VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 has Video Power!
Written: Mar 20 '02 (Updated Jan 30 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast on games and graphics!
Cons: The price!
The Bottom Line: The VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 has plenty of power for all your graphics and games!
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Visiontek Visiontek XTasy 6564 AGP 64MB Card |
The VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 video card with the nVIDIA chip will free up all of your games and graphic problems.
This is a nicely built card with 64MB of DDR memory onboard with some big heat sinks and a fan built on the card for better cooling.
Installation
Simple easy installation!
1. With the Computer off take off your computer case.
2. Remove your old video card from the AGP slot and place in the new card. (One Philips screw will remove your card.)
3. Plug your monitor in the back of the new card and turn on the computer.
4. Insert the CD and install the version of Windows that you are using.
5. After rebooting you are ready to set up the resolutions to your specifications.
6. You are done!
Specifications
Chipset GeForce3 Ti 200
Memory 64MB DDR/128-bit wide
Memory Clock 400 MHz DDR
Graphics Core 175 MHz, 256-bit 2D/3D GPU
RAMDAC 350 MHz
Memory Bandwidth 6.4 GB/sec.
AA Samples per second fill rate 2.8 Billion
Fill Rate 1400M/sec. (texels)
Connections VGA and S-Video for your TV
Features
3D Textures
Shadow Buffers
AGP 4X/2X
DirectX and OpenGL
Unified Driver Support
Supports DirectX 8.1
HDVP (High-Definition Video Processor)
HRAA (High-Resolution Antialiasing)
NfiniteFX Engine
Dual Cube Environment Mapping Capability
Programmable Vertex & Pixel Shader
Resolutions of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1440 and 2048x1536.
System Requirements
266 MHz Pentium II or higher processor or AMD K6-2 or higher processor
64MB of RAM
AGP 2.0 Compliant
A CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
10MB of hard drive space
Windows 95 OSR2 , 98, ME, 2000, XP, NT 4.0 and LINUX
My Tests!
My old card was the Voodoo 3 16MB card by 3dfx, which was purchased by nVIDIA. The VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 has the nVIDIA chip in it, so it was no surprise when I first started the card up that I couldn’t see any noticeable difference in the picture quality. If you have ever had the Voodoo card you know that it delivers an excellent picture on your monitor.
No noticeable difference at all as far as the quality of my Windows appearance, digital photos or Internet use. So to see if it was worth the purchase of a new video card I decided to test an application and a game.
I am running an 800MHz Athlon processor with 384K of SDRAM memory for the test of both video cards.
ACDSee
ACDSee an application for viewing and editing all kinds of photos!
OK first of all I shoot all of my digital photos in 2048 x 1536, which take up between 630KB to 710KB per photo. Now my old video card had 16MB of memory, which is plenty of memory for the digital photos so going to the new 64MB size is not really an issue.
The issue with ACDSee and viewing the photos is, will it bring up the photos at a faster rate due to the DDR memory and the faster processor on the new video card.
Under my old Voodoo card with a large photo in 2048 x 1536 it would start to open up the photo and take anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds to fully show the whole photo.
The new VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 brings up the photos now almost instantly in about 1 second or less, so there is a big improvement here.
NASCAR 4
NASCAR 4 is a racing game that gives you the ability to feel like you are driving a NASCAR car in a race.
NASCAR 4 is a game that takes a lot of graphics and here would be the test of speed for the card and the 64MB of DDR memory over my old card with only 16MB of memory.
My old Voodoo card would allow me to run it in a resolution of 800 x 600, any resolution over that would lock the game up. While playing the game you would have a clear blue sky with no clouds showing and only showing 3 to 5 cars at a time while you are racing. Also while you are racing you would see the grandstands, track and other object building ahead of you all the time while you are racing.
The VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 lets me run the graphics in 1600 x 1200 on my Sony 19” Trinitron monitor. While racing down the track you see the blue sky with beautiful clouds in it, everything is built ahead of you and now there are dozens of cars all around you.
NASCAR 4 runs smooth and clear now with all graphics working all of the time.
The Cons
The only con I have besides the price is there is no paper manual. All details are on the CD included in the Adobe Acrobat format. Adobe 4.05 Reader is included on the CD.
The CD
The CD also includes several nice demos for you to check out and separate installations for each Windows version including the newest version for Windows XP.
There is also an install guide and an install video for you to use.
Final Thoughts
I debated a long time before I finally broke down and made the decision to upgrade to a new video card and I am very pleased with what I got!
This card is great for gamers and someone needing a lot of graphics and speed. If you are not into games and don’t need better graphics then this card is not recommended. I do recommend it but the choice is yours.
Cost for the card was $179.95 with an instant $10 store rebate and a $30 mail-in rebate from VisionTek bringing the cost down to $139.95. Yes a high price but for me it has proven performance and is worth the price!
This is one Awesome Card!
Here are some of my Computer Hardware Reviews!
Western Digital 100GB EIDE Hard Drive
ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500 Graphics card
AMD Athlon XP 2700 Processor
Asus A7N8X Motherboard
EPoX EP-8K7A Socket A ATX Motherboard
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 139
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