For the past five years, my video card has been the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon. It wasn’t a bad card, but it I felt it was time to replace it. I noticed at CompUSA that they had a Predator GeForce MX400 Plus, (which, when you install, your computer will tell you what it really is, and Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 4000) for only $49.99. I paid over $300 for the AIW Radeon when I bought it new in 2001, and that was only a 32 mb card. Now, they had a 128 mb card for 1/6th that price. I’m no fool. I bought the card. But that brought up another issue. No TV tuner. Fortunately, right across the aisle from the video cards were the TV tuner cards. So I grabbed a ATI TV Wonder Pro. Got them home, popped the tower open and installed the cards. It took about 3-4 tries before I got all the cards seated and positioned so they were not conflicting with each other. After installing all the software (I just ignored the software cd that came with the predator and downloaded the driver directly form Nvidia).
All in all, I’m impressed with the performance over the old ATI. When I play FS 2004, I’m impressed with the performance improvement. The default flight is from SeaTac airport, heading northbound. With the old card, the scenery was ok, but could be better. With the new card, I can see Seattle, Bellevue, and a whole lot more. Combat Flight Simulator 3 no longer skips or hangs when I’m dogfighting or blowing somebody to smithereens. Not that the AIW Radeon is a bad thing. I won’t even throw it out. I’ve already found a home for it and it will still provide satisfying service for quite some time).
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