ELSA hasn't exactly been a household name like Diamond or Creative Labs simply because until recently they haven't been in the consumer market very much. ELSA's strong points have been in the data communications and professional workstation graphics markets. For 15 strong years they have been developing top notch PC graphics boards to meet the needs of profession CAD workstations, etc.  They are currently ranked 5th in the world for supplying computer graphics solutions and hold a 23% market share in the professional Windows NT workstation market.

ELSA has finally decided to take the plunge into the multimedia and PC gamer markets and they couldn't have chosen a better time to do so.  Ever since 3DFX came along, the 3D accelerator market has become a huge market.  Everyone I talk to these days and their grandmother seems to have or is getting a 3D accelerator.  ELSA wants to extend their consumer base and what better way to do it than to jump into the multimedia 2D/3D accelerator arena.  The important thing to note here is that ELSA is not new to graphics, they have been making graphics cards for 15 years, so we should expect the same quality in their consumer boards that they put into their workstation products.  Their latest line consists of the following boards: The Erazor LT based on NVIDIA's Riva 128ZX,  the Victory II based on 3DFX's Banshee and the Erazor II based on NVIDIA's Riva TNT all being aimed at slightly different consumers.

The ELSA Erazor II is based on the immensely popular NVidia Riva TNT 2D/3D graphics chip.  As you probably already know, the Riva TNT is an excellent graphics chip which provides excellent 2D acceleration as well as the industry's best 3D performance (aside from a Voodoo2 SLI configuration).  The Riva TNT has more 3D features then any other card and its image quality is amongst the best there is currently.  So as a basic rule of thumb, if you get any card based on the TNT chip and you have a fast computer, you will have a very enjoyable gaming and multimedia experience.

ELSA has done a few things to make their card standout in a crowded market of TNT's.  For one, as I've mentioned before, they do make professional workstation graphics cards so they used that expertise and migrated what they've learned to the Erazor II.  This means that the Erazor II is not based on NVIDIA's reference design but rather ELSA's own, smaller design which they claim boosts image quality and definition which allows the memory and the controller to use a higher clock rate, which then translates into increased performance.  If you look at the board, you will notice that there is four memory chips on each side of the board.   This is quite unique compared to other Riva TNT boards.  They have also added a very low profile heatsink and fan which is always welcome due to the amount of heat the 0.35 micron TNT generates and greatly increases the chances you have at successful overclocking.  Finally, they have provided EtronTech SGRAM which is rated to run at 125MHz. Overclocking this board should be a fun and enjoyable experience...