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This Video Card is currently the only PCI model that AOpen make. Well, not for long (they will stop production soon).The Card runs the SiS 6326 Chip which is actually quite good (much better then Savage Chips). It has 4MB SGRAM which is close to the minimum memory for video cards that I would get.

The Features are as follows:

The 3D Features are:

O/S / Driver Support:

 

OK, the installation was simple - just slot it in a spare PCI slot. Then boot up your computer, and Install the driver.

What's In the Box?:

 

What's the performance like? Running Windows Millennium (I don't think there would be a performance difference using 98/SE) with a few applications like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Office (Word) running, I did not have any problems - in other words, it ran well.

With games, it was a slightly different issue.

Unreal Tournament is playable - in a box window 400 X 300! (10-15FPS). Bump it up to 600 X 480 full screen, almost unplayable (6-8 FPS). This is using Direct3D. Using Software Rendering Mode, 600 X 480 is impossible. However, 400 X 300 is playable. 

Want to play The Need For Speed 3 & 4 using hardware rendering? Forget about it! It won't run. The game gives me an error when choosing car's ect. There might be a fix when Aopen brings out a new driver, however they tell me that no more drivers will be brought out for this card :-(. The game will run in Software Rendering Mode, but it is close to unplayable.

This card works well with Age Of Empires II. Game play runs smooth. Graphics look good.

You need to run Carmageddon II Carpocalypse Now in DirectDraw Software Mode to get decent smooth graphics, but it still gets choppy. In Direct3D Mode, it's very rough and would say unplayable.

 

In the DVD department, using the Kingston TurboChip 400 (AMD K6-2 400 Chip, see my review) & PowerDVD 2.55, DVD playback was very good - I can almost say excellent! Using PowerDVD 3, playback became very choppy.

Using a Pentium 200MMX and PowerDVD 2.55, what was the playback like? Your probally telling me forget about it. Well, your sort of close. It's similar to using the Kingston & PowerDVD 3 combination - very choppy. But I was surprised that is did run. I could probably forget about it when using PowerDVD 3.

 

My Conclusion: If you like AOpen, and want there products, I guess you have no other choice :-). Great on 1 or 2 games. Performs much better then my previous Trident 975 Card (First ever 3D card made) on everything. Very cheep too - I paid around $60AUS. Don't bother upgrading if you have a motherboard with a Intel 810E Chipset (has no AGP) - the video on that should be much better than this card.

If you want the best of the best, go for Asus's TNT2 PCI card, or find a PCI GeForce.

One last thing - the performance of this card would significantly increase if you have a Intel Pentium II or III, or Celeron of any speed - they are faster then the Pentium 200 & Kingston TurboChip.

System I tested the card on:

 

 

 

 

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Copyright © 2001 Dave's Hardware

Last Modified: December 1, 2001