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| Graphics Quality | 8/10  |
|---|---|
| Ease of Set Up | 6/10 |
| Value for Money | 5/10 |
| Overall rating | 8/10 |
Full review by
rudeboymick
expert review 
on 17th May 2006
User Rating : 8
Respect :
0
Good Points: Great graphics
Bad Points: Needs a power cable, no vga socket
General comments: I ordered this ATI Radeon X850XT card as a replacement for my ageing X700pro because I wanted to play F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2 with decent graphics settings. When the card arrived I fitted it with some difficulty into the case and turned on the computer. Nothing. Then I remembered that this card needs a power cable, so I connected that. It was around this point that I noticed that the vga cable from my monitor wouldnt connect to the card. Luckily my x700pro came with an adapter. This card was an OEM and as such came with no peripherals or software.
I was greeted by a huge roar as the fan revved up to full speed.I won't lie to you my friends; I was scared! But it soon subsided to its idle speed and wasn't very loud. In fact I didn't hear it go anywhere near as loud during any of the games I played.
After installing the drivers etc. I got on to playing the games. I saw a double in my average framerate on FEAR using my x700pro graphics settings and then managed to get the same framerates(slightly better) with all the eye candy on except soft shadows ( and only 2XAA vs 4XAA).
Playing FEAR is fun when you have all the settings maxed. So naturally I spent a few hours on that, giggling like a schoolgirl, before even thinking of BF2. When I did, I got a shock. I could play the game on max resolution and max settings! This is no mean feat for a game that has expansive maps and up to 64 players at once. It's not got the dynamic lighting of FEAR but it's certainly not a bad looking game.
I haven't had the card long but I can definately reccomend this as an upgrade from an x700 card or similar. It's a quantum leap in performance.
My computer is an AMD Athlon64 3500+ with 1gig of PC3200 Kingston value RAM and a 250Gig IDE hard drive. The motherboard is an ASRock that I picked up for £50. In short, this is not a monster of a machine, which makes fragging everyone in sight at maximum resolution on BF2 that much more satisfying.
rudeboymick's review and ratings | 384 words
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