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Poll: Radeon owners speak!

I owned a Radeon 64MB Vivo for about 2 weeks.
On the whole I was fairly pleased with it, the DVD playback was great, the image quality in boht 2D and 3D was excellent, and the 3D speed was more than adequate.

I had an issue with objects not having skins in Rune under Win98SE, but when I installed Rune it selected Glide as the preffered mode and at the time I didn't have a V3 in my system anymore...so i think that might have been a driver conflict not solely the Radeon's fault.

After a fresh Win98SE install, I couldn't get Diablo2 to load up in Direct3D mode...DirectDraw only...well since the only 3D is spells it's not a *huge* deal...but annoying...

then the Win2k drivers....'nuf said..

All in all it's a really good card, but there were enough little issues that bothered me...to stop it from getting an excellent out of me.
 
I'll rank various categories on a level of 1 to 10 (10 being the best possible score).

Ease of Installation: 10

Quality of Instruction Manual: 2

Ease of Driver Installation: 9

Quality/Stability of drivers: 9

2D Image Quality: 8
(My TNT2U would get an 8 as well, but my 2D is hampered by my use of a passthrough cable for my Dxr3 DVD decoder.)

3D Image Quality: 9
(With FSAA, it blows away my TNT2U)

Game Play FPS: 8
(I'd give my TNT2U a 5; FSAA causes lots of strain on my PII-450,however.)

Game Compatibility: 7
(I'd give my TNT2U an 8; I just play Counter Strike (OGL) and NFS:HS (D3D). I had a problem with the Radeon while running NFS:HS with Fog enabled, but disabling Fog fixed the problem. Counter Strike is just gorgeous. My TNT2U was kinda jerky in both games at times.)

DVD Performance: N/A
(I still use my Dxr3.)

Wow Factor: 7
(I would give my TNT2U a 3 or 4 here; my Voodoo2 would receive a 10.)

Overall Performance: 9
(My system runs better than before in all ways the Radeon could affect it.)


System Specs:

200W PS
Gateway/Generic 440BX mobo with AGP 1.0 slot / 100mhz FSB
Intel PII-450 @ 450
2 x 128MB Kingston PC100 SDRAM
Quantum 10.2GB 5400rpm ATA33 IDE HD
Maxtor 27.2GB 7200rpm ATA33 IDE HD
Toshiba SM-1102 2x IDE DVD-ROM (region free)
Philips 3610 2/2/6 IDE CD-RW
Generic 3.5" floppy
ATI Radeon 32DDR
Creative SB Live! Mp3+
3Com FastEtherlink 10/100 PCI NIC
Creative Dxr3 DVD PCI decoder
STB TV/FM Tuner PCI card
------
Sony CPD-E400 19" monitor
Boston Acoustics BA4800 4.1 speakers
 
GTaudiophile: Why do you still use the Dxr3 card???? TV-Out? OK, this I could understand, but with my computer, the Dxr3 really suck IMO. The quality is worse, than just with my Voodoo 3 2000. I think the throughput cable isn't very good. Also the 2D quality gets worse with the throughput cable....
 
Pleased.

3D quality is exceptional though I'm having problems with speed which could be system related, however (will do clean install shortly).

2D is good, but I have that damn shimmer effect with my aperture grille monitor -- waiting for them to release the fix they've supposedly discovered (can't download the latest special drivers because servers were all overloaded -- don't think those fix it anyway).

Installation has been EXCEPTIONALLY crappy. I had to manually install drivers initially because the Radeon was not compatible with an earlier DirectX installation, and the install program crashed (it makes DirectX calls! stupid!). I tried to update the drivers with a newer version, and it refused to allow me to install them -- said it was incompatible. Dumb. Again, could be related to my current Windows installation (98SE), but I'm not positive.

If they fix the shimmer, my estimation goes to VERY PLEASED. The only card with better image quality in 2D (that I've seen) is the G400. Hard to compare 3D image quality since the G400 is so slow that I never used it for FPS games, which is what I mainly play.
 
