good deal but don't believe the hype
Written: Jun 06 '01 (Updated Jun 06 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice 3d, details and textures; best card for dvd watching
Cons: not so fast for gaming; the bundled drivers are a joke
The Bottom Line: Very good card, but you can survive with less expensive.(for now)
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| bask7's Full Review: ATI RADEON, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
First of all, you can buy the best video card in the world, but it won't make your graphics any better if your monitor is smallish and of poor quality.
The ati radeon 32 MB DDR can be found for around $100-$129 . It is a great deal because for that relatively low price (compared to other high end video cards) you get the best dvd playback and a very good tool for intense gaming.
(try to download the updated drivers on www.ati.com, I guess you heard these stories about bad drivers).
BUT, when I compare this card to my older 32 MB nvidia tnt2 pci m64, a card that I bought for $70, in other words a low end card, the difference between the two is to me very slight. On a speed basis, my nvidia "little card" seems faster when I play counterstrike and browse the net. The games graphics are better and the animation nicer on the radeon, but again, no enormous difference. That difference may be great on the paper, of course, but not to the eye.
This is not a problem with the radeon, it is just the same with any video card: computer companies always try to sell newer, faster components to us, and try to make us believe that we can not survive without super-computers-with-4000 mhz-processors-and muscled video cards. But most people actually do not need to spend more than $60-$100 on a video card, it is already plenty of power for most computing tasks. The ati radeon ddr is to me a great choice if you want to go high; I can't believe that some people spend $400 on a video card like the geforce 3!!!
Buy the radeon if you want to upgrade from your 4 MB card( this time you'll see a difference, trust me!) and watch dvds on your computer(you still need to buy a dvd drive), but think thoroughly first if you already have a decent 16 MB-32 MB card which does not stop you from using you computer efficiently.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 105
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Epinions.com ID:
bask7
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Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 1 member
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