Unfair techspot review....

Yeah, i will settle for 1024x768, because that is the max res for my monitor lol.

Your numbers are way off! This is completely wrong and everyone should ignore this entire thread.

First point: The vast majority of workload performed is on the local bus of the graphics card, not across the PCI or other system buses. That's why this quote is completely incorrect: "idk, ppl were telling me otherwise, and it cant be only 127mb/s, or otherwise this card would exceed the bus by like 40X" -- Originally spewed by F1N3ST

Wrong. It is 133MB/sec. Traditional PCI is 32 bits and 33MHz. 33 x 32 = 1056Mbps. 1056Mbps / 8 bits in a byte = 132MB/sec. There's also PCI 2.2 (as mentioned above) which doubles the MHz to 66Mhz. There's also 64-bit PCI called PCI-X which ramps up the MHz even more to (up to) 133MHz.

Anyway, F1N3ST, you're wrong and you need to do some research before you criticize.

AGP has been standard on most motherboards for years!

I agree with SNGX1275. I had a "2004" Gateway PC, and I thought it was the best, because it was very recent. Then I opened it, and surprise, no AGP slot

Just 3 damn white PCI slots :dead:

That’s all good and well but would you spend $120 US on a graphics card that offers you no real performance gains? Or would you rather patch up the existing system correctly for maximum performance?

out of the box brands have gotten so cheaply constructed and poorly made these days it is becoming terrible. The low ball pricing has cut into manufactuer profits so much that they are making computers out of the most flimsy and cheaply made parts possible. I wouldn't buy a brand out-of-the-box computer today period. I have built my last two computers myself.

Of course I wouldn't get it. I'd better get a new mobo with PCI-E, and a cheap good PCI-E card

Thats right ... smart man! :grinthumb

Hello All, new here

Got this video card (Visiontek Radeon X1300 PCI) two weeks ago or so (Compusa 79.99 deal ended though now btw). Since it was only 80 bucks so I gave it a try. About the review, i found parts helpful and some other parts unhelpful. I know that PCI-E obviously performs much better than PCI and i felt that it was unfair to compare this PCI one to a PCI-E. But overall it was ok, not counting the comparison to the PCI-E card. For me, PCI is my only option unless you can find some decent PCI-X card out there lol. (in college, i'm broke)

What i think of the card: (my tiny review)

System:
Dual 2.4 Xeons
4 gigz ram
35gb SCSI Hard Drive x2
200gb hard drive
Visiontek Radeon X1300 256mb PCI
Windows XP

First off, i know my system isn't one of those hard core gaming systems but it's what I got and i have to deal with it until i get out of college and get a job and get my own. I have a supermicro motherboard. And as i can understand from my friend, my computer is meant for industrial use like servers and such. Again, my budget and no job :/ My previous card was a Radeon 9200se 128 PCI and it did it's job well until i saw this card. This new card isn't perfect but doesn't quite suck either. For a PCI card, it's amazing and astounding, an X1300 GPU on a PCI. I am also running these games at 1024x768 unless mentioned otherwise.

Cons:
There are just a few games that this card just doesn't like. Guild Wars and Call of Duty 2 just don't like this card. Guild Wars (my system specs are over the requirements) runs only at 7 fps at max settings and only at ~10 at the lowest settings(compared to 15-20 on a 9200se). Call of Duty 2 also hates this card. It runs at 10 fps maxed out without AA, with AA it goes down to 1-3 (compared to 20-30 on a 9200se). Even when i tried the lowest settings (like 800x600, all details lowest or none and such) it only went to around 17 or less fps. Online, sometimes even lower with a 500 ping (ugh!). my typical ping with my 9200se was around 100 or less. These are the only gripes i have with this card. 2 of my favorite games are basically unplayable. Doing some research, a product review on CompUSA pointed out that it didn't play well on OpenGl game. I understand that's some sort of rendering method so i think that i can agree with that. Also, this card was made specifically for PCI-E and AGP and that it requires some sort of translator or converter and so the quality is lowered compared to PCI-E and AGP

Pros:
For me, this was a blessing. It has improved my CS:S fps quite a bit, from 15-20 fps to 30-60 fps at all the recommended settings (high). So card works for me when i play Source games. As a PCI card, compared to the 9200se, it is better on the games that it works on but just plain sucks on some other games. Compared to the 9200se, it has Pixel 3.0 (yay battlefield 2) and supports HDR (yay Lost Coast and CS:S). On doom 3, i get at least 30 fps and peak at 70 on 'high settings'. Also, another pro is that this card is 'Vista Ready' and I plan on getting it when it releases.

Overall:
Overall, i think that this card was worth it when Compusa had the $79.99 deal. Now it's $130 and imo not worth the buy. If you currently have a PCI and no other option with only a 9200, i think this is worth a try and see how well it does. If most of your games that you play daily work then it is worth it. If not, then i guess you'll have to stick with your current card. As a 'gamer card', it doesn't do so well and it's just an average card with ps 3.0, hdr, and vista ready. if you don't want to play games on this, then this card is just way too expensive and the wrong card for you. For me, i'll be switching my cards every now and then so i can play call of duty 2 and guild wars

3.5/5
Note: I guess this card will really depend on the user. It works really well on some games but not on others so you really have to depend on what games you play.

Yes that is what i was taught, as follows

33mhz 32bit
33mhz 64bit
66mhz 32bit
66mhz 64bit

An update on this card: I stuck it on a PCI-X slot and it has worked wonders! I guess it's the PCI slot itself that is limiting the card. If you stick it on a PCI-X slot (Not PCI-Express), PCI-X offers more bandwidth and performance has increased quite a bit. Haven't wrote down any tests but it there is a really noticeable difference in my gaming.


-EDIT-

Just some performance boosts i got:

Battlefield 2:
On PCI: Only playable at the lowest settings, everything low or none, 800x600. This would only offer about 20-30fps and sometimes with too much happening, it would go down to 10.
On PCI-X: I have everything maxed out, all settings on High except i haven't turned on AA (might try that though, i don't really care much for AA personally) at 1280x1024 I get on average about 40-50 and goes upwards of 70+ when i'm in small rooms. The lowest i ever saw it go down was 35 once.
[Edited by COLDshiver on 2007-03-18 17:44:05]


Guild Wars:
On PCI: Basically Unplayable. I got 2-3 fps and the most i could do was basically use the game to chat with my guildmates at my guild hall.
On PCI-X: i play everything maxed out at 1280x1024 (native resolution of my LCD). Not that great though, i go down to 8-10 fps when i'm in town. But when i go outside to fight and when in battles (Like RA or AB) everything is fine.

Wow....

Thats probably why they're phasing out PCI slots, and bringing in PCIe.

Also, I don't see why they didn't ever implement the PCI-X on PCs (other than the fact that PCI is good enough for soundcards, basic RAID controllers, etc).


Btw, why is the started of this thread banned? o.O

you already answered your own question, the PCI bus is still good enough for almost all add-in cards (not including video).

read this for more info.

just look over some of his other posts, you'll see

:wave:

Lawl. I asked cos I knew he was kinda an *****. I've looked over his last posts, but I didn't find anything that would've warranted a banning...

You misunderstood me.

I've seen his posts, he needed some time out.

Besides, if you took a look at the advice he's been dishing out, you'd find that alot of them aren't good advice. Or at least I feel that way.

p.s. look at this thread he started.
p.s. we're going off topic now. I'll stop here.
p.s. I have no problems whatsoever with the management of these forums. The mods seem to be doing their job well. I was just looking for info on what would be the basis of a ban.