You Got a Perty Mouth
Written: Oct 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Amazing Framerates, Nice Video Capture
Cons: 3d Glasses Kind of Lame
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| infielderx's Full Review: Asus AGP-7700 |
After months of serious procrastination, I bought an Asus 7700 deluxe. I wanted to make use of Adobe Premiere 5, and play around with editing video. Problem was, I couldn't afford the high-end video capture cards that the professionals use. I wanted something simple, yet able to play 3d games the way they were meant to be played: in 32bit glory with framerates higher that George W. Bush's I.Q. (wait a minute, my old 486 could do that).
I settled on the 7700 deluxe model, mainly due to it's good reviews at Tomshardware.com and the fact that it came with funky 3d-glasses. I was also influenced into this purchase since my friend made me an offer I couldn't refuse on my new GeForce 1 card I just got for my birthday. Anyways, I installed the card and immediately went into the 3dMarks 2000 program to compare the new card's score with the old one. Frame rates were much higher, and the end result was a score of about 5,700 (500 points higher) on my Athlon 800 with 128mb of PC133 RAM. A decent increase, but nothing spectacular. The visual quality is superb and an improvement over the GF1. In games such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, the fog and clouds seemed more crisp.
I wasn't as impressed with the 3d-glasses which, to be sure, are nothing more than a novelty at the additional $50 they cost. The glasses themselves don't display a new image on the lenses, but change the way you see what's on your monitor. In games that use Direct 3D (Quake 3, et.al) one eye sees an image a split second before the right, creating the illusion of depth. I didn't find the effect highly amazing; I did however find the glasses to be heavy on the face and nose and headache inducing to say the least.
After a few rounds of gaming action I loaded up Premiere 5.0 and captured some video. I was worried that the 7700 wouldn't be compatible with Premiere, but thankfully it was. Top resolution you can capture is 720x480; keep in mind however that such video resolution will result in HUGE file sizes--better have a large hard drive in your machine. The video quality was respectable, certainly good enough to take footage from your family vacation and edit it into something worth watching on your VCR. You will obviously not create something flashy enough with this card for broadcast television. The video card comes bundled with a video editor of it's own, "Ulead Studio", which is a dumbed down Premiere of sorts. It's more user friendly, but I prefer the spiffy features of Premiere.
All in all I'm pleased with my new card. There isn't a game out there that can conquer it (yet). That chick in "Heavy Metal FAAK 2" sure does have a perty mouth...
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 280
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Epinions.com ID:
infielderx
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Member: David Bragg
Location: Frederick, Md
Reviews written: 145
Trusted by: 24 members
About Me:
31 year old Pizza franchisee (what a mistake!) and computer geek.
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