Only $59.00 after rebate for a PCI Express card with a great chipset, 1GB of Ram, support for DirextX10.1, HDMI output and support dual monitors was my dream. I'm proud to report that that dream has come true for me today!
As for my purchasing experience, I have nothing but good things to say about Newegg. The card shipped on time, I received timely email notifications of the products arrival and got some cool free stuff to boot!
Upon its arrival, I found that the card installs quickly and easily into the PCI express slot my computer is equipped with. Window 7 Ultimate 64 Bit recognized the card and all by itself and downloaded a driver for both the Audio and Video upon it first boot.
The first boost in performance I noticed was that my Windows video index score climbed from 3.1 to 6.7!! That helped to raise the computers overall experience rating to a whopping 5.1! (Growing for a tiny 3.1) The 5.1 rating is the ceiling thanks to my little Athlon x64 2 processor. I should upgrade, but why bother; I’m actually a Mac guy at the core...
What didn’t go well you may ask? I struggled with getting the latest version of drivers for the card; ASUS’s web site is VERY slow when it comes to downloading things. After about 4 hours the 99Mb driver and utility file completed its download. Next time I’ll likely go straight to ATI’s web site. I have since learned that ASUS really just puts the chip on a card and cools it properly, ATI does all the development and distribution for the drivers.
Once the drivers were updated, I was left with a weird problem. I couldn't get the image from the computer to scale to the monitor properly. I had black bars all the way around my desktop and all the configurations I tried on the monitor didn't fix the problem. I messed with it for about a day and after deciding that I couldn’t take it any longer, called Hanspree for support. Yes, I am a tech, yes, I did call for support. Part of being a tech is knowing when to ask for help so problems don't take forever to resolve. As it turns out, my call was answered quickly by a nice fellow out in Irving CA. Just as soon as I described the problem, he was quick to respond that he knew of a resolution.
Turns out, the new software that ATI adds to the computer adds a control panel for Scaling the image size to the monitor, by default; the software scales the output at a ratio of about 8% smaller than the available screen size, hence the bars around the picture. The technician sent me an email outing the changes needing to be made and as soon as I read it and applied the suggestions, a tear of joy came to my eye.
After owning the card now for 3 weeks, I am very pleased to have made my purchase.
