We have an interesting product for review today. It is the Synergy II from Elsa. Since I have not already reviewed any Elsa products I feel that I should do a background of the company. That is basically what this intro is. So, if you are not interested in that you should just skip to the review section. The graphics card biz is a market in which Elsa first entered when they were founded in 1984. They have always been considered a market leader in workstation graphics and are continuing that reputation, to this day. They are based in Aachen, Germany and do much more business in Europe than in the USA. Elsa is one of the biggest if not the biggest player in the graphics card industry in Europe. You may not have heard of them, but their U.S operations are expanding.

They really gained a lot of popularity with their Elsa ERAZOR II, based on the TNT2 chipset. They have continued that trend and have really started to make a big dent in the US market. I felt that I should mention that in Europe that produce a whole line of products. So as you can see the European market is big to their success. I hope that someday they bring those products to the US, so that I can review more Elsa products. Well anyway back to the Elsa company info. They start their operations in the US in 1989, that is 10 long years ago. So, there is not really any reason for you not to have heard of them. As I was saying earlier, Europe and Asia are big markets for them as they have 40 U.S. employees and 550 employees worldwide. I think that fact speaks for itself. Last year they recorded $168 million US dollars in revenue which is not bad at all. They are also publicly traded on the Neuer Markt of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, for those of you that want to buy some stock in this great company! Onto the review………finally….=).

This section should always be small because if the product is not easy to install then the company didn’t spend time on it. At least, that is how I view it because the end-user is the one that suffers. I opened up my case and easily removed my tnt2 and inserted my Elsa SYNERGY II. It went into the AGP slot easily. I had no problems installing drivers from the CD that Elsa provided me with. That’s it. Nothing more to say on this because it was so easy. That means that you can expect a good product. (Here is a pic of the SYNERGY II box and card).

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