( 17 reviews )
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Mar 3 2008
I started out by buying a 3D Fuzion GeForce 5500 FX graphics card as an upgrade to the incompatible Intel card on board my Dell 1100 PC to play Guild Wars. Their card was well within the required & recommended specs for the game - but the display would sometimes hitch & lurch during gameplay. Not a good thing in the middle of a melee... The PC is only 2 years old, but it only contains PCI slots. In search of a faster card, I returned the GeForce & tried this card locally. According to VisionTek, this model I am reviewing is identical to the ATI Radeon X1300 model VTK-400073W I bought locally at WM. And if you buy from Amazon instead...as of today's date...you will save $28 on the same identical technology. (I wish I had...) I am very pleased with the performance of this card. The intermittent display issues the GeForce 5500 FX experienced during the game have cleared up, the quality of the overall visual display is noticeably better. When I click "Auto Detect" in the game's Graphics settings, I find it's able to run at a much higher quality level all around. I can use the highest settings without problems. The minimum & recommended requirements for Guild Wars games are set deceptively low. Many graphics cards will fall within these specs, & they will perform to some degree, but not all will perform excellent. This card does. (The game server itself still lags... But that's a different issue, & not the fault of the card.) I now have an edge on my gameplay, vs. losing time trying to work around the GeForce 5500 FX's display issues, trying to take aim at my opponents. I have much better control over my battles now than the GeForce offered. For fellow gamers... The GeForce 5500 FX card fell within the recommended requirements for Guild Wars Prophesies - but unlike Prophesies, the GeForce 5700 FX is the minimum requirement for NightFall & Factions. However, the Radeon ATI X1300 remains well within range for all of the GW campaigns. Guild Wars 2 will come out later in 2008, & it will place even higher demands on PC technology, setting the previous recommended requirements out of the present range (exactly where... I wish I knew.) So rather than hang onto a GeForce card that is already obsolete for my game, I returned it & got the Radeon X1300. There is an even faster Radeon ATI PCI card, the X1550. VisionTek tech support indicates that the X1550 has a Core Processing Speed of 500 MHz - vs. the 450 MHz in model X1300 - so model X1550 is a faster card. It has the power to process more information & display it faster than the X1300. I recommend taking a look at the X1550, but please be aware it requires a 300 watt power supply - & the X1300 requires a wattage of 250. I went with model X1300 because my power supply is 250 watts, & the X1550's 300 watt requirement would burn out my power supply. If your power supply is 300 watts or higher, however, I would investigate the X1550 card instead. Check with your manufacturer on your computer's specs first before buying, & don't buy a card that will overpower & permanently damage your PC at worst, or at best will not run at all & have to be returned. When purchasing a video card, another thing to consider is how much RAM you've got on board. Low RAM will cause a bottlenecking issue in your video card's memory - causing what appears to be problems with the video card, when the performance problems are actually a memory issue. My PC is upgraded to its maximum of 2GB RAM. If you're running on considerably less, you may want to also consider also doing a memory upgrade along with your video card. Last, I recommend not using the installation disk that comes with this card, but rather downloading the latest drivers directly from ATI's website. Your video card & your drivers will operate with far fewer problems. I experienced a lot of problems using the drivers on the disk, but the updated drivers on the website offer more stable performance & user interface. ATI's Catalyst Control Center offers a plethora of intricate settings to tweak. One nice perk this card offers is that it will support a wide range of wide screen flat monitors. Something I plan to add in the future. It can be set to a lot more resolution configurations than the ones shown on the box & in the specs. No one will always have all of the best technology, at all times... Marketing will impel you to keep up with the Jonses, but living within limits is a reality for most people. For me, this is the fastest card available on the market that I can upgrade to & run within my PC's current specs. And it's performance is excellent for the game that I bought it to play. I am very happy with this video card's performance, & I recommend it to others wrestling with similar issues.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 25 2007
I searched everywhere for a good PCI video card. I finally found this product. With a good PC you can easily run Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and Call Of Duty 4 with this video card. Basically I updated because my video card could not run these high end video games. I definitely recommend this video card to those who only can run PCI. Otherwise seek a stronger card if possible.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 11 2007
I had all kinds of trouble trying to find the right PCI video card. I tried several different brands, and returned the ones that didn't work well or at all with my Dell Dimension 3000. I had picked up 2 video games and wanted to play them, but they didn't work because my system's video capabilities were not updated enough to handle the technology in the games. So after trying a few different video cards and having little success, I finally picked up the Radeon X1300 at Walmart, and low and behold the games worked perfectly. You can even adjust the game performance using the VisionTek control panel, so that the game plays better, or the graphics show better, or somewhere in between. I haven't even explored all the bells and whistles of the software that came with the new card, but that's not a problem. As long as my games and other applications work great with this card, I'm a happy computer game playin camper. It works just fine with my Dell, so I'm not sure what other reviewers are talking about. Radeon to the Rescue!! Yeee haaa! But since most new games require more RAM, make sure you upgrade your RAM before using the card (to match or exceed the RAM of the card). That will definitely help game play. Also, make sure that your CPU clock speed either matches or exceeds the speed of the card so that they are compatible. A slow CPU and a fast video card are NOT a good combination.
