3D graphics cards group test review - page 8
3D graphics card (AGP)
Review date: 08 January, 2001. Review by: Darren Allan
Is it a graphics card or a washing powder? Much as the idea of a 32MB Persil and other such nonsense is an enticing one, we think the former. The Radeon (which we reviewed as a stand-alone product here) is ATI's new champion card, which the company hopes will help it corner more of an increasingly Nvidia-dominated graphics market.
The hype for the Radeon was pretty impressive, and we're pleased to report that it certainly isn't a disappointing card. It looks relatively unassuming, being a standard length AGP card with just the one monitor output. There's actually a fan on top of the GPU rather than just a heatsink, so that should help with cooling.
In terms of features it's very impressive. Along with all the standard sort of malarkey that all 3D cards supports these days, the Radeon also turns its hand to hardware Transform and Lighting (or T&L) and S3 Texture compression, along with bump mapping and Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (or FSAA) which both go a long way to making a more realistic, smoothed out 3D image.
However, it must be said that the FSAA (which smoothes out an image's jagged edges) comes at the price of a substantial frame rate hit, which will put all but the hardiest of ninja PC systems off their stride. Still, the option's there should you prefer prettiness over speed.
Under our benchmarks, the 32MB DDR-powered Radeon acquitted itself with considerable aplomb. The 3DMark 2000 score was fairly strong and the Quake 3 benchmark produced some very solid figures, particularly in high quality, high resolution modes, where the frame rates didn't dip by much at all.
With added video capture and a built-in TV tuner, the Radeon is a good all rounder which performed extremely well on the games side. In terms of speed it was up there with the fastest cards benched here, including the powerhouse Geforce 2 GTS. Be warned though; there are still some issues with the drivers, which are quite flaky with some games. Let's hope newer versions of the drivers iron these problems out.
Company: Creative
Contact: 0118 9344744
Company: Guillemot
Contact: 020 8686 5600
Company: ATI
Contact: 01628 533115
Company: Pine
Contact: 01908 218812
Company: 3Dfx
Contact: 01753 502800
