ATI Radeon 32MB DDR @ Best Buy

[jhassi]

Not a deal

Sorry, i looked at the card and it doesn't even have a TV-output!!!!!! So it's crap to me, i'll never buy a card without TV out anymore, it's very useful if you download movies and put them on a VCR to bring to friends' house. Well I *might* buy a card without a TV output but I'd rather not, it'd have to be a better deal than this Radeon.

Besides, Best Buy's regular price is $199, so I'm really doubtful if websites are really going to sell the same card for $70+ more than what Best Buy is selling it for, Best Buy isn't known to sell items for considerably less than online deals.

 

[Trifecta]

hmmm, point well taken, but video out is the last thing I look for in a top notch video card.

My decoder card plays DVDs flawlessly and thats what it is supposed to do.

For those of us who have decoder cards, this deal is HOT.

for those who dont...you will have to spend around 40 dollars more to get a top level card with TV out (which is basically the same price as a decoder card.)

This ATI has been great so far, but the GF2 kicks its ass all over the place as far as speed and frame rates are concerned.

However, I just went and returned my GFmx (which I bought at BB) and basically paid 30 dollars for twice the level of performance in 32bit. This card is very nice on the eyes and I highly recommend it !

For people who just cant let go of their bragging rights, stick with the GF2...Then you can mouth off to everyone about how 7 frames per second really makes a huge difference when playing Q3

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

To the original poster of this thread.

No TIVO, damm they already have TIVO in these cards, I just bought a 14 hour Philips model at CC. Just kidding...

I think you meant VIVO (video in / video out) but it could mean (TV in / Video out) but I don't think so...

 

[darker]

Thanks for the great deal. We can still price match upto 30 days if it comes down in price at a B&M store. Glide games like UT run much slower. Maybe I will keep my V3 just for them and swap it out. This is the best deal out there for a GREAT card right now. Just wish it had 5.5ns instead of 6ns chips

 

[Sesopedalian]

It doubles my 3DMark scores from 1700 with a TNT2 Ultra and Celeron 300A@472 to 3400 with the Radeon. So there's somewhat of a comparison for you, WageSlave.

 

[zeppelin]

Is this the best deal going for a video card in the $150-$175 range, OEM and retail, and in stock?
I picked up the last one at Best Buy today ... but can return if a better deals can be found?

 

[NiNe]

zeppelin,

It depends on what you want. I wanted a card to play games with at 32-bit color (can't ignore the 16-bit dithering patterns anymore), hopefully at 1024x768 or 1280x1024. My goal is to stay below $200 with any video card, so this Radeon totally fit the bill. Good DVD is also a must for me, but most cards seem to do DVD pretty well now.

I don't care about TV-out, but I would like TV-in. However, I plan to pick up the ATI TV Wonder or the equivalent Pinnacle or Hauppage card. I'm too nervous to get an all in one card because I upgrade video cards a lot. I don't want to stick with a slow 3D card just because I can't stand to give up the multimedia capabilities.

 

[Buffdaddy34]

Here is my take on this card, and it's from Maximum PC as well. If you got a comp that can handle the high resolution, there isn't a card on the market that can keep up. It transfers three-rate, rather than a two-rate down each pipeline, entailing that it is faster. Sorry, I am half awake, and forgetting my terminology. And as for that earlier benchmark, at high res. if your comp can handle it. It smokes the hercules 64MB GTS. BY FAR!! If you can hang with the 1024+ res. BUY THE RADEON, it starts a spark, and never stops bad boy. Well, put one in on my comp, and now I'm gonna buy one. HAVE A GOOD DAY folks.

 

[skippy459]

Buffdaddy- I don't know what review you are reading but every review I have seen shows that the GF2 GTS thouroughly pounds the Radeon in every test exepect for 3DMark which gives no indication of real world performance. Even if the Radeon did outperform the GF2 I wouldn't buy it....in fact I won't buy any ATI product from now on. I bought the Rage Fury when it came out and the drivers didn't support TV out, I bought the TV-Wonder when it came out and the drivers didn't support ANY of the features that I bought the card for. To make matters worse it took ATI almost 9 months to release the new software for the TV Wonder. So no more ATI products are getting anywhere my machines thank you. Besides if history repeats itself NVidia will release new drivers very regularly, nearly all of which will boost performance, and with ATI you are lucky if they put out a total of 3 releases of drivers in the life of the card.

Just my $.02

ATI is SUCK.......Rambus too

 

[Sesopedalian]

Radeon tops GF2 GTS at HIGH RESOLUTIONS using 32-BIT COLOR in a number of game benchmarks. myurl
So, if you like to play games at high resolutions in 32-bit color, and have good DVD support, this was a hot deal. Driver support is another issue.

