Well, I just did some initial testing (mostly playing games). Let's start at the beginning:
The packaging is not very good. They chose to lose the anti-static bag for the showy window. It kinda makes me nervous to see something like that. However, my card was not damaged (I suppose that the packaging protected it, but when I pulled the cellophane away from the box, it did produce some static charge). Everyone should remember to use a static wrist band anyway.
The contents are: The board, a manual (really sparse documentation), the vivo connector (s-video in and out only), an s-video cable, MDKII, a driver CD (WinDVD, drivers, and an overclocking utility) and a DVI-VGA converter.
The card itself is fairly large (it's larger than my old GF2 GTS). It's not so large that it wouldn't fit into my Epox 8KHA+ (unlike the Visiontek GF4 Ti4600). I didn't have to do too much rearranging in my case either in terms of cables. The card is also realtively heavy, which leads me to think that the heatsinks are made of aluminum. However, the heatsinks still leave me in doubt. The gold coating seems to be plastic (at least, to the touch). I don't have any way to determine if it is anodized aluminum or not. They do, however, conduct heat fairly well (ie: they get warm to the touch while the computer is idle). The fan is quiet. I cannot hear it over my current setup (the Volcano 7+ on low is the loudest part of my rig).
As for ease of installation, I run WinXP Pro, so I just dropped it in, and it was recognized. I downloaded the latest drivers from Guru3D, with the refresh fix. The documentation with the card suggested that their drivers were out of date (there was an insert advising downloading drivers that didn't make it in before publishing time from Chaintech's Taiwanese website).
Now for the preformance tests. While I am very sleepy, I did force myself to play some games (yeah, like that was hard...). Grand Theft Auto III ran great. I previously ran on the lowest resolution, with all of the eye candy off. I was able to turn on the eye candy, and bump up the resolution a little before I noticed a slowdown. It was practically unplayable on 1280x1024x32. The only problem I had was that, for the first time ever, GTAIII crashed on me. I'm not sure if it was the card's fault, or if it was just a random occurrence. It happened when I had the resolution at 1280x1024. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was always very video card limited on my system. When I tried it again with this card, I found that I could play at 1280x1024x32, with all the settings turned up, without a problem. I probably could've turned the resolution higher.
After I quit the games, I noticed that my CPU and ambient temperatures were one to two degrees celcius higher than they were with my GF2. Normally, my CPU doesn't go above 45C at full (GTAIII) load. I reached a new high of 48C with this card.
If I think of more, I'll post later. Otherwise, good luck to everyone.
The packaging is not very good. They chose to lose the anti-static bag for the showy window. It kinda makes me nervous to see something like that. However, my card was not damaged (I suppose that the packaging protected it, but when I pulled the cellophane away from the box, it did produce some static charge). Everyone should remember to use a static wrist band anyway.
The contents are: The board, a manual (really sparse documentation), the vivo connector (s-video in and out only), an s-video cable, MDKII, a driver CD (WinDVD, drivers, and an overclocking utility) and a DVI-VGA converter.
The card itself is fairly large (it's larger than my old GF2 GTS). It's not so large that it wouldn't fit into my Epox 8KHA+ (unlike the Visiontek GF4 Ti4600). I didn't have to do too much rearranging in my case either in terms of cables. The card is also realtively heavy, which leads me to think that the heatsinks are made of aluminum. However, the heatsinks still leave me in doubt. The gold coating seems to be plastic (at least, to the touch). I don't have any way to determine if it is anodized aluminum or not. They do, however, conduct heat fairly well (ie: they get warm to the touch while the computer is idle). The fan is quiet. I cannot hear it over my current setup (the Volcano 7+ on low is the loudest part of my rig).
As for ease of installation, I run WinXP Pro, so I just dropped it in, and it was recognized. I downloaded the latest drivers from Guru3D, with the refresh fix. The documentation with the card suggested that their drivers were out of date (there was an insert advising downloading drivers that didn't make it in before publishing time from Chaintech's Taiwanese website).
Now for the preformance tests. While I am very sleepy, I did force myself to play some games (yeah, like that was hard...). Grand Theft Auto III ran great. I previously ran on the lowest resolution, with all of the eye candy off. I was able to turn on the eye candy, and bump up the resolution a little before I noticed a slowdown. It was practically unplayable on 1280x1024x32. The only problem I had was that, for the first time ever, GTAIII crashed on me. I'm not sure if it was the card's fault, or if it was just a random occurrence. It happened when I had the resolution at 1280x1024. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was always very video card limited on my system. When I tried it again with this card, I found that I could play at 1280x1024x32, with all the settings turned up, without a problem. I probably could've turned the resolution higher.
After I quit the games, I noticed that my CPU and ambient temperatures were one to two degrees celcius higher than they were with my GF2. Normally, my CPU doesn't go above 45C at full (GTAIII) load. I reached a new high of 48C with this card.
If I think of more, I'll post later. Otherwise, good luck to everyone.
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