Multitalented: All-in-One Graphic Boards

Recommendations? Continued

The third board with a TV tuner is the Voodoo3 3500TV which also costs around 250 dollars. Recordings in MPEG 2 format in real-time are possible, however, only at half TV resolution. The board is definitely too expensive for this level of performance. The first impression made by the supplied software is good, but when you look again, a number of details are missing. Overall, one has the impression that 3dfx is somewhat new to the video field. The VisualReality software makes it clear that 3dfx bought the package from a separate company.

Elsa and Asus only have boards without a TV tuner on offer. The 3D performance of the board is very good thanks to the TNT2 graphics chip, however the video functionality is lacking sadly. Neither of the boards can directly record videos in MPEG format (that is, without sporadic system crashes). Elsa's Erazor III Video ($200) at least offers the 'MainActor' video editing software for download from the home page of the manufacturer (note: the software can only be installed if an Elsa board is in the system). The use of the MainActor software is - to put it mildly - 'difficult to handle'. It took us more than four hours to attain results that were halfway acceptable. Asus doesn't offer any editing software. The AGP-V3800 Ultra Deluxe ($ 200) is a good board for games, but it's impossible to praise the video functionality. It was our impression that the manufacturer wanted to earn a few points for its marketing pamphlets because the ease-of-use of the video functionality is blatantly insufficient.