Well I have had this card in my machine for about 4 hours now. I've been doing some little tests for my own personal amusement to see what it is like. So far for the price you pay for one of these it does not seem to be that bad. Of course there is the anisotropic issue, but then again if you buy a budget card you can't expect x8 anisotropic filtering can you
I have been testing this on Battlefield 1942 on the Market Garden map, which IMO is the evil bitch of them all (play it on a 850 Athlon and a GF2 GTS and you will know why). I have it set at 1280x768 with maximum detail settings, with all image quality settings left as they are (off) the average FPS was a quite admirable 80 fps. Then came the anisotropic, never set it at x8 for this card or you will cry and think you opened powerpoint I lowered the settings to medium after that, when set to x4 the average was around 40fps, it was playable but not very nice to be honest. I have yet to get round to x2 since I'm currently talking to people
With the DetsFX I think this card is a bit better than most people would let on, it comes down to person preference really. Image quality does not really bother me when it comes to gaming as I'm too busy fragging to notice. So far from a very limited test (I will bo doing a hell of a lot more) I quite like this card, and I think it justifys itself as a budget option.
Also try not to flame as I am just offering my view on this after some experience with the card. Just don't think of it as anything but a budget card.
