Looks nice, plays nice; for the price
Written: Mar 18 '03 (Updated Aug 11 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Price, Performance (for price), Ease of Install and Use, Compatibility
Cons: None so far
The Bottom Line: At this price level, the Radeon 9000 seems to really deliver the goods. The card installed and has worked flawlessly and provided good performance in 3D and 2D applications.
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| WhtdoIKnow's Full Review: ATI RADEON 9000 PRO, (128 MB) AGP Video Card |
Not sure if this needs another review as I would agree with the other 9000 reviews that this is an excellent value in a 3-D card. However, I think there is some use in sharing specifics since there are so many systems/situations/needs out there.
We just purchased an HP Pavilion desktop system at Costco. This was a great deal at $999 as it includes an excellent flat panel display and has a good set of basic specs and flexibility for this money including an AGP slot. However, as is the case with a lot of these lower end packages, the graphics and sound sub-systems were pretty basic – both were “on board” chips w/ no real 3-D acceleration and just a simple mini-jack for 2 audio speakers. I was not looking to turn this into a super gaming/audio machine but I did want to upgrade so that some of the newer games would play. My personal example was “No One lives Forever 2”. I had enjoyed the first game very much – which played decently on my older PIII laptop. Wonderful Daughter got me the sequel for Xmas and I had neglected to even try installing it on our old VAIO system. With the new AMD Athlon 1.8 MHz-equipped Windows XP-Home system up and running, I decided to install and give it a go. Well, no dice. I can’t remember the specific complaint but I was basically politely told that, even after upgrading the DirectX drivers, that the game simply required rendering hardware that the HP lacked. So much for the onboard graphics and I decided that an upgrade would be necessary.
I actually had 2 main graphic-related needs: 1. to be able to play - w/ at least decent graphics – some of the newer games; and 2., to be able to get digital video onto my system for editing. My old Sony had built-in firewire and I had gotten used to this –the HP did not. So: first I considered some of the “all-in-one” graphic card solutions such as the Radeon 8500 All-in-Wonder. This offers 3-D acceleration plus fairly extensive video in/out ports, TV tuner, etc However, looking over the reviews of this (and even the 9700 version) on the net, I was struck by the number of dissatisfied, often violently dissatisfied, users. It sounds like these cards can work fine for some, but for others – including some very tech savvy people - they were disasters. Also, the 8500 actually has a fairly low level of 3-D acceleration features and many complained that this aspect was not up to the level of more modern accelerator cards - and I definitely did not want to spend the money for a 9700 card. I began to consider other options including just purchasing a second dedicated firewire card, which you can get for about 50 bucks.
In the end, I looked over reviews for mid-level accelerator cards and picked out the low to mid level 9000 Pro128MB as sounding like it provided the most bang for the buck. In looking over these cards, I also saw that Creative has a SoundBlaster card that is also mid-level in price/features but has a firewire port built in. This is the Soundblaster Audigy Gamer – not as fancy as the new Audigy 2 versions but much less money and not much more than some firewire cards alone. On my next trip to BestBuy, I purchased both cards – much to Wonderful Wife’s dismay. She seemed amazed that these items cost about a ¼ of what the whole computer cost and couldn’t fathom why we would need these things since the screen lit up and sound came out of the speakers. Well…that’s a hard one to answer but I could have pointed out that the current top of the line graphics and sound cards would have ended up costing more like ¾ of the price of this system or more – Hey, I was compromising! The Radeon was about $125 and the Audigy was about $100 I think.
Installation was not a problem and I must say after 20 years of struggling w/ upgrading home computers, that for all its goofiness, XP is certainly good at figuring out these kinds of issues. I did the 9000 first. The install instructions were pretty weak but they did suggest that you upgrade the AGP driver first thing and provided some guidance in doing this. I determined which company did the AGP slot on the HP and went to their website. It was pretty clear which download was recommended. I proceeded with this and installed these drivers. ATI also suggests that you uninstall or inactivate the onboard graphics drivers. I thought I would wait to do this and went ahead and stuck the card into the AGP slot, plugged my monitor back in and then installed the extra ATI software. Bingo. (I have never formally removed or inactivated these on-board drivers and have had no problems).
