ATI Radeon X1600 Pro user reviews (512MB, AGP)

Pros Some performance increase, quite fan

Cons Software issues, no product support, overpriced

Summary ATI Technologies new X1000 series what can I say mmmmmm .......I know never again! I have owned a number of their older cards for years and thought I was happy. I was replacing an old ATI Radeon 9200 SE 128MB DDR AGP8X. I was really expecting a major boost in my video performance. Considering I was not only increasing the video cards ram by a power of four. I was also installing more pipelines with new and supposedly improved architecture. All the "professional" articles raved about the X1000 series performance based upon a number of tests, trials, etc. Lots of meaningless charts and fanfare. You know what I am talking about. In reality in a real machine not even a year old yet, the card failed to impress me. For all the money I spent on this video card my game performance in frames per second has only improved maybe twice as fast as the old card. For real time game play no advantage or noticeable improvement. Buying this card and expecting a real zip to gaming is like throwing money down a toilet and expecting more back.

This is only the tip of this dismal iceberg. When I installed the card I kept getting this message "zero display service error" what this means I don't know. ATI does not even have a response for it. Check the internet and wow lots of problems! ATI required me to obtain a "ticket" for my concern. This consumer pacifier is all ATI has provided, no solutions, no advice. The other issue is only once have I been able to set the cards settings (full performance for me), otherwise I am still are shut out of the Catalyst Control Center. The message states that I need to contact my system administrator in order to obtain access. What do you know that's me! ATI's tech support doesn't list this message either, check the NET. The fan issue concerns me, it is very quite but what happens when it fails? Is the whole card toast or can the fan be replaced? We all know that the fans will and do fail inside our computers what about this card?

I have downloaded all the drivers, ATI's software remover, reinstalled all the software ... ah but always the same messages. Always no support from ATI (check the WEB, wow!) what can I tell you, if I was to do it all over would I still buy any ATI product. Only with a gun to my head. This is inexcusable for an organization in business this long and with this much market share. I can only guess what new B.S. cards are in the works. I am sure that the magazines which get free samples, jackets, what ever; will be wowed by the technological aspect of the new cards. Personally I trust you more and more for my purchasing decisions. Real people like you and me who use products in real world conditions. That I trust.