i just have installed one of thoses baby in my mum's computer to replace her 8600gt....first "serious" ATI gfx experience for me... coupled with an old pentium D (first real dual coupling 2 x P4Prescott....a dinosaur!) it gives to the pc a real boost (8600pts under 3DM06!!..+.+...)
just to tell that i was really scared by all what i heared about ATI gfxs n drivers but and i had 0 problems to install it,first driver was the good one, catalyst is as intuitive to use as nvidia control panel... performances:lot of games(adventure games) were bugged by the couple 8600gt/pentiumD...now all work on max settings
on the silence side i cant hear the fan of the card...impressive silence
if u search a "cheap DX11 GFX" this one performs really well and looks like a solid reference to me now....my next GFX will probably an ATI because of the prices
I got one of these in my oldest sons PC as it has a crap PSU so I didn't want to buy anything that would drain too much power. For their price they perform quite well! (his PC is running a Q6600) My son was very happy as it runs UT3 quite nicely! Dx11 support is always a bonus as well! All in all for quite a cheap card I was happy with the results!
I have a 5850 and overall, I am very happy with it. The driver control panel was a bit odd compared to nVidia, but I have been using nVidia for a while before this card. The price was good (with DX11 capabilities) and does well for UT 3 and other games.
My biggest issue is that I can't alt-tab out of UT 3 anymore. BUT, I can run 3 monitors using one card (with a special display port active adapter, which cost about a $100). This is what "sold" me on an ATI card since Windows 7 has major issues running 2 cards (non-SLI/Crossfire).