Video-Capture Reviews

I get mine this week and i test it recording some tv programs, and the result was amazing.
For the person to ark for GART ist only the AGP driver for the motherboards, but if you install all the drivers for your mainboard's CD, yo cant expect any problem.

Nice vcard... has many features some you may never use some you will use quite often. Comes with decent video software also. This card is somewhat better in terms of features & power compared to the AIW 9600 PRO, and can still keep up with new DirectX 9.0b games like FarCry or Halo! Buy it if your in need of an upgrade... nice looking card and installation isn't too difficult either. Be sure to delete all your old vcard drivers & associated software otherwise you will encounter problems, which I did at first having a Sapphire Radeon 9000 PRO previously installed & not uninstalling the drivers assuming ATI drivers will work for all regardless! For more installation, accessaries, and using all the capability of this card read the detailed manual on the included ATI driver & software CD. Very good card indeed...

WOW! This card is worth the money, for what it comes with and the things it can do. Now I have a graphics card that supports dual monitors, HDTV and has the ability to capture. When used with the new DVD drive, my PC is a home entertainment center. This is the card to get. It installed in one shot, and the remote is amazing.

My only problem is the documentation is somewhat sparse, not listing install process for new machine, or giving great detail on all features. What is with the GART?

New System:
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD 3200 XP
1 GB Crucial PC-3200
AIW 9600XT
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
16X DVD
Plextor CD Burner
Windows XP Pro

I am glad i waited six years to upgrade, from a PII machine.

I searched around and found the least expensive place to purchase cartridges for my Olympus P10. I bought enough for 200 4x6 prints.The price per 4x6 turned out to be app. 42 cents per print. I can go down to my local Walgeens and get prints for 29 cents. I'm not certain about quality yet, but at 42 cents, one has to be careful, or the whole thing can cease being fun.

I bought this for my wife to supplement our P-400 (8x10). We went digital almost 3 years ago with the Olympus C4040 and P-400 and I was looking for something to do 4x6s w/o having to cut 8x10s down all the time. I've always been partial to Olympus, having worked extensively with the OM-1 as a photographer in the early 90s. We were very happy with the results we received from the P-400 and I have to say the prints from the P-10 are stunning, if not better. The cost per print is about 39¢, which is a bit more than taking it to some of the local pharmacies (though we live in the middle of nowhere, we'd more than make up for it in time and gas). Plus there's something to be said for the convenience of printing at home. Print time is reasonable, what you'd expect from a dye sub. The greatest benefit to me is that you don't get the diffusion dot patterns you find with the ink-jet "photo" printers. If you want "photos", dye sub is the only way to go -- and the bottom line is the P-10 gives the quality I want at a reasonable price.

I've had this printer for a couple months now and would recommend it highly for anyone with occasional, low volume printing needs. The prints are indistinguishable from lab prints when printing high resolution shots and have a high quality gloss finish. Because it's a dye-sub printer, there's no pixelation as with many dot-matrix printers. Set-up and use is easy. In fact, I keep mine disconnected and stowed most of the time. It only takes 1 minute to plug it in and connect it. My only complaints are that there's no integrated imaging software to simplify printing (I use Powerpoint with good results) and the paper and dye-sub pack are a bit expensive (equates to 65 cents per print if you order the 4x6 kit for 100 prints). But if you only need a few good prints on an occasional basis, this printer is tops.

I've only owned this card for 6 months and the cooling fan just started making a loud annoying noise. That's unacceptable for a $190 card! ATI won't send me a new fan so I guess they expect me to pay $10 to send it back in for repair, leaving me with no card and costing me more than just buying a new fan. I think I'll just unplug the fan, let the card burn up and then never buy ATI products again.

The other ongoing problem is that if I just have my flat screen connected with the DVI connector, after win2k boots, my screen is blank. If I hook the DVI **AND** the VGA connectors to my flat screen, it works fine and stays in digital mode--pretty annoying. It also won't properly display 1600x1200 on the VGA port--my other systems work fine at 1600x1200.

