Author: Nels Drugge
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Tuesday, August 28th, 2001
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/radeonve/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
Introduction
The world of the inexpensive and powerful dual display video card is here. The ability to make use of two monitors has been available for some time now, but has been generally difficult to setup and maintain. The need for this type of technology in a useable form for the general public has been growing quickly. The ATI Radeon VE is one of the answers to this problem.
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The convenience of working on a large desktop spread of over two inexpensive monitors, cannot be underestimated. Whether you are a system administrator, multi-tasking between telnet sessions, research, and troubleshooting other projects, or a web designer/graphics artist working on multiple images, ftp and and e-mail, these products are indispensable. The ATI Radeon VE is a prime example of this move to inexpensive solutions for work place productivity.
Specs
About 3 months ago I switched our production team from “old school” dual monitor systems (2 video cards, one VGA, one PCI), to one of the new dual monitor supported video cards. We haven’t looked back since
Administration and troubleshooting these machines has dropped dramatically and the software that is bundled with these cards allows more flexibility with the desktop environment. Performance has increased productivity across the board. An excellent investment at a very low cost. One of those few win-win situations.
ATI is one of the companies that are offering a dual monitor supported card in its Radeon VE. This card offers dual monitor support and a myriad of software tools that allow DVD playback, specifying separate resolutions per monitor, changing the placement of monitors, memory for where a program window opens, multiple desktops, etc, etc, etc…at a relatively low cost.
I would like to be clear on the actual use of this card. It is not a gaming card (as you will see with the benchmarks). It can be used as such, but certainly not at the same level as most if the high end video gaming cards out there. This is a card that is specifically designed for dual monitor support in a 2D environment and nothing else. If you are set on having dual monitors and want serious gaming performance then you will have go back to the “old school” setup that I mentioned earlier or to a more expensive. Now on with my impressions.
Impressions
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.
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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
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