Hightech ATI Radeon 9250 ideal for entry level users…

Category: Review on Hightech ATI RADEON 9250 128 Mb AGP Graphics Card

Posted by: 30-Jun

Strengths: Price, Smartshader technology, easy setup

Weaknesses: Incompatibility with Vista, low clock speed, lacking in features

With too much hype surrounding the high end graphics card market and hardcore gaming, the mediocre user seems to have been left out. The Hightech ATI Radeon 128 Mb AGP is focussed on such a user to whom price plays a major concern yet likes to engage in casual gaming.

The card satisfies the normal user providing improved 2D desktop environment for playing media, photo editing and other applications. It also supports most of the latest games available with the trade off being loss of detail to achieve playable frame rates.

The card supports DirectX 9 which is still the standard for 3-D graphics rendering in most games. However, it is not compatible with Vista’s DirectX 10 making it score low with a lot of users. It sports a black anodized cooling aluminium heat sink which provides sufficient cooling during regular usage but fails to keep up causing raised temperatures during high graphics requirements. The absence of a DVI port could discourage some consumers with LCD screens.