 

[AndrewR]

I went from a GeForce DDR to this Radeon and am very pleased with it so far. I have not played games yet (working on a new install) because I ran into a DirectX problem after running the default installation. However, 2D at 1280x1024 is very nice and crisp (better than DDR), and the DVD playback is excellent. The inclusion of a DVD player was very nice since I didn't have one, and the one I received with my new Voodoo3 3500 wasn't working that well (just buying all sorts of video cards...).

FYI, in case anyone finds the same problem: I installed this card under Win98SE and ran into problems with DirectX 7.0 and the default drivers included on the CD. EVERY application that uses DirectX calls was locking up, which includes the Flash IE plug-in, Media Player, and games. Also, the ATI driver update program uses DirectX calls. This problem results in an error message with DDHELP.EXE (Invalid Page Fault). The solution is to upgrade to the latest Radeon drivers on ATI's page (3054, I think is the number). Run the installation program, which will then crash with the error. Go to Device Manager and manually upgrade your drivers using the Properties tabs (drivers are under c:\ati\support).

Thanks for the heads-up, NiNe.

 

[pmark]

Is the rebate expired?

 

[WageSlave]

Darn, after hearing all that about the Radeon I REALLY wish I had the money for one right now. Im running a tnt2 and id love to double the performance

 

[Mysterie]

Thank you, thank you, thank you AndrewR. I was going nuts trying to fix the problem. I even reformatted in Windows ME and it STILL did it. I even tried contacting ATI (phone was busy all day, must be a big problem). Stupid thing I always learned that DirectX should be installed separate, in case you already have one or an newer version which would cause you system to become unstable. I thought it was strange they didn't give you a choice... *grumble, grumble, two days of going nuts*

 

[Skaven]

Just got back from Best Buy!! Thanks for the AWESOME deal guys!

To think, I almost bought a Geforce2 MX! SDR ram... BAH!

Anyway, just wanted to fill in some missing details. The card was $199 as you guys said. I asked about the rebate, and the guys said "The card is too new, there is no rebate." So I asked them to check...

Guess what? $50 rebate from ATI!!!

Here are the details from the rebate form:

Offer Date: 10/01/2000 to 01/15/2001
Postmark Date: 02/15/2001

All you have to do is mail it to ATI.

Anyway, hope this helps! This is one helluva deal though! Coupled with my $25 gift card... heheh

Thanks again,
-Skaven

 

[huh!!]

Wow, I purchased my card last week and the rebate is only $30. Time to head back and get an adjustment. Very nice card, able to overclock to 200/200 with powerstrip.

 

[andylawcc]

hahah, so procrastinating IS a good thing...

 

[Sesopedalian]

You can do price adjustments on rebates? Well, if anyone is successfull, let us know.

 

[huh!!]

Sorry, I meant getting a new receipt and rebate coupon. Sorta like doing a return and repurchase w/o actually returning the merchandise.

 

[rebuilder]

Yep, he's right about the new $50 rebate!
Thanks for the heads up to original poster!

Got the last one at the Best Buy near Georgia Mall in case anyone was going there in the North Atlanta area.

 

[intoran]

That sucks! I made a special trip of 1.5hours just to get the damn rebate before it expired. Oh well, I am going back in a couple of weeks anyway. They will be giving me the $50 rebate this time! Thanks guys.

Sam

 

[HenHunter]

can some one please scan the recipt and the rebate?! thank you!

 

[tom3]

Is this an ATI rebate? or a Best buy rebate?

 

[DSchell]

Okay. I was finally able to do a comparison between the Hercules Prophet2 MX and this ATI Radeon 32MB DDR. First, my system specs:

P3-800E in an Asus P3V4X running stock
256 MB Infineon 133 RAM
30GB Quantum Fireball
20GB Maxtor 7200RPM
Plextor 12/10/32A
Kenwood True 72X
SBLive Value
Netgear 10/100 NIC
NEC Multisync XV17+

Ran 3dMark2000 v1.1

MX2 with Detonator3 Drivers

1024x768 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 3537
1024x768 16bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 4912
800x600 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 4975
800x600 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 6059

ATI Radeon 32MB DDR with the latest drivers (from their site as of last night)

1024x768 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 4295
1024x768 16bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 4505
800x600 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 5357
800x600 32bit color 32bit textures 24bit ZBuffer - 5534

So in 16bit colors we see the Radeon falling behind the MX. But since I play in 32bit color that doesn't matter to me. More importantly to me, when playing UT with the MX, I was never able to reliable go from full screen to a window. It would crash 90% of the time. So far with the Radeon, I have had zero problems doing this. Also, in UT the FPS I am getting with the 2 cards is about the same. So with the new rebate value, this card is the winner for me.

For grins, I'll post this from PC Gamer (Oct 2000 pg 154)

They don't give specs on the system running this, but they do give 3dMark scores:

ATI Radeon 64MB DDR

All 32 bit colors, 24bit Z and triple buffer
800x600 6086
1024x768 4769

Hope this helps you folks!

 

[Skaven]

This is an ATI rebate.

-Skaven