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Reviews (2)
Jan 18, 2018
Pretty good; but has small mouth
The bags seem about what you would expect for standard 13-gallon trash bags. The issue I have with them is that compared to the usual store brands I have used, these have a smaller mouth on them, which makes them more difficult to get around the lip of my standard-issue 13-gallon trash can. The mouth has to be stretched quite a bit to reach around it. Otherwise, these are certainly usable and seem to get the job done so far. My rating is mainly for value, where they deliver the most.
Nov 19, 2010
Solid (windowed) 3D graphics, poor 2D and full-screen
Box open:
Upon initial handling, I was surprised at the weight and size. Heat-pipes appeard and the board said AMD. It looks and feels solid.
Installation:
The length exciled the hard drive all the way to a lower bay. The card requires 2 6-pin PCIe power plugs. With just one, it complained with some beeps and a red message on the screen. Due to failure of my power supply to supply any, I was short by one (bought used - got one - not sure about new), I ended up having to make one from some old stuff, which worked out fine, it seems, as the card then let the system boot.
Windows (XP SP3):
After installing the latest ATI drivers, the first thing I noticed is that the card seemed slower than my built-in (GeForce 8200) in windows. Now, I'm not saying it was slow like with no drivers or with a cheap built-in, but it was notably slower than my built-in. Other than this, it seemed to display Windows just fine.
PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0:
Then it was compared to my built-in (GeForce 8200). The 3D scored much more in general, at 1560 versus 73. Now, this sounds good and fun, but the tricky thing is that the full-screen mode of the same scene didn't score in such a blaze, and I think it's the same resolution. In window-mode, it scored 742 FPS, but full-screen of the same scene scored only 25 FPS, which is only about 2.5x that of my built-in for that particular test, and it didn't seem any more graphically involved. On to the 2D tests... The 2D performance scored less than my built-in and the overall scores for 2D were 318 (card) versus 656 (built-in). This confirmed my initial perception about windows exhibiting a bit more slowly in general.
Removal:
Upon removal after a day's go (with mainly just windows stuff for the later part), the card was quite hot, like that which can burn upon prolonged touch. Now, I believe the fan works since it goes fast when the system first gets turned on and then calms down to a relatively quiet pace thereafter. I'm told that you can configure the fan speed, though I haven't done it yet, and I imagine it would allow more reasonable temperature control.
Conclusion:
I should first say that I have no prior experience with cards of this level, but I've experienced quite a number of lower-end adapters and built-in's in my time. Also, be aware that most of the judgement was based on the results of the testing software used, and the results in other applications could very well vary significantly.
I found this card to be well-built, physically, though a bit power-hungry, with the potential to get quite hot if it's not configured to a faster fan-speed.
The 3D, windowed performance seemed very nice and very fast, and I presume it would work well for 3D games played in a window. The 3D, full-screen performance, however, was very disappointing as it only got about 2.5x the frames-per-second (FPS) of my built-in on the same test, and a power-hungry card versus the built-in should outperform it further than that. Furthermore, the 2D, windows performance of the card was quite disappointing as it was actually lower (noticably so) than that of my built-in.
Overall, I feel it was worth the money since I bought it used (~$100 for everything including S&H and Sales Tax). This was my first ATI (AMD) card, and I was excited to try ATI for once instead of nVidia and 3dfx all the time, but I feel it failed me. I would take caution before a future ATI purchase.