Great card (When it works)
Written: Dec 08 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: A great gaming card with VIVO feature.
Cons: Inadequate heatsink leads to problems quickly, but fixable.
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this card only if you are comfortable upgrading the factory heatsink upon arrival. The features and capabilities of this card are great.
|
|
|
| gtg497b's Full Review: AOpen Aeolus TI4200 8X-DVC128, (128 MB) AGP Video ... |
History
I got this card originally as a gift. Once I got it home, I put it in my PC and realized the card was Dead on Arrival (DOA). I contacted AOpen directly (since technically I didn't have a reseller) and they gave me RMA authorization. I returned the card to them and they replaced it with a brand new one (in a brand new retail box including a new software set and adapters/cables) in about 4 weeks. I was pleased with the relatively quick turnaround. I got the new card and it worked right out of the box. However, about 3 months later, my computer would freeze during any graphic intensive applications. I contacted their customer support (after exhausting my own troubleshooting ideas) and after a very lengthy email conversation (about 2 weeks) with technical support and several new windows installs, I returned the card again to their RMA service. Again, about a 4 week turnaround, but this time I received a refurbished card. I was convinced the second one went dead because of a faulty and inefficient heatsink and fan. The stock fan is small and made out of aluminum (not the best heatsink material). So before plugging in the third one, I upgraded the stock fan to a ThermalTake copper heatsink with copper RAMsinks (heatsinks for the RAM) and Arctic Silver thermal compound. Once I got it all back together and installed it in my computer, it has been working great without any problems. It's been about 10 months now and I'm convinced this current setup will last a long time.
PC Specifications
These are the specifications of the PC I have the card installed:
Gateway 500s
Pentium 4 2.0 GHz
1 GB pc2100 DDR SDRAM
40+120 Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 8 MB cache harddrives
Soundblaster Audigy soundcard
Monitor Setup
Gateway EV700 17" Color VGA monitor (1024x768x32 @ 85Hz: max monitor is capable of)
19" Television
Thoughts
When I first got my computer I quickly realized the integrated intel extreme video was not very capable. I was ecstatic when I received the GeForce 4 ti4200 card as a gift. Difficulties aside, this is a great card. The 128 MB of dedicated VRAM is plenty for dual, or even triple monitor support. If you have 2 TVs and 2 monitors you can even have 4 monitors simultaneously! The nVidia software is easy to use and orienting the monitors is straight forward. I use it to play the most demanding games at the highest possible settings. I play Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam at 1024x768 (The maximum my monitor supports) and get excellent frame rates. I also play MS Flight Simulator 2004 at the highest settings. I like the fact that it has TV in/out. I play all my movies and dvd's on a TV and it looks great. I also use the TV-in feature with MS Movie Maker 2 to record my favorite TV shows. The recorded videos are 640x480 at a full 30fps. It has excellent recording capabilities. Don't get this confused with a TV tuner card. A TV tuner card has coaxial-in and has a software tuner that allows you to watch TV on your computer. This just has RCA/S-video-in so you can record a raw video source. You would still need an external TV-tuner (in my case, I use a VCR plugged into the wall). The included adapter allows for S-video or standard RCA in and out. I update the nVidia driver whenever windows update tells me to and I have had zero problems with driver compatibility.
Recommendations
Overall I would definitely recommend this chipset (the GeForce 4 ti4200). However, I don't think all the problems I've had with this AOpen board are really worth it. Had it not been a gift I probably would have gone with a more reliable (and most likely more expensive) board, maybe from Asus or Gainward. The VIVO feature is awesome and I use it all the time. The gaming capabilities are great for what this card is currently going for.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 0.00
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
gtg497b
|
|
Member: Brent Rivard
Location: Marlborough, MA
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.