Bought the card and it ran fine for a few weeks, then suddenly without any changes to hardware/software the card started to freeze in 3D games. I thought it was a driver issue so i tried ALL drivers... Still no stable system now i've finally been able to get my system stable enough for 3D games. With Fast Write of, AGP set to 4x. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS CARD TO ANYONE.

If you have unlimited funds and don't need to be a savvy shopper, then by all means buy the best ATI or Nvidia video card on the market. But for the rest of us average joes, the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro is the smart choice for those that don't want to break the bank yet still appreciate superior PC graphics. I haven't always been a believer in ATI video cards. A few years ago, this brand was notorious for driver issues and other compatiblity problems but I'm pleased to say that after several months of gaming on many titles, I haven't had any video card related problems yet. That's not to say it doesn't happen but my experience has been fantastic thus far. What really surprised me though with my Radeon 9600 Pro is that I can play almost all PC games at their highest graphical settings (shadows, model detail and other aspects) and a 1024 x 768 resolution with little slow down. Now I do have a decent processor and more important, plenty of RAM in my desktop, but with the phenomenal success I've had so far, I wonder why people spend a few hundred dollars more on a better model. Honestly, you won't be missing much with a 9600 Pro. There are a few models more advanced than this card, but not many, and the visual performance advantages in those cards may not be worth the extra two hundred or so dollars you'll spend. Especially because software is always behind hardware. Some top of the line video cards don't even have games available yet that take full advantage of that model's power. If you're not computer literate, as much I have enjoyed this model, I might recommend you also look at its chief competitor, Nvidia, as that company's video cards still have less technical issues in general. Nvidia and ATI are also constantly at war and pay software companies to make their games play better on a certain type of video card. The good news for ATI owners is Microsft and ATI have become recent bed fellows and Microsoft makes one of the most important software programs in the gaming business - DirectX. Nvidia is still the king of video cards but ATI may replace it in the near future.

At first I was impressed with my AV380, but then I realized my battery life was defective - approximately 90 minutes on a full charge. My AV380 is still under warranty, and Archos doesn't return my emails, and doesn't even have a telephone support line, so I'm at a loss how to get help!! I can not reach anyone at Archos, and my warranty is running out.
Before buying mine, my friend had warned me, and I had read reviews before that Archos customer support is known for being the worst in the business. But I figured I would take my chances - I did - and now I'm paying for it!
Incredible that this company is still doing business here in America... I understand they are based out of France.... Maybe that explains the lack of customer service... Buy at your own risk - Peeved in Hawaii!

This thing is exactly what I was looking for to take on long trips. First, it replaced a portable DVD player and the need to take all my movies on DVD disks with me. Next, it replaced an electronic film vault as I can load JPEGs in from my CF cards, and the screen is much better to share photos with friends. And the size and weight of the AV380 compared to lugging around a laptop is pure joy!

I was concerned that movies would be "jerky" or "pixilated", but nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe it's not DVD quality, but it's so close I can't tell the difference.

This product is going to turn heads wherever you go. I see that Archos is releasing the AV400, which has CF built in, but it's not hard to do with this unit. Synchs right up to Win XP, and the USB 2.0 is great for moving files around.

Anything I don't like? I believe we'll see these PVPs really take off in the next year. On my wish list would be removable battery packs, a speaker, and a built in CF reader (all now available on the new AV400 which should be shipping soon, and more file acceptance TIFF, PDF, etc. A flip cover for the screen would also be nice, as the unit doesn't come with a case. Recording movies into the unit is a snap, but the process of doing file conversions on movies I've made with Pinnacle was more daunting than I was prepared for (no, I didn't major in computer science). Much easier to just output to disk or camcorder and then re-record into the AV380.

All in all, the coolest product I've bought since the first portable DVD players came out a few years back.

