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Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2000 11:59 am
by KiLLerCloWn
With the probs my mate had I've been going through (read related posts in this forum) I went through the ATI forums and support sites and all that for a couple of days...now I was a bit shocked to be honest. After all the trusted ex-Voodooextreme, ex-AGN and current PC Abusers experts have been hailing the Radeon and I seriously thought about replacing my Geforce DDR. I was brought back to reality and found what ATI was always about: Nice potential but the damn card doesn't flippin'work! Now we are all tweakers, of course we will get it to work... But it seems if you just take the card, install and take a game, install, and try to play it won't work. You will need registry tweaks, you will need second or third party drivers, you will need procedures and you will need to enable/disable this or that for every game you want to play. Now this puts some serious doubts into my mind. Because my GeForce all I needed to do was to updete the Via AGP drivers and all my games work. And that already I found a pain in the neck cos it took me a day (and the kind help of members of this forum) to find out about that! Seems like the Radeon is a pro's card and you have to have knowledge and be willing to invest time and patience to get this to work with basically any game out there. Plus driver support still seems more sluggish than Nvidia.

Hmmm, I thought ATI had come good, but reading all that: Halleluja, I'mma go home now, kiss my GF DDR and fire up a good session of Quake3

...and what else did I read? DVD playback sluggish? Now that was the one strong point of the previous underperforming ATIs....

Hmmmmm....

KC

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2000 12:43 pm
by blade
I'll find out later today how one works for me.

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2000 1:03 pm
by Biohazard
Just got one of the engineering sample from insane morphius. Thing ROCKS 64mb at 215mhz (way above the retail version too). I like the radeon better than the GTS or V5 (problem card if you have an agp pro slot)

BTW the best place for info and new drivers, including some awsome custom ones is over at http://www.rageunderground.com

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2000 1:08 pm
by wvjohn
i replaced my gts with a radeon about a week ago and haven't had any problems. msi 6163 pro/600e@800/256 micron -7.5/promise ata66/wd 18.0 etc, win me dx8

loaded straight from the box and the games i've played so far - aoe2, mdk2, alice are fine

i found the utility drivers from ati - in beta- increased my direct 3d score from 285 to 400 wintune9x

it is not as fast as the gts i'd guess at 65-70 %- but the quality is better

the dvd playback with the ati software if poor, but with windvd it's just fine -

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2000 9:09 pm
by Hipnotic_Tranz
Once you get 'er working (which can be difficult) then you realize how sweet of a card it is. I've had some trouble with it, but I knew I was getting into that trouble when I bought it. Ther has been a problem with the Radeon and the KA7 motherboard every since the Radeon came out, but I alwasy knew there was a way to fix it.

Well, I got it fixed within a couple days of having the card and I am now satisfied. DVD-play back is superb. Best I have ever seen. I still have a couple annoying problems, but I'm sure they will dissapate as the drivers mature.

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2000 9:17 pm
by blade
The install went just fine, no problems at all on my be6. Only a few minor issues like the video-in didn't work and Unreal and Quake 1 and 2 didn't work properly.

Posting at that rage3d bbs HT suggested solved those issues very easily. I had to install webtv to get the video-in to work and that solved that problem. For Unreal I just needed the latest patch(doh!) and for quake I had to get id gamma to adjust the brightness because both were waay too dark.

DVD playback has been flawless as has been NOLF and certainly the 2d has been just fine. And I sure can't complain at all about the good looks. I am happy :)

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2000 1:13 am
by CaterpillarAssassin
i love it! upgraded from a TNT1...

Its a great card!

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2000 1:45 am
by sbp
I use in my bh6 system with no problems. I put it in that bx chipset system since people were having problems using it with Via chipset motherboards.

Maybe the question should be: Who here loves their Radeon?? Image

hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2000 2:02 am
by b-man1
"You will need registry tweaks, you will need second or third party drivers, you will need procedures and you will need to enable/disable this or that for every game you want to play"


...well, i've had mine for months and haven't had one flicker, glitch, or otherwise. just put it in, installed the drivers, done.

i would like to add that most people that don't have problems do not post---you only hear from the people that have problems and complain about it. just like cars. you don't hear about the good ones as often, just the "lemons".

mine is on an abit bf6 running at a 130fsb (at 2/3). playing q2, q3, ut, unreal, and everything inbetween. love it! :)

32mb ddr radeon.

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2000 2:31 am
by Biohazard
I agree with B-man1 100%. LOTS of us around here have em, only a few have had any complaints. Fast, compatible, great image quality, support from a company that ain't going away (not like Nvidia or Matrox will either). What more could you ask for?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2000 5:18 pm
by guste
I have no comlpaints. There was a slight problem with NFS5, but a post to the rage3d forums cleared that up in timely fashion.

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2000 9:45 pm
by plucky duck
Good things in live don't always come easy and the Radeon is a card that will put you up to the challenge. Once you get past that, its a sweet road ahead :)

I loved the Radeon AIW I had for that little while before I sold it.

Pluckster

Mine is Fine

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2001 5:07 am
by Zak33
It is stable as hell, although I got the OEM when it first hit so it doesn't o/c well at all. But hey, when it plays games so smoothly and with such little frame rate fluctuations it doesn't need to be clocked up on my 17" monitor.

Had to change one setting in the display properties to get Porsche to run in 32bit, and that was the lot!

Shame its still getting dissed cos I had a GeForce DDR for a short time and it didn't work on my SD-11 mobo :(

Glad now though!

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2001 5:48 am
by JohnM
I switched from a gf2 gts to a 64meg Radeon VIVO.

I had some problems with it originally (especially in W2K) but I stuck with it & I'm REAL glad I did.

I am using the latest beta drivers, DX8 & the VIA 4.27 4in1's with my KT7-RAID. All my games work great & the image quality is absolutely incredible.

I can't wait for the Radeon2 to come out. I doubt I will ever buy another nVidia card at this point (my previous four video cards where nVidia).

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2001 7:16 am
by KiLLerCloWn
Cool, thanks for all the feedback, xome nice opinions in here but also what I feared in the first place:

Of coursre I kwill get the Radeon to work and I very prolly will invest in a 64 megger in the near future. But if I build a system for my Dad I won't put a Radeon in it. He doesn't even know what a patch is. If i stick a GeForce in there it'll just work almost all the time. If I stick a Radeon in it it won't. Even if it's just checking one thing in the advanced dsiplay properties it's laready asking too much for 90% of PC users.

I think because we spend our time playing games and tweaking our systems we vastly overestimate how much the average customer knows about PCs. I have many friends who ise their comtputers all day and play games in the evenings. The are PC literate. But they would never think of changing desktop colour depth if the game locks, turning buffers on and of etc. If it doesn't work when they double click on the .exe they won't get it to work. Now this is the mass of the people, we're just freaks and a very small minority.

I don't think the Radeon, altho undoubtedly a great product, caters for the mass market. Which is a shame really. I talked to the guy who owns my local computerstore. Good guy and he knows his stuff. He says if you want a Radeon, he'll get it for you. Because people who want Radeons knwo their stuff and if they come into his shop asking for one he knows that they'll be able to get it to run. But he won't put them on the shelves because they're more trouble than anything else for him....because if Joe Sixpack comes in and get the Radeon my frind will spend hours on the phone or taking in systems to upgrade drivers and fix settings and it's an activity he can't afford. I think that says a lot.

KC