Rating: 
Summary: So glad I spent that little bit extra...
Review: In approaching an upgrade for my default dell graphics card I admit that, being a thrifty, stingy kinda guy, I was tempted by several different 3rd party cards, most of which weighed in around the $100 mark. In a titanic battle of instinct vs. cashflow I eventually decided to suck it up and get this card, which has been favourably regarded in most reviews. I'm no great computer whizz, so I can only review this from a user perspective - you can always check ATI's site for power and framerate specs.The intsallation was pretty simple even for a scaredy-cat like moi - I followed the instructions closely, and didn't have any problems. All the new drivers worked fine, and its nice to have a greatly expanded menu of graphics options, included as software with the card. I can honestly say that this card is the single biggest performance upgrade I've made, surpassing extra RAM by a mile. I had a blast running my newer games (Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942 etc) on higher resolutions than I thought I'd ever seen on my P4 1.4, and it really has opened my eyes to the potential of a quality card. I can only assume from my lack of problems that it runs cooler than my old card, and it's quiet too. For those on smaller budget, eager to upgrade their graphics I highly recommend splashing out that little bit extra on this, or a similarly priced card. You really are getting what you pay for, and in my experience ATI has offered great patch support and a solid, well designed product. I guess the highest praise I can offer is that, for a lower end user like me, this card is simple, very effective, and the price is cheaper than I'd expect for these results.
Rating: 
Summary: Linux users.. don't try this..
Review: No Drivers for Linux.. try 9500Pro .. works better than this...
Rating:
Summary: i love it
Review: replaced my geforce4 mx 420 64mb agp card with this, and IT BLOWS IT AWAY.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts out well enough, but then...
Review: This card certainly functions as advertised when you first install it. Graphics performance is impressive, installation is straightforward. But heaven help you if you need customer service or have to install new driver software. Customer service is only given for 30 days and you must register your card on the ATI website to receive it or PAY for it! I accidently mistyped the purchase date when I registered my card and was refused help! If this seems excessive to you then your only choice is to make do with the online help system on ATI's (imho) convoluted and badly organized website. That would be fine if the provided solutions had anything at all to do with the most common problem you will run into: Installing new drivers and actually make them work. This seemingly simple process wreaked havoc on my computer. Following the instructions to the letter is not garanteed to work - it certainly didn't in my case. Everytime I booted my computer it insisted that it found new hardware and needed to install the drivers for it. Game graphics were an unholy mess, looking like they diverted to 16 colors. Every window I open on my desktop leaves an outline. My only solution was to revert back to the old drivers which - of course - prevents me from using any program that requires the newer drivers to function, which are quite a few. This card has been a nightmare for me since I bought it. I will definitely not purchase another ATI product again - EVER!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent high end card
Review: This card is an excellent compromise between high performance and ease of installation. Why?
First, It does not need to be hooked into the power supply like the 9500 pro, 9700 pro and 9800 pro or the high-end Nvdia cards. This can be tricky and crash your entire system if your power supply is not at least 300W. Next, this card does have a small fan above the processor heat sink, but it runs so cool because of the new processor technology and in tight installations does not make the next PCI slot unuseable because of the size of the fan. Also this fan is very quiet and not a noisy annoyance like in the GeForce 5900.
This card is a little slower than the top end cards, BUT also much less than half the price, it does support DirectX 9.0 and and all the latest shader etc. technologies. The perfomance differences are not noticeable to the average user unless you are a top end gamer. Therefor the excellent performance right at the top end together with the ease of installation makes this my top choice for other-than-hard-core-gamer machines. There is nothing like it available elsewhere. Install is a snap: First unistall all your previous drivers, reboot and install teh latest driver suite from ATI.....and voila ....a whole new world of graphics is open to you. HINT: You GOT TO download some of the DirectX 9.0 demos from ATI's web site !!! Don't miss them !!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: WOW! Could not be easier to setup, and could not be a better value. I could not believe what an improvement it made. WOW!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: WOW! Could not be easier to setup, and could not be a better value. I could not believe what an improvement it made. WOW!
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