CAD ADVICE

Welcome to Jim's Advice Column

Featured Dilemma:

Crappy Graphics Cards

     Once in a while you run into a really junky product and I believe people should be warned.   My employer bought a  Voodoo3 2000 fx video card for the Dell I work on and for 4 other machines. They had to buy the 2000 series because the P.O.S. Dell did not have an AGP video slot, only PCI's (Yes I have issues about the Dell I work on too but, I wont get into that right now). After installing the Voodoo Card I kept getting phantom lines in AutoCAD (see a screen shot). I would do a simple command like "rotate" or "move" and after selecting the entities the highlighted graphics would go every where on the screen, Grips were even worse. I downloaded and installed all the latest drivers and the problems still prossisted. Finally I could no longer handle the phantom line work and pulled the card.

     If you are looking to buy a new graphics card I would strongly recomend not spending your money on a Voodoo card. ATI's and Diamond's graphics cards have always worked for me and from now on I'm going to stick with the name brands I know.

    If you have had the same problem I would like to hear from you or if you have had a bad expierence with another card I'd like to hear from too.

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