video capture and editing devices

Wow, okay. There's just a little bad information going on here. :) First of all, the 9600XT is hands-down, without-a-doubt the best graphics card you can buy for the money right now. considering that the 9700Pro (what, a year ago now?) whipped the pants off the GF Ti4600, I think the reveiwer below might want to reconsider his installation steps (removed your old drivers? firmware updates? stop using synthetic benchmarks?) you obviously are missing something-- check benchmarks on any reputable online reviewer (*cough* hardocp.com *cough*). Surely you're not suggesting you run FarCry/UT2K4 on a Ti4600 with no problems? *smirk*

Really, I can't believe I saw this card with a 3 1/2 rating. It really does deserve better. No, it's not going to beat an X800XT (neither will anything else right now), but then again it doesn't cost $450-$500. Show me a better card in this price range. I guarantee you Nvidia doesn't make one. Maybe someday, but right now ATi owns the top and the middle of the market, and they deserve it.

Great card, the best value card on the market, yet you get great performance and easy overclocking.

I purchased this last December, harboring moderately high hopes of enjoying a decent middle-of-the-road graphics card. It proved to be faster than my previous card, but it fell rather short of its supposed capabilities. Moreover, after approximately three months of running the card with the default factory settings, it died, upon which only software rendering (extremely slow) was possible. I returned the card to ATI under the warranty, whereupon I received a replacement card with accompanying documentation indicating the other was defective.

Hmm...well it was brand new in the sealed box when I bought it, but I guess stuff happens. I've since come across a number of people and reviews who've had very similar problems with this card, and thus, the evidence seems to suggest an ATI quality control problem. ATI has seemingly allowed a great number of these cards to hit the market...which is somewhat disturbing, considering the purchase price. Perhaps I think in overly idealistic terms, but I'd expect a company to publicly own up to something like this rather than playing it off like it was a one-in-a-thousand fluke. But then I suppose that addressing each defective card one-by-one probably is more financially prudent for the company.

ATI's customer service definitely leaves much to be desired, and it's skimpy at best. They offer one lousy month of free telephone support on their products. Afterwards, it's either pay-per-minute, per-incident, or you're reduced to automated, often useless assistance via ATI's "Customer Care" center on their web site. They offer no individual e-mail support, at least none that is readily apparent, if even available at all. Their site provides forms for submitting preformulated questions and problems to which you will receive an auto-reply to via e-mail -- most of these answers can already be found on their site. Hence, their web-based support is not really support at all, but a mirage for those too stupid or lazy to find the solution on their own. If you have a specific question or problem about your card, don't expect it to get answered if its not already in their FAQs or common technical issues.

More importantly than the faulty card, ATI's customer service efforts, or rather, the lack thereof, are enough to make me go to the competition. Give me a company that lives up to the definition of customer service.

Good-bye A-T-I.