The archos AV300 series is a portable computer in addition to an awesome personal video player. All you need to do is install windows to a partition you make on the hard drive and you can run your computer from anywhere where there is a USB connection and a monitor. The simplicity and speed of the file transfer method is un-matched unless you need to install an upgraded USB hub. All you do is drag and drop. Immediately upon plugging in the Archos to a computer it recognises it as a USB mass storage device and you are ready to do your bidding. And get these while you can. The main problem is that battery life is less than 4 hours when watching videos. And since the battery is a proprietary non-removable Li-Ion battery, you can't just pop out the old battery and put in a new one. The unit does have a ability to turn off the LCD backlight while operating each time you skip a song or mistakenly press a button in your pocket. It has an excellent record timer, A nice surprise,so you can record a weeks worth of your favorite reruns. It is easy enough to get video recorded into it with the provided cables and DVR attachment, and easy to connect to your TV for playback. If you read the specs and don't have a problem with the size and other features, you will be very satified. Don't expect DVD quality playback on your TV. It has the wonderful AV recorder which comes inside the pack, makes video recording very easy. you wont need a video anymore. connects easily to the TV or VCR, but you should be careful of the cables connecting the AV380 because they turn out to be too plenty. The remote control (wireless) is excellent and makes life easier when placing the AV380 away from you. Finally, Archos gets it!! With this model, Archos has addressed most of the drawbacks of previous models. This product is actually in a class of its own! It does everything it claims to do, and does it well! The interface has also been drastically improved, though it is not obvious how to use the 3 "soft" buttons at first since the buttons are aligned vertcally at the right while the functions are listed horizontally at the bottom of the screen. However, a quick glance at the button descriptions in the quick-start guide is all you need to understand how everything works. Yes there is actually a quick start guide in addition to the well-written manual. The interface is much improved by the addition of a joystick. Also, the Operating System now allows file-handling functions such as rename, delete, etc to be done right on the jukebox, whereas a PC was required before. Also as with previous models, the jukebox looks like a hard-disk when connected to the PC which means transferring files back and forth is as easy as drag-and-drop (as opposed to using proprietary programs). The USB 2.0 connection is extremely fast and definitely a plus. The audio input jack doubles as line-in and mic-in. Live recording is now very clean with no hard-disk noise, even when using the internal mic. This model adds official support for playing WMA files. The latest OS update (free on their website) adds support for playing AND recording in WAV format (in addition to the MP3 format. You now have a full blown DAT recorder in your pocket! This update also allows you to do some basic audio and video editing on the unit itself. Video looks very good indeed on the large 3.8" LCD screen. May not exactly be DVD-quality as they claim, but its close! The included DVR module allows you to record MP4 video on the fly or you can convert videos to MP4 on your PC and transfer them to the unit. Pictures look great! The unit supports both JPEG (non-progrssive) and BMP. You can use the optional memory card readers to upload directly into the jukebox bypassing your PC, or you can download pictures from your PC. Also for the hefty price tag, Archos should have included the optional wired remote that adds FM Radio support. The lack of an included carrying case is puzzling especially since the cheaper Archos models all came with cases. Go out and buy a case right away to protect that huge LCD screen.
The Arcos is quality is miles ahead of any other competetors products.
Recommendation:If you like having alot of movies on hand, alot of photos on hand and the ability to play hundreds of song, then this is for you. I am a chauffeur for a living and this definately kills the sit and wait time assosciated with my job. Excellent for long trip, plug into the vehicle dvd player or music into the tape deck. Makes for a shorter trip.

To anyone who thinks that this card allows you to capture analog video from your VCR, DVD or TV, think again! This is simply a Firewire interface for your PC; it does not have analog inputs for audio/video and does not perform analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion.

It's hard to believe this FireWire card is less than $50, and comes with PC Magazine's top-rated consumer video editor: Ulead VideoStudio. I've used a lot of video editors and it has the best combination of power and usability.

For the price, i was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this little package. I have a relatively old computer - p3 500 w/ 192mb ram, and a 16mb voodoo3 video card - all on windows 98.
The card installation was a breeze, and the installed software was great. I had my first movie made in two days.
I've used this for a month now w/ no complaints. Highly recommend it.

I don't know who would spend so much money on this???
64MB Sgram , phh please!
Buy something else!

I second the previous review. This card is for graphic rendering in applications, not for pumping graphics for video games. Anyone in the industry will tell you the same. Do not let uneducated reviews deter you from purchacing this card as it will outperform any high end gaming card on the market today.

If you want glitzy graphics for the latest video games, look elsewhere.
If you want a powerful entry-level rendering card, look no further.

...because its obviously made by some pseudo-gamer that simply has no knowledge of the true application of this card.

