With the demise of 3DFX there is but one real competition for Nvidia and that is ATI. Starting with their line of Radeons they do provide consumers with another fine choice. ATI has always been noted for their usually superior 2D performance and the 7500 is no exception. 2D is very sharp and clear along with excellent color. DVD playback is flawless. The picture looks sharper than any current movie theatres capabilities and the hardware acceleration does make for smooth performance and after watching many DVD movies I had no stutter or weird anomalies you would sometimes get using no hardware acceleration or an inferior video card. Using the Radeon 64mb Vivo I would get some stutter at times but not so with the more powerful 7500 gpu. And as you can see by the picture below ATI includes all the applications you need. ATI's DVD player, file player(similar to windows media player), video cd player and a music cd player.

Sure there are better video cards out there but you will pay much more and sometimes more than double and even up to triple the price to get a better and faster video card. Some like the ATI 8500 and the Geforce 3 give you faster frame rates for games while one like the 8500dv has all kinds of goodies such as a TV tuner, digital video editing capabilities, makes your breakfast, etc.. well you get the idea. But if what you want and need is a mid level newer card that you can run all applications with, multi task using two monitors, play DVD movies and if your no heavy gamer then the ATI 7500 is one most excellent choice and certainly an excellent choice for a business. Checking prices at pricewatch at the current date of 1/24/02 the 7500 can be purchased starting at $100 for OEM. But for the retail version with the DVI, cables and higher clock speed it's usually $140 +. Now that my friends makes this a major bargain! The 7500 has been out for a few months so yes the price has gone down but I had smooth frame rates running the latest games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Aliens vs Predator 2 at 1152x864x32.

• best video card for the price, bar none
• excellent 2D and 3D quality
• smooth DVD playback along with great picture quality
• multi-display capabilities
• very good application package

• it really doesn't make you breakfast

We've stopped rating items we review here at PC Abusers because we feel a rating doesn't always tell the real story but if I had to rate the 7500 I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10. I know I cheated but hey, I like it!