VisionTek Visiontek Xtasy 5864 AGP 64MB Nvidia Geforce2 TI

WHAT'S HOT: The budget iteration of NVidia's newest line of graphics chips, the GeForce2 Ti, is no slouch when it comes to speed. In fact, the GeForce2 Ti-powered VisionTek Xtasy 5864 posted Unreal Tournament speed scores nearly identical to those of the VisionTek Xtasy 6964 GeForce3 Ti 500 card we tested, although the Xtasy 5864's image-quality scores were a bit lower. In other games, its speed scores came close to those of the faster cards in lower resolutions, but lagged at 1600 by 1200 resolution.

WHAT'S NOT: While this card is swift, speed isn't everything in the graphics-board world. We rated this card's image-quality scores in Test Drive 6 as Average because texture problems marred the game (yellow-gray shapes appeared in the middle of the screen as we played). And despite the high frame rates, game play in Unreal Tournament was jerky at times. Also, Autorun failed to run for the driver CD-ROM, so we had to install the card's drivers manually.

WHAT ELSE: With only S-Video-out and a coupon for DVD software, this card's bundle is skimpy.

UPSHOT: It's a speedy first-generation card at an affordable price, but you might prefer to wait until NVidia has fine-tuned its drivers before you buy.

SUMMARY

VisionTek Xtasy 5864 4X AGP, NVidia GeForce2 Ti chip, 64MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; S-Video-out; color-calibration software. $135 800/726-9695 www.visiontek.com