True, the card will perform quite poorly when placed up against current cards designed for 'videogames'. But this card will easily blow away even most modern GeForce or ATI when it comes to rendering scenes and animations in programs such as Lightwave or 3dMax.

For anyone looking for a solid entry-level rendering card, this is an excellent choice. 3DLabs, of course, has many more higher end cards to chose from as well.

i did a lot of research before buying this card, and in my honest opinion this is one of the best PCI graphics cards you can get, and at $100 is a great deal. i was playing unreal tournament 2003 on my dell dimension p4 1.8ghz with 512mb ram and standard onboard intel 3d graphics running windows XP home, and i had to play with practically all graphic options unchecked and set on the lowest settings. after i installed the card (see below) i gleefully checked every box and pumped all options to the max, and was rewarded by a beautiful game in its fully glory, and at an even better framerate than before. well worth it.

to install, it was somewhat of a hassle. the drivers included on a cd didnt work, and i had to go to pny's site to download them. but they send you over to nvidia to get the drivers, and since nvidia is the chipset and not the card, they provide drivers only with no support whatsoever. so, i got the drivers in, got direct x 9 installed, and no dice. you have to (again, this is windows XP home) go to the display, enable the dual monitor support, select the GeForce FX 5200 as your display for the second monitor, then choose that as the default, then dont expand display over 2 montiors. then you shut down, then plug the monitor from your onboard video to the new GeForce FX 5200. this is more of a windows XP/dell onboard video problem, which is what i still gave the card 5 stars, but you should still be aware of it.

anyways, bottom line: great card! good value, great performance, and if youre stuck in PCI graphics land, you cant go wrong with this for $100 bucks.

I love this card. It's versitile, its east to install, its great for newbies or hardcore graphics users. The price ain't bad either :-) What more could you ask for?

I bought this card because I was attempting to install dual videocards to expand my desktop. As it turns out this card comes equipped with two outputs. Instead of having to run this card along with a crumby 8meg ATI rage, I was able to run both monitors off of a single PCI slot @ 128 megs. Bravo.

I purchased this last December, harboring moderately high hopes of enjoying a decent middle-of-the-road graphics card. It proved to be faster than my previous card, but it fell rather short of its supposed capabilities. Moreover, after approximately three months of running the card with the default factory settings, it died, upon which only software rendering (extremely slow) was possible. I returned the card to ATI under the warranty, whereupon I received a replacement card with accompanying documentation indicating the other was defective.

Hmm...well it was brand new in the sealed box when I bought it, but I guess stuff happens. I've since come across a number of people and reviews who've had very similar problems with this card, and thus, the evidence seems to suggest an ATI quality control problem. ATI has seemingly allowed a great number of these cards to hit the market...which is somewhat disturbing, considering the purchase price. Perhaps I think in overly idealistic terms, but I'd expect a company to publicly own up to something like this rather than playing it off like it was a one-in-a-thousand fluke. But then I suppose that addressing each defective card one-by-one probably is more financially prudent for the company.

ATI's customer service definitely leaves much to be desired, and it's skimpy at best. They offer one lousy month of free telephone support on their products. Afterwards, it's either pay-per-minute, per-incident, or you're reduced to automated, often useless assistance via ATI's "Customer Care" center on their web site. They offer no individual e-mail support, at least none that is readily apparent, if even available at all. Their site provides forms for submitting preformulated questions and problems to which you will receive an auto-reply to via e-mail -- most of these answers can already be found on their site. Hence, their web-based support is not really support at all, but a mirage for those too stupid or lazy to find the solution on their own. If you have a specific question or problem about your card, don't expect it to get answered if its not already in their FAQs or common technical issues.

More importantly than the faulty card, ATI's customer service efforts, or rather, the lack thereof, are enough to make me go to the competition. Give me a company that lives up to the definition of customer service.

Good-bye A-T-I.

