Weird game, but good card
Written: Dec 03 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: easy installation, stable drivers, incredible performance for Q3A and Rainbow Six
Cons: A little more $$$ than I'm used to paying, Kingpin demo wasn't in the box
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| dmatsumo's Full Review: Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor |
My first experience with video cards from Guillemot was about a year ago when I purchased two of their MaxiGamer2 3D cards (based on the Voodoo2 chipset). They were fairly inexpensive, so I figured "what the heck", and I wasn't disappointed.
I just purchased a Xentor32 32MB card, based on the Riva TNT2 chipset, and boy does this card fly! Under Windows NT, I have had extremely fast performance. Their drivers seem to be very stable, too, as I have not had any system crashes. Even my CAD graphics performance is substantially better than my old video card (Riva128).
Under Windows 98, the card seems to perform even better, and maybe it's because that's the only OS I can run games like Quake 3 Arena and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear on. Compared to one of my systems running a Voodoo2 card, the Xentor32 blew it away. I could run Q3A with 32bit textures and 1024x768 resolution at a seemingly high frame rate, whereas the Voodoo2 12MB (SLI) configuration totally choked and died.
The card is extremely easy to install, both hardware and software. I didn't have to get online and download any sort of updates or patches, the drivers on the CD worked perfectly for me. It's also nice that they included a chip fan onboard. Too bad that they ran out of the free copy of Kingpin that was supposed to ship in the box with the card.... but you can send in a voucher and they'll ship it to you when it's available.
All in all, the Xentor32 32MB is a terrific performer for the price. If you don't get tempted by the newer geForce chip from nVidia, then this is the next best thing to get!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 209
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Epinions.com ID:
dmatsumo
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Location: San Jose, CA
Reviews written: 81
Trusted by: 19 members
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