What more could you want?
Written: Mar 23 '01 (Updated Jun 03 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fast, excellent 2d and 3d image quality, supurb dvd playback
Cons: no tv out on 32mb version
The Bottom Line: An excellent card that blends top-notch video decoding and graphics speed.
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| microscan5528's Full Review: ATI RADEON, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
ATI Technologies as long been a leader in the graphics card industry, but they have never garnished the support of gamers with their so-called "gaming" cards. The drivers were buggy, their were numerous graphics anomalies, and the cards themselves were never at the top of the performance curve. When ATI released the ATI Rage Fury MAXX, their luck began to change, gamers saw that their cards were not only for the budget-minded any longer. Now anyone could enyjoy excellent 2d and video quality with blazing-fast high quality 3d graphics. With their new Radeon chipset, ATI has blown both 3dfx and Nvidia out of the water on a price performance basis.
The Radeon Le 32mb ddr is going for less than 95 dollars on pricewatch.com. This card is the lowliest of the Radeon bunch, but still packs a potent punch when compared to other much more expensive graphics cards. The gforce 2mx, also a fast budget card, is comparable to the Radeon at lower resolutions, but, at a high color depth (32bit), the Radeon is clearly superior. OpenGL performance in Quake 3 is solid, even at very high resolutions with effects set to maximum. Direct 3d is also supported, and very fast indeed.
The Standard Ati Radeon 32mb has
32mb 6ns ddr sdram
166mhz clock speeed
pixel tapestry
charisma engine
hyper z technology
idct motion compensation
The Ati Radeon le 32mb ddr has
32mb 6ns ddr sdram
150mhz clock speed
pixel tapestry
charisma engine
idct motion compensation
As you can see, the only difference between these two is their clock speed and a feature named "hyper z".
Hyperz is basically a compression system that allows the radeon chip to transfer more information over the AGP bus, allevieating the memory bottlenceck that plagues other graphics cards. This feature mainly comes into play at extremely high resolutions, and is not necessary to most gamers.
Idct motion compensation is a mathematical formula that increases the quality of a decoded DVD. This is only found on ATI boards, and boosts the video quality of these boards above anything else avaible on the market.
Anti-alaising is another formula used by all major graphics chip manufacturers. It involves "shaking" each pixel in the frame in order to remove "jaggies." This feature improves the quality of a 3d image greatly, but comes at an extreme loss of speed, and is not practical on any of today's hardware.
2d performance of all ATI based cards is top-notch, and the Radeon is no exception. Images are clean and sharp with no apparent fuzziness or color distortion.
DVD playback is rivaled only by cards manufactured by Matrox, truly a feat.
Because this card offers extreme performance at a low price, it is a great buy for anyone looking to upgrade their video/graphics subsystem.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 81
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Epinions.com ID:
microscan5528
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Reviews written: 14
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