Wow, okay. There's just a little bad information going on here. :) First of all, the 9600XT is hands-down, without-a-doubt the best graphics card you can buy for the money right now. considering that the 9700Pro (what, a year ago now?) whipped the pants off the GF Ti4600, I think the reveiwer below might want to reconsider his installation steps (removed your old drivers? firmware updates? stop using synthetic benchmarks?) you obviously are missing something-- check benchmarks on any reputable online reviewer (*cough* hardocp.com *cough*). Surely you're not suggesting you run FarCry/UT2K4 on a Ti4600 with no problems? *smirk*

Really, I can't believe I saw this card with a 3 1/2 rating. It really does deserve better. No, it's not going to beat an X800XT (neither will anything else right now), but then again it doesn't cost $450-$500. Show me a better card in this price range. I guarantee you Nvidia doesn't make one. Maybe someday, but right now ATi owns the top and the middle of the market, and they deserve it.

Great card, the best value card on the market, yet you get great performance and easy overclocking.

I previously purchased a VisionTek Ti500 for $400 when it first came out.

Within a few months, the fan failed and the card overheated. Rather then send me an RMA, they sent me a new fan without any instructions on how to replace it - it was no straightforward and the install chipped a ceramic on the board.

They replaced it with another card whose heatsink simply fell off of the card.

When I requested an RMA, they said that VisionTek had gone bankrupt and that they were the new VisionTek who was not required to honor the warranty. They offered me an upgrade option with several cards - all but one resulted in a higher price for the upgrade then to buy the card at Best Buy.

I offered them to exchange me their lowest-priced upgrade card, which would have cost me $40 (mind you, my original card was $400), or I would escalate and FedEx the company CEO at the following address:

Hartford Computer group, 1610 Colonial Parkway, Inverness, IL 60067

and post my experience on online store reviews.

They failed to respond in 2 days, so here is the result.

Please note that I am neither advising or dissuading anyone from buying their cards, but simply posting a truthful and unbiased account of my experience with VisionTek.

I've been a consistent ATI graphics card user from "way back", since the old ISA based VGA Wonder and Graphics Ultra Pro days, circa 1988. ATI has never let me down in reliability, compatibility, and sheer performance. ATI's video chipsets always seem to be the best and most stable performers on the market. I purchased the Radeon 9800 Pro card as a replacement to a newly purchased Radeon 9700 Pro, which is now running top notch in my wife's Athlon 64 3200+ machine. The Radeon 9800 Pro's AGP 8x interface and Direct 9.0 compatibility makes this graphics card a top-notch graphics and gaming performer. The card has its own power plug instead of drawing power from the AGP slot, the first such setup I've seen. When I saw that, I knew I was on to something special in performance. The graphics board is an outstanding performer and the drivers seem compatible with all my software under Win 2000. MPEGS, streaming video, web browsing, scanning and modifying JPEGS, and games just seem to fly around the screen. I plan to buy a 3-D game soon and check out that aspect of the card's performance. I did have some problems loading ATI's Linux Redhat drivers for the card. Redhat natively sees the card as something entirely different (VESA graphics card, 128 Mb). But the card works just fine in Linux, in spite of not having dedicated drivers, so it's not a big deal to me right now.

Its amazing how the nvidia fans jump on here and knock the Radeon Series. I bought this card when it first came out. Smokes nvidia in image quality, and yes I tried the 5900 Ultra, the FX cards are no more than a hopped up GF 4 Ti with DX 9 capabilities..the funny thing is, Half Life 2 wont be able to use AA and AF with the FX line....LOL. Get a grip. Radeon = Mature Adults that like great picture quality. Nvidia = Kids that like the little butterfly on nvidias web site. 8)

I am a computer geek for sure, and i love high quality graphics.

The only problem is that i don't have the money to buy a expensive computer so i had to keep my 3 year old dell. The situation for me was that this computer only has a 200watt power supply, and now-a-days most cards are requiring over 350watts of power. I previously had a geforce4 ti4200(64mb), but that stoped working once our electric in the house was changed. The computer origionally came with a Nvidia TNT 2 graphics card with 32mb of memory. This card looked nice, but its performance was very weak and had very little support for advanced graphics applications.

