very nice...if you're an Intel person
Written: Jun 05 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: performance, lots of features, best DVD playback
Cons: value, horrible drivers
The Bottom Line: Fast & powerful, but can be a nightmare with a VIA-based motherboard.
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| beanbear's Full Review: ATI Radeon 64MB DDR |
Abstract:
The Radeon is very nice, but the many nVidia licensees make price comparisons tough. Performance-wise, it’s a toss up. Driver-wise nVidia is tops.
Design/Installation:
It’s as easy to install as any other AGP card. Open your computer, unscrew the slot cover, “pop” the card in, & re-screw. There are two different versions of the Radeon 64 DDR ViVo (video-in, video-out). The retail unit is about $10-20 more, is clocked at 183mhz, and has the texture and lighting unit that does those wonderful fog effects and the like. The OEM or white-box version can be had around $150, is clocked at 166mhz, and doesn’t have the T & L unit. Be aware of what you’re buying.
The backplane of card has the regular VGA output, as well as composite in & out, and S-Video in. It also includes the same MPEG2 encoding chip (the Rage Theater) as the Tivo-like All-in-Wonder Radeon.
Performance:
The 64MB DDR is powered by a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) that can give you 32-bit color up to 2048 x 1536 resolution. It’s almost useless to talk about gaming performance per se, since many other factors are key including the CPU, hard drive, memory bandwidth, etc. It’s sufficient to say that the Radeon 64 DDR is more or less equal to the nVidia GeForce 2 64MB.
The Radeon’s GPU is a cooler running chip than the GeForce 2's – I was so irritated with the buzzing noise of it's heatsink/fan that I unplugged the fan; the temperature difference is less than 1 degree Celsius. If you’re a big gamer or you’re overclocking the GPU (they go well over 200mhz easily), I wouldn’t. But if you’re a casual gamer or more of a home office person that’s annoyed with the noise, unplug with impunity. DVD playback remains the best in the industry with class-leading DVD hardware acceleration.
ViVo (video-in, video-out) & Drivers:
Well, it works pretty well and sometimes merely okay. The video capture quality is a very noticeable notch below a pro-level card, which is not necessarily bad. When capturing from a source like VHS, the difference can be downright unnoticeable.
The bigger issue is the MPEG2 capture and drivers. Cruise the boards at rage3d.com and you’ll notice that Radeons on VIA-based motherboards, especially running Windows 2000, have nearly broken the spirits of their owners.
Why? ATI drivers, well, s*ck.
Your chances of having everything work painlessly is much greater if you have an Intel chip on an Intel-based motherboard. The driver issue seems to disproportionately affect the multimedia functions, especially MPEG2 capture. The Radeon also saves the MPEG2 captures in a non-standard format, which may or may not be an issue. For example, FlaskMPEG, the vaunted DivX encoder, won’t recognize the bastardized MPEG2 format.
I don't game much and mostly use it to capture straight into DivX via VirtualDub. Better driver support would probably produce fewer dropped frames and maybe somewhat better compression, but it's a trade-off. I'm not sure if having a seperate GeForce 2 and, say, a Haupaugge capture card would be cheaper or better.
Value:
With so many nVidia licensees, the price of the GeForce 2 drops faster than the Radeon - you're looking at about a $20-40 difference. If you’ve got an Intel/Intel setup, the Radeon should be a good fit, if not the absolute best value. However, if you’ve got a VIA-based board, it’s best to look towards a GeForce 2 with video capability.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 189
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Epinions.com ID:
beanbear
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Member: B Kim
Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 7 members
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