I just replaced my old Geforce 2 GTS 64 mb with a radeon 64 w/ vivo. I am pretty impressed.

The drivers were kind of annoying for me to install. Took me a couple of tries to find the drivers that were most stable. I really couldn't tell much of a difference in 2D quality compared to my geforce on my 19" ADi Microscan. I did get the annoying 'water' effect but I easily fixed it. It wasn't as fast as I thought it would be in Quake 3. When I had my Geforce. I got over 115 FPS in Quake 3 arena (w/ my config 1024x768 Hi Quality), and then with my radeon 64 I get around 70 fps.

Overall.. I am happy with it. I love the vivo features especially, dvd quality, and all my games still run pretty good and look beautiful.
 
nDee, I can't see how DVD quality could improve much beyond what I get with my Dxr3. I have compared it side-by-side with WinDVD, and I think the Dxr3 is better. Plus, with my SB Live!, the 4-speaker downmixing is great. I do have a copy of WinDVD 2.2, and now that I have a Radeon with iDCT, I might give it a try. I also just really like the fact that my Dxr3 uses only 5-10% of my CPU during DVD playback. If and when I install WinDVD 2.2, I'll let you know how I feel about it.

Another note on installation: the only things I did to prepare for the Radeon was change my display driver from TNT2-Ultra to Standard VGA, and install DX7.0a. After doing those two things, I just shut down the computer, pulled out the TNT2U, installed the Radeon, booted up, and installed the 3056 drivers. It was as simple as that. I thank the stability of the 440BX motherboard for that.

Lastly, I have a Sony FD Trinitron (CPD-E400) monitor, and I do not get the "shimmering" effect. Again, my Dxr3's passthrough cable might be masking that to an extent, but I don't know.
 
OT:

Hey GT, when you have some time on your hands could you compare the dolby 5.1 to 4 channel downmix quality of the Dxr3 to that of WinDVD 2000 for me? I've decided on the BA-4800s over the ADA885s, and now I'm looking for a good Dolby 5.1 to 4 channel downmixer. No hurry or anything just sometime if you have a spare half hour or something.
 
GTaudiophile: You said, for watching DVDs, it only uses 5%-10% of the CPU. I don't know, but when I watch a DVD, I want to watch the DVD and not do something else. It could use 50% of my CPU power while watching DVDs, I wouldn't care. My Opinion.
 
One of these weekends, I'll install WinDVD 2.2 and test it out, closely looking at both audio and visual quality. I'll be gone this Saturday, and with the Holiday Season comming up, who knows when I'll get to it. I'll let you all know. I guess it's just a matter of installing the damned software, but whenever I do something with my computer, I like to give myself lots of time so there is no rush.
 
No problem I'm in no hurry.
It'll be at least mid-december before I buy the BA-4800s and then probably mid-late january if not february before I decide if I want to buy a hardware decoder card.
You just seem to have similar tastes in audio quality as myself (read: I repsect your opinion because you hate the promedia's even more than I do 😉) and you happen to have access to both 🙂
 
I like my 32Mb DDR version....better 2D and image quality than my GeForce MX. Haven't had any problems at all and it seems happy at 89MHz.

Super6
 
I have a Radeon 64DDR VIVO and a Radeon 64DDR in my rigs right now. Replaced the Creative Labs GF2 with the VIVO, and a Voodoo5 5500 with the Radeon 64DDR. I've got a Radeon AIW (which has been enroute for almost a month now!!!!) coming that will replace the VIVO as soon as it gets here.

Installation was cake on both my BH6 and Epox 7KXA boards. Both are running Win2k.

Don't believe what everybody is whining about ATI and drivers... that was history, and it seems like they have cleaned up their act. I'm thoroughly impress with the cards!

 
Fantastic card couldn't be happier. It was night and day going from my GTS. I can't believe at one point I was happy with the GTS. Drivers are rock solid and stability terrific. There's not a better all around card available right now.
 
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