Creative Labs had already started off on the right foot with the 3D Blaster Annihilator, featuring the GeForce 256 3D chip and 32 MB of SDRAM. The exceptionally designed black box, superb performance and Creative Labs name ensured that the Annihilator would be a best seller. The 3D Blaster Annihilator Pro is a similarly configured card and, contrary to previous NVIDIA chips, the Pro moniker does not denote an increased clock speed. This is a bit of a departure from the TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra cards, with their varying clock speeds and 16-32 MB memory configurations. with the Annihilator, the "Pro" difference is in the type of memory, with the Annihilator Pro featuring DDR memory rather than the SDR of the Annihilator. Both the Annihilator and Annihilator Pro have GeForce 256 clock speeds of 120 MHz and, using its quad-pipeline rendering engine, this translates into a fill rate of 480 MPixels/second. The GeForce 256's T&L processor can process a peak of 15 million triangles, 480 million bilinear filtered, multi-textured pixels and more than 3.8 gigatexels per second.
Both the Creative Labs Annihilator and Annihilator Pro are almost complete clones of the NVIDIA GeForce 256 reference cards. Most GeForce 256 cards follow this route, but some, like the ELSA ERAZOR X, at least include TV-out or some other added extra. In this respect the Annihilator and Annihilator Pro boards are pretty standard fare, specifically designed to give the most value for hardcore gamers.
The two Annihilator cards are physically similar, with the only difference being the type of on-board memory. While the Annihilator features 32 MB of 5 ns ESMT SDRAM, the Annihilator Pro follows the majority of the GeForce 256 DDR crowd by including 32 MB of 6 ns Infineon DDR SGRAM. What this means is that the Annihilator's memory is rated at up-to 200 MHz (although it runs at the default speed of 166 MHz) and the Annihilator Pro's is rated at 166 MHz (but actually runs at 150x2 MHz - 300 MHz). If running memory lower than specification seems a bit strange to you, remember that memory speed can vary with each production batch (from 6 ns to 5 ns) and Creative Labs and NVIDIA seem to be erring on the side of caution with their default memory speeds.
The Annihilator Pro also features a fan/heatsink combo to help cool down the GeForce 256 chip. One nice touch is including a "hypro bearing" fan, which will outlast sleeve or ball bearing fans of comparable quality. Incidentally, this is the same fan used with the GeForce reference cards. The cooling fan is also powered through the Annihilator Pro itself, and although this makes the card easier to install and ensures there will be no loose power cables, it can raise the already-high motherboard voltage requirements of the Annihilator Pro.