Everything looked fine so far. I nervously popped in the NOLF2 CD and…..success. The game loaded, recognized the 9000 and ran perfectly first time and WOW did it look good. Whether from new/improved graphics in the game engine or from the rendering ability of the 9000 (I’m sure a little of both) this game looks simply amazing. Comparing it with my prior set-up of NOLF1, there was no comparison. Characters looked and moved with almost CG digital quality and the surroundings were fantastic including amazing lighting, water, fog, etc effects. I was loving life and got lost in playing the game for awhile. I have since determined that a lot of the graphics bells/whistles were actually turned off in the game software at first. After turning these on, I must say I can’t imagine wanting better game graphics than this. Realistic snow falls from the artic skies, fires crackle w/ sparks and smoke, moody lighting provides a super realistic aspect while the metal surface of your AK47 gleams and glows – really amazing. I can’t really comment on frame rates. I have never played online and for the most part the game has been pretty calm so far. I have noticed (with all rendering tweaks on and detail/etc settings max-ed out) a bit of slowdown in just one scene or two where I screwed up and multiple (i.e 5-6) guards were simultaneously bearing down, yelling and shooting at me w/ the associated bullets, shell casings, debris, blood, etc flying around in the same screen. Obviously if you are looking for the top-of-the line performance, the 9000 is not it - but I have yet to see anything to complain about. (I imagine that Doom ]I[ is going to be a different story).
I will briefly mention that the Audigy Gamer install went just as easily and I am VERY satisfied with this card. I have a set of Creative Inspire 5.1 speakers ($49 reconditioned from Buy.com) and the sound is absolutely excellent. NOLF2 sounds as good as it looks and I must say all things considered that for music, the near-field quality of this system makes it one of the best listening set-ups in my house - and for the overall price – amazing.
I will take a final, short off-subject detour to briefly discuss the video editing situation – since this is not exactly off subject. I have seen multiple complaints about some card combinations that just don’t work well for non 3-D applications and as mentioned this was part of my concern in selecting an overall graphic card solution.
I looked into new video editing software as my old Ulead Studio was not XP friendly and it pretty much sucked anyway. In looking over reviews of the current crop, I again ran into many violently dissatisfied users and couldn’t see that one of these programs (Pinnacle, Ulead, Roxio, etc) was likely to be any better than the next - but along the way, I realized that Windows MovieMaker is available for free. I figured, what have I got to lose? MovieMaker was actually not included in the XP pre-load on my computer but I bought an XP Plus Graphics upgrade thingy at Costco (like $5 with a rebate) that had enhancements for MovieMaker and when I installed this – the set-up downloaded the original program. (Otherwise, you can just go to the Microsoft site and get the program) I nervously plugged my trusty Panasonic DV-400 (see my Epinion on this) into the firewire on the Audigy (I had skipped this part of the Audigy set-up and had not loaded the Creative firewire drivers) and XP politely informed me that it had found a Panasonic DV camcorder and it was configuring it and then… did I want to capture DV in MovieMaker?? Hell, yes! I won’t go into a full description but this system has worked flawlessly and is in fact the most trouble free DV editing package I have ever used. My first hour, learning the system, I captured and edited half an hour of DV, with some very nice transition effects. In another hour, I had a completed 20 minute video with titles, etc that the program quickly and error/glitch-free turned into a Windows movie file that looks/sounds great and consistently plays w/o problems. I have burned this on a CD and it has opened and played perfectly on several other systems including older ones w/ slower processors and CD drives (as long as MediaPlayer codecs are up to date). Did I mention that MovieMaker was free? I have a good friend who is a pro at this and from what I’ve seen, a 5 figure PC–based AVID system can be just as problematic as our poky little desktops – so all praise to MovieMaker. I also frequently use this system for a variety of 2-D tasks including high-res photo editing in PaintShop7 and generating graphics in OpenOffice Draw (another fantastic “free” program). From what I can tell, the Radeon 9000 plays nice, provides good quality graphics in a variety of situations and particularly, for the money, I have no complaints whatsoever. Good luck w/ your system!
July '03: Just wanted to pass on that all is still working well and that GTA-Vice City runs speedily and beautifully on this system w/ all graphics features maxed. What a kick a$$ game!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 125
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Epinions.com ID:
WhtdoIKnow
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Location: Maplewood, NJ
Reviews written: 87
Trusted by: 10 members
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