So, i started looking for a new card, and i came upon the ATI radion 9200 with 128mb of ram.

i bought the card, and installed it in the computer. Sadly though, i noticed you could ACTUALLY see the pixles changing color.... it was not very accurate with picture quality. Now, this was not my moniter, or computers graphics settings, as i know none of those were changed(i have an extensive knowledge of computers, and know that it was the graphics card doing this). When i played a game (diablo2) it was VERY noticilbe with the "Fog-of-war". I e-mailed ati tech support and they said that this "snow" might just be a defective card.

I returned it and got another. The SAME problem occured.

Im not sure whether this is common among all ATI products, but to someone who really likes computer graphics, this is a major turn down.

The Nvidia graphics cards do not have this problem(from what ive seen and heard), and thus i would recommend you go with a Nvidia made product if possible. Nvidia is very competitivly priced and the graphics are just that much better!

As for performance, and seeing how this card being very new, is only "below-average". This is aimed at the very cheap quality market, which is a shame because its a brand new card.

I did a benchmark with it (3dMark2001) and the numbers average around 4000.... very disapointing. My geforce4 ti4200 was a year older and averaged around 6500 with the same benchmark.

Also, this card does not have multiple moniter support, or any other the other features that some of the new cards have. This is not a problem for me, but some people might need those "special features".

As for the softwear, it was flawless, and installed easily. This is the only main turn-on to this card.

As of right now, i feel ATI is really producing a Cheap quality product for a relitivly high price.

I would recommend you consider a Geforce4 TI model or a geforceFX before this...

In conclusion, i was very disapointed.

Assesment based on a scale of 1-10(10 is best)
Picture quality: 2 (because of the changing pixles)
Performance : 4 (very low for such a new card)
Price : 1 (i think this card should have been more like 50$US)
Card Features : 3 (basic card)
Software : 10 (worked perfectly)

Hope this helps!

My computer is a three-year-old Dell P3 800 MHz 256 MB. I replaced my GeForce-2 32 MB video card with the ATI Radeon 9200 128 MB card with the hopes that game performance would improve. Sadly, I did not see a marked improvement in game performance. Apparently, performance (i.e., frame rate and available effects) is limited by the computer's P3 800 MHz CPU and 133 MHz memory. It would seem then, that you will NOT see an improvement in your computer with this video card if you are running a sub-1 MHz computer.

Even though I did not see an improvement in video performance, my computer experienced none of the video problems that a previous reviewer observed. The display is very crisp and the colors are great.

Installation of the new card is very easy. Just make sure that you un-install the drivers of your old video card before you install the new card. This is very, very important - otherwise, you will experience all kinds of problems. Also, it is best to update all of your chip drivers prior to installing the new card.

Now here is my biggest problem with this card: Although the card works great once the computer is running, my computer had serious problems cold booting after this card was installed. In other words, if the computer had been turned off for more than a few hours, it would not boot (in one try) when started up. Most of the time, it stops near the beginning of the boot cycle and never energizes the monitor. Sometimes, the monitor will energize, but then booting stops before the Windows desk top is displayed. Sometimes, I had to reset my computer (with the RESET button) six or seven times before it would successfully boot. The problem seems to get worse the longer the computer is turned off. This indicates to me that it might be a capacitor problem (faulty capacitor or bad solder) or maybe my power supply is inadequate. Anyway, once the computer boots (after 15 minutes or more of repeated attempts), the video card works great.

I have now pulled the Radeon 9200 card out of my computer and installed the original video card. Since then, I have had no booting problems (indicating the the Radeon 9200 was the sole problem).

By the way, I could find no information on this problem at the ATI web site. They obviously know (or SHOULD know) about this problem. If they were responsible folks, they would put a warning on the box.

In brief, this seems to be a great video card and a great price; however, if your computer is less than 1 GHz, or if your power supply is less than 300 watts, I would recommend that you live with your current video card until you can afford a new computer.

I just purchased this card 2 weeks ago. It's is the best AGP 8x 128Mb graphics card I've had, and it can handle all the 3D games I have. Since it's manufactured by ATI you don't have to worry about getting a bad product,there's no problem with warranty, and you get ATI Catalyst software. It comes in good on the TV, but like all cards, when it's plugged into a TV, it's going to be hard to read whats on the screen. On the TV, it still comes in really good when playing games. I recommed this for gamers who don't have a lot of money to spend on cards