the Nemesis manages at higher FPS over the Elsa. So, at first glance, the Elsa looks like it has carried the day but on further inspection it's prowess is only gained at low FPS - PAH!

The Nemesis is really kicking some serious Elsa ass through out all these benchmarks with some serious performance gains.

Overclocking

As far as I know (knowledge gained through deep meditation/read from the entrails of the news otter) that the main bottleneck in the setup on a graphics card is the memory speed. Therefore, overclocking this will result in the greatest gains.

Here are the levels we managed to reach:

Nemesis

We were able to get reasonable increases of 20% for the GPU and 15% for the memory. Not bad when it is all speed for free!

Elsa Gladiac MX

The Elsa is a slightly different proposition because it is able to run at GPU 31.5% over stock speed and the memory gained an excellent 26.5%. These are exceptional figures that could be further enhanced by the addition of RAM sinks and active GPU cooling.

As you can see, there is not a great difference between their engine (GPU) clock  speeds but the Nemesis is able to exploit the quality of it's memory to reach 240 mhz. Bear in mind that the card is a pre-production sample that came without any RAM sinks, which allow even higher memory speeds (and more stable operation) to be achieved.

Will it affect anything? Hell yes!

                          6937                                                                                                                6424

The gap is closing with an 8% lead for the Nemesis. The Elsa has managed to get a phenomenal increase of 24% in it's score.

                          3336                                                                                                                3015

11% lead for our friend - the bringer of retribution but this is less than half of it's former gains. Looks like the Elsa is not the dog we thought with another superb 27% gain over it's Feeble) stock score.

Vulpine GL

Tighter than a gnat's - well you know.

In my old age, it is hard to tell but I think that the Nemesis has still taken this one with a superior score in the higher FPS region.

Temperature

We took the temperature as close to the GPU as we could. Here are the results:

The difference is massive, definitely a direct result of the little blorb and fan. It is very obvious while testing that the temp is the overriding factor that affects the cards stability. A 1*C increase is the difference between flawless running and purple patches/artifacts etc.

Conclusion

The Nemesis is a very fast and feature packed graphics card. It is well designed, and the TV out coupled with Absolute have managed to produce an overclocking friendly unit with the high quality RAM, GPU fan and also (production version) RAM sinks.

My only worry is that they may overprice the card, which may be a death knell with the advent of the GeForce3 MX. Only time will tell.

If you are in the market for a new card, then my advice is to wait for a couple of weeks until the GF3 MX are out and then weigh up the options. If your money is burning a hole in your pocket (yes, you Homer) then this may be the card for you.

Descriptive word for this review is: Provocative

The final Chillblast rating is *******

Absolute's site can be found at www.absolutemm.com

Danke schon Herr Donnelly.

Check out our sister site:

HOME