Radeon VE?

[NIelkc]

Hey yall, I am bulding a computer. And I have 2 monitors. The Raedoen VE is sounding great for the price. But my bro told me it stinks for games. I am not building a SuperMachine or anything, just a Duron 800 with 128mb for right now. And I really only play CStrike and some Unreal Tourny. I will be doing 1024x768 res. And would be happy with 40-50 fps. What do yall think?

 

[T2T III]

I can't comment on the game performance. I'm also interested in this card, but I've read where some people have indicated the output to the 2nd monitor (the one one the side where the signal was converted via the DVI to VGA cable) was not quite as good as the regular analog output. I've tried to find out some more information on this, but have been unsuccessful to see if adjustments can correct this or not.

 

[jobberd]

under what OS? Radeon performance drops slightly when running in Win2k.
In counter-strike, 1024*768 wont be a problem for you. the only time you might experience slowdown is with a smoke grenade, but that happens to most cards. As for Unreal Tournament, you will be getting around 45 fps, but it can drop to as much as 15 fps in certain scenarios. Your options are: get the radeon ve, play counter-strike contently, and lower the res of unreal tournament to 800*600 to get playable fps, or: get a geforce2 mx with dualhead. the performance is much better with it, but honestly, you seem like you wont be needing the extra power if thats all youre going to play. Plus, the Radeon's dualhead is reportedly much better then the geforces

 

[NIelkc]

Yeh, well I guess I could pick up the raedoen and if it stinks just get the other one.

 

[wuji]

i sold my ATI Radeon VE because of a few serious issues, here's my config and why i sold it...

1) win2k pro
2) dual dell 17" 1701FP flat panel displays with digital and analog outputs
3) dell precision pentium III 500 with 640 MB RAM

major problems (or annoyances)

1) can't view any sort of video files (MPEG, AVI, RealMedia, QuickTime, you name it) even after installing directx 8, win2k svc pack 2

2) the monitor with the digital output is very noticeably clearer than the analog output (as it should but keep reading)...while some would consider this anal, i find it hard for my eyes (i'm not an old guy ok) to quickly adjust to one screen with super crisp text and the screen right next it having blurry text or whatever.

3) slow performance compared to other video cards

i ended up tossing this card and getting an nvidia geforc2 mx based card...i can view video files fine, the quality on both monitors is good AND uniform, and the windows seem to snap and refresh much faster.

that said though, sometimes when i reboot with the new nvidia card, the second monitor doesn't light up...which appears to be a known problem with nvidia's twinview according to eVGA (my card is a visiontek).

http://www.evga.com/support/support.ihtml?page=tvfix1.htm

so the only card left to try would be the matrox, sigh...