Customer Reviews

Radeon X850 Xt Platinum Edition 256 Mb Agp

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Just got my card, I was so excited I took lots of pics of the box and the card itself. :)

The card box came in a nice big box (courtesy of Amazon), very well packed with a lot of protection, inside you find the box of the card, not so big, but very well packed too. The retail package of this card is quite nice, lots of cables for the VIVO functionality, a manual, a driver CD, and the card wrapped in a anti-static box with some warnings.

To install the card I proceeded to uninstall my old Radeon 9800 Pro first, remove the card from my PC and install the new card. Keep in mind that this card is a 2-slot card, it means it uses two slots of your computer (AGP and the first PCI). After the card is secured in the AGP slot you need to connect it to the PSU because this card uses more power than the AGP slot can give.

Once your computer boots, you need to install the drivers again (if you had a Radeon before), it's recommended but not neccesary, windows recognizes the card correctly anyway. If you had a nvidia card (or any other brand) before, don't forget to uninstall the drivers before you put this new card in!.

The Catalyst software suite intalls 3 things:
- Radeon drivers
- WMD drivers (for vivo capabilities)
- Catalyst Control Center
NOTE: Requires .NET Framework 1.1 installed.

The drivers are very stable, and haven't given me any problems so far, I ran several benchmarks with the following results:

3dMark05: 5850
3dMark03: 12750
3dMark01: 20600

Also all my games run smoothly at 1280x1024 6xTFSAA+16xAF.

Conclusion: This card is great, easy install (if you know what you're doing), nice functionality and great performance.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, it's worth the price.

Ok, with the last guy's review some of you may find this card to be a burden. However, he has only had compatibility issues which iswhy he has burnt his rating for this card. Truthfully, the card performs unbelievably well, and compared to other cards, this card deffinately holds the crown. To avoid any compatibility issues, make sure your motherboard is updated with the latest bios. Also, you can check your motherboard's manufacturer's website to check compatibility issues with any video card at all. I deffinately recommend this graphics card to any gaming enthusiast who loves liquid smooth game play.

Received my order in good time from Amazon.com and they were the lowest price retailer for this item, which was a good thing. Opened the box to find the X850 XT P.E. retail box, good. Opened that box and found nothing but wires and manuals and a CD. Contacted Amazon.com for return and still waiting. Not going to pass judgement yet on Amazon.com but this is my first purchase from them and so far a it's bit shaky. Amazon.com was recommended to me with high regards though.

Had to run out and purchase the card again, a little more expensive, finished building the system and the card is simply stunning. Install was a snap, ATI must've made some upgrade to their control panel and drivers since the time the previous reviews indicated tough installs. The whole process took roughly 7 minutes, and the instructions were simple and clear. I think I'm going to purchase another one for personal use. Overall great card for AGP slots, for those of you still hesitant in jumping into the SLI and PCI-E frenzy.

Despite my years of experience with computer systems, it took me two long evenings to get this thing working. The installation instructions made no mention that a separate power cable is required. This was my first graphics card that required supplemental power. Apparently, I'm just supposed to automatically know this. My motherboard complained that the card was not connected to the power supply. In fact, the installation instructions were so generic (but in many languages), they were essentially useless.

But I did follow the instructions to uninstall the existing video drivers. When starting the system again, it wanted to install the VGA Controller. This step failed and the instructions said to install my Windows CD. I did so, but the system was still unable to install the VGA Controller driver. And the drivers for the new card won't install without an existing VGA Controller. Back and forth to the web, the motherboard's CD, safe mode -- none of these worked as per the installation instructions and various other web references. ATI's web site did not have a working support section. It was conveniently under construction. The merchant's web site, Monarch Computer Systems, had another link for ATI support, but this too was broken.

I was able to find ATI's drivers, cryptically named "Crystal", which apparently makes sense to them. It was not obvious whether this would help me. But I downloaded them and despite not having a working VGA Controller, the Radeon drivers installed and the card came up.

So the vendor shipped a useless installation CD. The installer produced generic and misleading error messages that did not lead to a solution. I put that CD in the garbage!

For this kind of money, I am sorely disappointed with the lack of attention to support and the installer. Since the installer was my first impression of the company, I now have a very poor impression of ATI / Sapphire.

If you're not a computer hardware genius, do not purchase this card.

BTW, the card's performance is excellent. In this regard, my expectations have been exceeded.

Every few years or so, I go all out and buy myself the "top of the line" graphics card. Being a gamer, I see it as a great investment and a way to ensure that I can always play the newest games without problems.

I bought the Radeon X850 XT PE after reading lots of reviews that hyped it as being the best card on the market. Once I got this card home, I figured installing it would be a snap. Boy was I wrong.

I first worked on removing all of the video drivers from my system (a must when upgrading video cards), then I installed the hardware. The card fit perfectly, and my comp booted just fine. I followed the instructions step by step and installed the drivers and software from the bundled CD, but I had lots of graphical glitches. So many that I could barely even read my screen. Then I uninstalled and started from scratch. No go. I then downloaded the newest Radeon drivers (they were newer than the bundled CD). After installing them, my computer would not even boot unless I started in safe mode. While the card seem to be recognized just fine by windows [xp pro], it seems as thought the software (Catalyst Control Center) and drivers just refused to recognize the card.

I spent about 4 hours working on it and did extensive searches on the web. It seems that althought the cards' specs say it is AGP 4x/8x compatible, it is not. My motherboard apparently has issues with ANYTHING over 4x. I suppose I could have gone further and contacted ATI support, but they are only open 9-7 Eastern time and this was on the weekend. Besides that-- when I pay over $500 for a card, I EXPECT an easy install. I was not willing to devote ANY more of my time trying to make this work.

Afterwards, I uninstalled the Radeon drivers, and reinstalled my old GeForce4 4600ti. I installed the (Nvidia) card and drivers and the entire process took about 2 minutes. I was really bummed that I couldn't use this card, but after buying it, I definitely didn't have the cash to upgrade my mobo, buy a new processor and RAM. If you are thinking about purchasing this card, do some searches on the web to find people that own this card AND your specific model of motherboard. Or... make sure the place you buy from has a good return policy.

Good Luck