Nice video card, if it doesn't die on you!
Written: Sep 18 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, smooth, realistic.
Cons: Reliability? Card needed replacing!
The Bottom Line: It is a good card, but it died on me after 1 month. Needed replacing.
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| dominiko's Full Review: Leadtek WinFast A250 LE TD MyVIVO, (128 MB) AGP Vi... |
The exact card I have is the DUAL HEAD (2 monitor) version but it has exactly the same 4200 chipset and 128 RAM, same 8X AGP etc. I only use the dual head mode for windows stuff, not games.
I bought this card as part of my newest PC setup. Its a fairly high end system with a 2.4GHz Pentium, 1GB Kingston 333 RAM, 120 Gig hard drive, Asus P4 motherboard and two nice Sony monitors, a 19 inch and a 17 inch. I had the machine put together at a shop from parts I selected myself. LeadTek is an OK brand name with OK prices so I went with them (OEM model). I avoided the 64MB TX Models from LeadTek since their chipset was merely a beefed up version of the Geforce 2 chipset. I tend to use my computer a lot and it's on 24hrs a day most of the time.
Although this card performed well at first, as does my replacement card... but what's that you say? Replacement card? Yep, the card died (slowly) on me about a month after I bought it. I started noticing little dots on the screen that wouldn't go away and garble characters on the boot up screen. A week after that there was guff (bad pixels) all over the place and the boot up screens were illegible. I couldn't even read my way through to a safe-mode boot up! I took it back to the shop and after a day they said the video card needed replacing. So he did that.
The card works fine now but.... Well I wasn't too happy - you see I value robustness in a PC. One reason why I didn't go with the hotter AMD chips instead of the P4 which would have given me more power for my buck. I selected what I thought was quality brand name parts all round but the LeadTek card did not give me the staying power I needed! If that was the hard drive I would have blown my top!
I suppose I could have just been unlucky. The computer was on for a good 3 months straight and something may have happened but everything else is fine. Everything was replaced and works fine but its still a hassle and an extra worry. Kinda takes the shine off having a new PC.
Anyway, how does it perform? Well admittedly I don't have too much to compare it too. My last card was a 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 which was great back then but games have a hell of a lot more polygons and textures now. It looks a whole lot better than my Playstation 2 I can tell you that much!
Games played using card: Quake 3, Hitman 2, Soldier of Fortune, Return to Castle Wolfenstien.... etc. you get the idea.
The frame rates on these games is bloody awesome (to me).
I usually use 1024 X 768 so the frame rate is up past 70 or 80 per second. Its the way I like it. If I go with 1200 X 800 its still sweet but gets a tad choppy when there a very high anti-aliasing setting (over 3X), there is a lot of action on the screen or a lot of stuff to calculate (complex scenes, long distance etc.). I am very picky about frame rates however, I own a 100Htz TV because normal TVs flicker too much for me (most people don't see it). Its more than adequate at 1024 X 768 and the rate stays well above 70ps, nomatter what is happening in the game. I can barely see the diff between 1200 X 800 and 1024 X 768 sometimes (although lots of people say they see a big diff). This is especially so when using the anti-aliasing on 3X or more. So you see where I'm coming from on this.
Textures look really nice, very real. Anti-aliasing is a must and works great at 2X and 3X - higher can slow things down. Screen effects like mist, smoke and sun-flares etc. are so real its great. Very emersing, you feel like you're there.
The bundled software is good, lots of controls and settings to tweak if thats what you want to do. All the overclocking stuff, heat sensors and monitors etc. I don't overclock this card or anything on my PC - its not worth the risk (and the extra heat in my study). There's even a few free games with the card which is a real bonus and their fairly big titles too.
So it has been a good card but my only real gripe is the fact that it died on me and had to be replaced. This is why it only gets 3 stars and would have got at least 1 more had it been more reliable.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 158
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Epinions.com ID:
dominiko
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Location: Sydney, Australia
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Mild mannered software programmer by day, lounge-room guitarist and web surfer and by night.
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