Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Vista Aero even on old PCs, with Visiontek's 256MB, X1600 PCI graphics card



This card supports dual displays, and HDTV TV-Out!



The nice folks at VisionTek sent me one of the company's X1600 PCI graphics adapters for review.

While I AWAIT (until hell freezes over?) for Microsoft to ship me a sample media evaluation copy of Vista, I want to give you a sneak peek of this impressive graphics card.


Front View. Yes, it' s PCI bus!.

In a nutshell, if you need to use Vista (I prefer Linux, yet I understand that people have no choice for work reasons), and want to experience "Aero" (the 3D interface eye candy), I suggest you get one of these cards. At $210 [Updated June 1st : $154 at TigerDirect, here!], it' s a LOT cheaper than replacing your whole motherboard, graphics card, and probably RAM as well.


I have used it and it works very well. Vista Aero works beatifully, on my 2.4 Ghz P4 (800Mhz FSB) in the Supermicro P4SCA mobo. 3DMark scores and screenshots will be published on my INQ review. I would have published this months ago if it wasn't for the Vole. [Hello? Anyone reading?].

In short, if you have a machine with no AGP or PCI-X, just plain old PCI bus, I suggest you get one of these cards. I had no previous experience with this company, but from the way they communicated with me, the firm looks top notch!.

www.visiontek.com, and also www.froogle.com. Use Google, it is your friend!.

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