pbernota's Full Review: ATI RADEON, (32 MB) AGP Video Card
Right off, let me say that the Radeon has the best image quality I have seen from any 2D or 3D video card. I'm a power user and get a chance to look at a lot of hardware - Nvidia, 3dfx, S3, ATI, etc. - but ATI really blows away the competition this time around with the Radeon.
I was so impressed by this graphics card that I am writing a very long review, so relax and send the kiddies to bed!
My initial inclination was to go for an Nvidia Geforce GTS card because of their mature drivers and high frame rates with 3D games. The latest Detonator release drivers have been rated extremely fast but also seem to have been released prematurely as the systems I saw them on had a variety of video stability problems. Looking over a number of forum posts to get other user opinions made me realize the extent of the problems that had cropped up. I personally found the imaging of the card to be really washed out, too. Match it with a dull Compaq monitor and it was basically like using a monochrome card. ;-)
I also briefly considered the 3dfx 5500 card for Glide compatibility with some older games like Unreal, but found it was over my $200 budget. Beyond the Glide factor (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex run best under 3dfx's proprietary Glide API) the only real advantage offered by a Voodoo card was above average antialiasing (smooths out the image, but at the cost of a severe drop in frame rates.)If I played flight simulator or driving games a lot I might have considered it a bit more appealing with the better AA, but I like FPS (First Person Shooter) games a lot more and AA hits frame rate too much there. The 3D imaging was fine and 2D imaging was really good, so it is still a viable choice if you can get it for $100 less than the current price.
I started seriously considering the Radeon when I looked at Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 8.0 release and noticed that ATI was putting together a 100% compliant DirectX 8.0 feature set with their new Radeon.
This is important folks because there are only two major standards that 3d video cards have to tackle these days - OGL and DirectX.
OGL is older and to maintain ongoing compatibility in the professional market doesn't change much from year to year. DirectX, however, is highly evolutionary and implements new features regularly, so you have to be aware of future compatibility with your video drivers and video hardware.
There are no DirectX8 games right now, but the first ones should be released in the Christmas season or early next year. I like to keep my hardware purchases for at least 1 - 2 years and the Radeon's complete compliance will mean some future proofing. BTW, no other current card has this level of compliance.
That said, I haven't been a fan of ATI video products before - they weren't very competitive on rendering speed, they lacked stability and did little in the way of driver updates. Plus they were targeting mass consumers anyway and I always liked to go a little more toward performance at a reasonable price.
I paid $200 for the 32MB version of the card at Multiwave which was right in line with my budget. I understand that some retailers now have a $50 rebate going for a net price of around $150 - this is an excellent deal!
I chose the 32MB DDR version for a couple of reasons:
1. It is substantially cheaper than the 64MB version
2. It uses DDR (Double Data Rate) memory to avoid a common bottleneck (Hint: avoid any SDR (Single Data Rate) memory versions unless you are really broke)
3. 32MB is plenty for current games and the vast majority of games coming out next year. Also, the special texture compression features of the Radeon makes it much more future proof than other 32MB cards.
On the negative side, the clock and memory speed of the 32MB card is somewhat less than the 64MB version. If you have to have the ultimate right now, have a 21" monitor, and need to run very high resolution 3D gaming - go right ahead and spend the money for the 183Mhz rated 64MB DDR version. Otherwise, I doubt you will notice any difference.
I was installing the card in a one year old 550Mhz Athlon based PC with a 250 watt power supply. Those of you with Athlon systems know that they draw a lot of power and everything you add had better be power efficient or you will start having "unexplainable" system problems. The Radeon draws very little power and runs very cool - Cool!
Actual installation of the card was very smooth. I made sure to use Control Panel to revert to straight VGA, uninstalled all of the 3dx drivers, shut down the PC, pulled the Voodoo card I had in there and then inserted the Radeon. Rebooted to the VGA desktop and ran the Radeon install disk. At this point I was pleasantly astonished at the quality of the 2D image!
Let's face it, most of us spend a lot more time looking at the Windows desktop and 2d applications than we do playing games. The 2d image of the Radeon is outstanding!
I then started playing a number of 3D accelerated games I had viewed with other cards and they were each a lot better looking, too! ATI really came through on image quality with the Radeon!
The card is plenty fast - each game ran smoothly and had a very consistent and high frame rate (a lot of cards go fast then slow down, go fast then slow down.)
You can easily manipulate a lot of the performance/feature parameters through the Control Panel's Monitor settings. You can also use the ATI preconfigured Performance and Quality settings for a quick comparison of image quality versus frame rates. I chose the Quality settings after a few experiments and my comments are based on these parameters. FYI, I also maintained a 32 bit color depth - this card has no speed advantage in 16 bit over 32 bit depth, so keep the color quality.
Balancing the good with the bad... I also wanted to install the ATI Multimedia Center CD to play DVDs, CDs, etc. The installation of this free software went smoothly except that when all was done I couldn't get past the startup screens on the DVDs I tried playing. Since I don't give up that easily I went the extra mile and finally got to a working configuration - to save you some problems I'll recommend the following:
1. If you have another DVD software player installed you may have to uninstall it to get the ATI player to work. Most DVD players cannot co-exist with each other, so pick your favorite and stick with it. The ATI player is a Cinemaster version which takes full advantage of the ATI hardware and thus is a very good choice to keep. (If you have a very fast computer (700Mhz+) you may also consider buying the latest version of WinDVD. The other players on the market right now use only a portion of the Radeon hardware feature set and thus will tax your PC to the point where you will not be able to multitask at all.)
2. Make sure you have UDMA enabled for your DVD drive.
3. The ATI player also may have conflicts with packet writing CDROM burner software. In my case it was cequadrant. I had to uninstall it to make the ATI DVD player work. I recommend you use software like Nero for much happier co-existence and anyway it is a better program.
4. You can get enhanced DVD peformance by installing a copy of DVDGenie. Not necessary but then we ARE looking for performance, aren't we?
I did not see a lot of image quality difference between the DVD players, but the ATI player did run more smoothly once I finally got it running.
I have read that some VIA AGP chipsets are having problems with the Radeon, but if your firmware/BIOS is up-to-date you shouldn't have any problems. Check with your motherboard manufacturer or the support section on the ATI website to be sure.
While overall image quality was the best I have seen, I did observe some texture tearing in games under some settings and I did have some tiling problems using texture compression settings in moving from one graphics program to another. This is definitely not typical use so you most likely won't encounter it, and future driver releases will probably address minor discrepencies of this type anyway. Keep your drivers up-to-date by downloading updates from ATI's web site!
If you would like the latest info from bleeding edge users of the Radeon, check out http://www.rage3d.com
In summary, I highly recommend the ATI Radeon 32MB DDR for its great image quality, FAST speed, loads of future proofing features, and stable early drivers. This is the best card for the money right now!
Don't forget to get the latest drivers and check out the product support info at the ATI website to insure a smooth running product with peak performance. But then again, you should be doing this with everything you buy, shouldn't you?
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