Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Check my images that are related to this product., September 8, 2007
Well it's finaly here! The DirectX 10 card that is small enough to fit in your AGP case. The card is very new and needs drivers that are being developed. The new drivers will fix issues that I am having with 2 out of 8 games and utilities that I used to benchmark. So I can only use AA of 2x or 4x and not 6x or 8x. I guess I need Vista to use DirectX 10. Supposedly there is a DirectX 9.0L for XP and it is DirectX10. I don't know to much about that though. There is a decal that comes with the Black Box version (Look at my images assosiated with this product) and I don't have the chemicals to apply the decal to my case =( need to goto the hobby store. I reccomend not changing the heatsing but rather get a portable air conditioner and direct the airflow to the front of the computer.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The one you want if you're stuck with AGP and you want ATI!, September 25, 2007
it's very hard to find in stores (only Fry's carries it in Houston now) but this is the one you want if you're a hardcore gamer still stuck with an AGP mobo and you can't afford to upgrade it to a new PCIe mobo yet...
driver support is very minimal right now, but keep in mind that these cards literally just came out, so it'll take a while to get them up to their full potential with the best drivers for the best performance...
installation is easy, but you will need at least a 350W PSU to power it, and it must have either ONE standard PCIe power connector or TWO standard peripheral connectors available to plug it in and power it up... so be aware of this before you purchase... I had to open the box to find out...
once you get it up and running, you'll enjoy all the bells and whistles of the superior PCIe-only HD2900XT card that you really need right now, at a fraction of the price... compare the typical price of $250 for this card to the typical price of $500 for the HD2900XT, and it's a bargain...
using Colin McRae's Dirt as a benchmark, I'm able to run it with all the options maxed out, and all the special effects enabled, at a resolution of 1024 x 768 x 32 @ 85HZ refresh rate, without any slowdown whatsoever...
you will need a very powerful system to take full advantage of all the features of this card though... I had to upgrade my RAM and my sound card to achieve these results, so pay close attention to my system specs:
Compaq Presario 8000
3GHZ Intel Pentium 4 single core CPU
800MHZ FSB with Hyper Threading
2GB Kingston Hyper X single channel DDR RAM (upgraded from 512MB RAM)
512MB VisionTek ATI Radeon HD2600XT 8X AGP video card (upgraded from 128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 8X AGP video card)
Sound Blaster Audigy 4 sound card (upgraded from Sound Blaster Audigy 1 sound card)
430W Thermaltake Purepower PSU (upgraded from 250W PSU)
Windows Vista Home Premium (upgraded from Windows XP Professional)
so in light of all the upgrades that I had to perform on my system, just to make the switch to Windows Vista and Direct X10 gaming, you might want to just buy a whole new system, or build a new one yourself, as that's effectively what I had to do... the only thing that I haven't had to upgrade yet is my CPU and motherboard, and I really should've upgraded both of those before I upgraded anything else... however, the cost of upgrading compared to the cost of building or buying a whole new system was a big factor for me, and I expect that it will be for most people... next time they literally change everything on us like this again though, I will wait until I can just build a whole new system, as I don't think I really ended up saving that much money by choosing the upgrade path, even doing all the work myself, but at least I didn't have to pay for labor...
all that aside though, I'm very happy with my purchase, and all the other upgrades that I performed to restore my system to its former glory... at the time that I bought it nearly 5 years ago, it was one of the best that money could buy, but needless to say that wasn't the case nearly 5 years later... I was able to run any game with all the options maxed out, and all the special effects turned on, and now I'm able to do it once again...
in summary, if you're on a budget, but you still want to experience the best of the best that modern PC gaming has to offer now, this is the card you want, unless you have a PCIe mobo and you can afford the HD2900XT...
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5.0 out of 5 stars
So far ahead of its time...., November 1, 2007
The card itself is great. The only problem is, is that, the fixes in the driver have yet to be created for all current games. Oh and if you play Halo: Combat Evolved - DO NOT install the HDMI driver for the card or you will not be able to play your game.
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