Norman Brooks 2001-04-26 21:41
I have been using the new Radeon VE for more than a month now and with the new beta drivers installed here are my observations:
1. The only major outstanding reports are two:
a. Wallpaper (if two or more pictures are selected) will not stay on their proper monitors on bootup .. as neither will any icons placed on the 2nd monitor. The first thing I do on bootup now is drag my 2nd picture over to the proper monitor. I will take a new picture this morning and post it in the Gallery.
b. Major ( in my opinion) Those using W2K or xP will still have no independant control over monitor size and colour depth. ie both monitors must be 800x600x32 or 1024x768x16 etc. Not a problem for me with one 17 and one 19 inch monitor but if you have two widely disparate size monitors ie 19 and a 15 it sure is a nuisance.
ON THE PLUS SIDE
I used an AGP nVidia RIVA TNT and a PCI 3D Blaster before and this setup beats that hands down !
-The DVD player will run on either monitor.
-The TV will run in either monitor.
-The mouse still adversely affects the TV card but not the DVD player. I can put a movie on one monitor and surf the net or handle mail with no adverse affect on the movie. I have removed both Power DVD and WinDVD from my setup.
-ICQ runs on either monitor, any size, any shape!
-When a program comes up, it does so with two additional boxes on the Title Bar. These allow exact placement on the desktop, disabling or enabling spanning monitors, directing which monitor an app comes up on and wither it is max'd to that monitor or windowed on that monitor.
These new drivers appear to be about 20% faster than the release version, so they are catching up quickly to the speed of the nVidia card. The G450 still has the ability to treat the desktop better in W2K but is so much slower I don't think it is a serious threat.
All in all, I can now recommend this card to anyone thinking of a dual head card. The price is right and the drivers are improving. If you are a serious gamer, forget a dual head card. Go with seperate AGP/PCI cards and disable the 2nd card so that your Glide and DirectX functions max out on the primary monitor. However, FlightSim is awesome on this card, throttles and radios on one monitor, full size "out the window" view on the other !
nbrooks@accesscable.net
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