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The ATI Radeon VE is a strange mix of versatility and frustration.

Installation of the hardware and software was simple and easy. No blips. No bumps

The frustration with this card came with the software. The versatility that the software offers is impressive, but also, I think one of the weak points of this card. With a grouping of tools that include, support for multiple desktops, separate resolutions per display, application pop-up memory, positioning monitors, etc, etc….it seems as the designers have gone for more tools that work some of the time, than getting a solid grouping of tools that work all the time. For a piece of hardware that is supposed to increase productivity, this did not help.

Now, to be fair to ATI this is simply a software issue. Very Fixable. And probably already is, so I will not harp on this. The fact is, that this card was more than capable of dealing with most users needs, while offering dual display support at a very reasonable price. And once you have used dual monitors, you are hooked.

3Dmark2001

1024*768
32 Bit Color

Well as you can see the Radeon VE does not really measure up. Period. Specifically against the GeForce2 MX (which is also a dual monitor supported card), it fairs very poorly. There a number of reasons that this is taking place, but without getting into the gritty details (and all the tech talk that goes with that), it basically has been handcuffed by ATI, creating a series of choke points on the card ( I assume to cut costs).

I am not going to waste the time in showing any more benchmarks at different resolutions or different configs, mainly because it would be a waste of your time. The above marks are enough, and provide a sample of what the rest looked like.

Final Statements

Well the world of the dual monitor is definitely here. The ATI Radeon VE is not the way to go. The Geforce2 MX is slightly more expensive and does not offer the same amount of software tools, but what it lacks there, it more than makes up in speed. ATI is losing the battle against Nvidia and this card certainly shows some of the reasons why. Being a Canadian I find this quite disheartening. My overall rating on this card is a 79%.

Overall Score: 79%

Find the Lowest Prices on the Net for the ATI Radeon VE