PowerColor Radeon 7000 "Evil Wizard Edition"

Most all of us have a machine or two around that are not quite up to standards. What can you do with these machines anyway? I decided to try my luck at turning one of my aging machines into a simple media server. All I needed was a cheap graphics card and some cables – I found what I was looking for at Newegg.

I picked up the Powercolor Radeon 7000 “Evil Wizard Edition” graphics card in PCI format for the small amount of $41.50 with FREE shipping, if you don’t already shop at Newegg you should check them out. If you have an available AGP slot the card is offered in AGP format for $38.00 with FREE shipping.

The Package

Everything arrived in one piece and undamaged. The card comes in your standard retail box. Included are a manual, drivers CD and a video cable. No games or extra adapters are included, nor should they be at this price point.

The Product


This product is using the ATI Radeon 7000 chipset running at a core speed of 148 MHz. The 32 MB of DDR memory is clocked at 296 MHz. This is obviously NOT a gaming card, there is no use buying this card if you are looking for performance.

On the back there are 3 output connection; 15 pin VGA out, composite TV out and a DVI connector. The main reason for me purchasing the card is the composite TV out, this is the simplest way of getting the image to display on your TV. For those of you interested in this card for other reasons it does boast a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 at 75 Hz, displaying at 32 bit color.

This card is passively cooled, in fact, there are no heatsinks affixed to the memory – they are simply not needed. Many modern cards consume 2 expansion slots due to the size of the heatsinks and cooling fans, this will NOT be a problem with this card.

The Installation

I installed this card just as you would any other PCI card – there were no unexpected issues with the installation. It went off without a hitch.

I fired up the machine, inserted the CD and followed the instruction booklet to a T while installing the software and drivers. After restarting the machine I discovered a fly in the ointment – the machine would hang during the bootup process. I booted into Safe Mode, removed the drivers and restarted with no problems. I then downloaded the newest drivers from the ATI site. After installing them and rebooting I did not have any more problems.

The Testing

As stated before, nobody in their right mind would buy this card and use it for gaming. Benchmarks were not my concern here, instead I offer only my opinion on image quality – on the desktop monitor and the TV.

The image displayed on my 15” ViewSonic LCD monitor was crisp and sharp. This video card displayed an image FAR superior to the image displayed by the Intel Extreme on-board graphics.

The TV out was on par with other video cards I have seen. The setup was fairly simple and the help files offered easy to follow instructions for those attempting this for the first time. There are many adjustments available for those in the tinkering mood, but its not a necessary step.

My main use will be to watch MPG files encoded to video CD specifications from over the network (and some from the local drive). This was accomplished using Windows Media Player 9. I selected Theater Mode from under the Overlay setting tab. This allows the graphics card to grab the video footage from the running program and route it to the TV out in full screen, its not required that you run the program in full screen as the card will take care of that itself. ItÂ’s also not required to leave the program active, at this point you can run any other program over the top of the media player and it will not interfere with the TV out (the video feed will be all that is displayed on the TV). The catch is this: if you minimize the media player (or whatever you use) it will change focus to the active application and the desktop.

Conclusion

If youÂ’re looking for a cheap way to get video to your TV, this is your card. If youÂ’re looking for better image quality over integrated graphics, this is your card. If youÂ’re looking to play any games beyond Solitaire, this is NOT your card. This product did everything I asked of it and it did it with ease.

The Loot (Good)
Cheap, cheap and cheap
TV out
Easy setup
Video cable included
Good image quality
Space conscious

Walking the Plank (Bad)
No gaming performance what-so-ever
Drivers on the included CD caused problems

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I would be curious to see a 3dmark 01 score, I wonder how it would stack up against a GForce 2

Were you stuck using PCI becuase the motherboard won't support AGP?

That card should be able to run old games like Quake or Half life, have you tried?

I have a smiliar card in my Soldier of Fortune II server, Radeon 7200 32MB SDRAM, PCI. Nice review man.

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro I would be curious to see a 3dmark 01 score, I wonder how it would stack up against a GForce 2 Were you stuck using PCI becuase the motherboard won't support AGP? That card should be able to run old games like Quake or Half life, have you tried?

This card was going in my HP 532w that I gutted and put in the Ahanix Master case - no AGP slot. Im sure its capable of running older games but I wont bother - the machines on 24/7 to serve video to the TV, rip and encode CD/DVD and fold.....thats its only purpose in life.

I actually considered running 3dmark01 on it but didnt want to spend to much time on reviewing old hardware, most people wouldnt be interested it this card anyway. Just though I would toss a quickie up for those people looking to turn old machines into something useful.

I wonder how my Voodoo 5500 compares to that card....

OMG J-Dogg. Shut up already!

Quote: Originally Posted by j-dogg I wonder how my Voodoo 5500 compares to that card....

J-Dogg. Shut up already! Voodoo WAS great...they no longer exist, they are no longer great.

Jeez, and I thought the ATi 9700 Pro would take Voodoo off your mind,
yet you still speak of it like it's your G/F or something. Move on, d00d!

You guys are hilarious. I love you all.

I have an AGP 64MB version of the Radeon 7000

It actually plays SWG kinda ok, I used it to replace the Rage 128 Ultra in my mom's POS Dell.