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Well, I finally got the thing working in a halfway recent recent system. It languished in an old PIII system I had for quite a while, and didn't really accomplish anything, which gets me to my first score:
Compatibility - 6/10
This card is VERY picky about BIOS settings and chipset drivers. I could not get it to work at all in Windows (hard locks seconds after logon) on an older Via Apollo Pro 133 (VT694T) Socket 370 chipset. When I switched it to my nForce2 SFF, things got better, but I still had to tweak BIOS settings before I achieved stability. I'd also suspect that Intel chipset users would be good to go, but I fear for Via chipset users.
Drivers - 7.5/10
XGI has WHQL (version 1.08) drivers. Make sure you download these, and as they have the best compatibility and best implementation. Ignore the newer 1.09 drivers. Some of the features don't work as well in the newer version. The driver control panel was pretty intuitive, and working with multiple displays was on the same level as ATi/NV drivers.
Gaming - 8.5/10
This card did suprisingly well on the gaming front. UT2004 was playable @ 800x600 with max settings except for 16 bit color, and image quality was no different from my 9600XT. Remember that it has 64bit memory bus and will be limited on resolution, but should be able to handle most of the effects, and render them properly. UT2004 is a mostly DX 8.1 title, I will run it through on HL2/CS:S and possibly D3 to see if it can handle the latest and greatest (it would require my reinstalling D3 o_0)
UPDATE: CS:S Video Stress Test Runs: 6/10
I'm upgunning my CPU 2.0GHz for these runs. I don't want the results to be CPU limited. With everything on low except trilinear filtering, she gets 16.4fps in the VST in 1024x576, which is a supported wide screen mode for the card. After switching to 800x600, performance increases a little, going up to 18.82 fps. Looks like we're stuck with 640x480, where we get 25.23 fps. There were also some severe image quality problems in the VST. Neither character models nor the spinning tiles were rendered correctly. In addition, in 4:3 screen modes, reflective textures glowed, of all colors, magenta. XGI's driver team has some work to do. To their credit, the card never hanged during the runs, even when overclocked. Playing online in an actual game of CS, 640x480 was workable and there were no IQ issues, but I think you'll need to confine this card's gaming adventures to DX 8.1 and older titles. What did you expect for $47?
HDTV and HTPC work - 9/10
Using the included component video dongle, I hooked the card up to the 65" Hitachi CRT HDTV in my basement. This HDTV is somewhat limited, as it only supports 480i, 480p, and 1080i. Even tweaking with PowerStrip, I could not get a sync with the TV over DVI, despite the fact that PS picked up its maximum resolution of 1920x540. Component output fared much better. Using the driver control panel, I enabled the TV, switched it to 1080i, enabled 16:9 (You cannot use the 16:9 aspect ratio if you are cloning a CRT or LCD computer monitor, only if the HDTV will be an extended desktop) and set a desktop resolution of 800x600. After doing this, I got NO overscan, great picture quality, and everything looked great period. The computer boots straight to this, no regular comp display required, although having a regular monitor handy for setup is a good idea. Movie playback looked great, as did games rendered on the HDTV. DVD playback is also fabulous.
Overclocking and value - 10/10
Using PowerStrip, I got the card from 225Core/208RAM to 270/225, which gave a nice boost to minimum frame rates in UT2004 and allowed to me hang on to some eye candy. This is running on a 1.2GHz Mobile Barton HTPC, so a lot of my game results will be CPU limited as well. The 64MB version of this card is only $47 on Newegg. That includes the component video dongle, a $25 accessory from ATi. An excellent value in a card. It works, it gives you DX9 in hardware, and is actually one of the better performing cards you can get for less than $50. Throw in that you get HDTV support and the video playback assist chip, and you have a really compelling package, presuming that your system is compatible with it.
Compatibility - 6/10
This card is VERY picky about BIOS settings and chipset drivers. I could not get it to work at all in Windows (hard locks seconds after logon) on an older Via Apollo Pro 133 (VT694T) Socket 370 chipset. When I switched it to my nForce2 SFF, things got better, but I still had to tweak BIOS settings before I achieved stability. I'd also suspect that Intel chipset users would be good to go, but I fear for Via chipset users.
Drivers - 7.5/10
XGI has WHQL (version 1.08) drivers. Make sure you download these, and as they have the best compatibility and best implementation. Ignore the newer 1.09 drivers. Some of the features don't work as well in the newer version. The driver control panel was pretty intuitive, and working with multiple displays was on the same level as ATi/NV drivers.
Gaming - 8.5/10
This card did suprisingly well on the gaming front. UT2004 was playable @ 800x600 with max settings except for 16 bit color, and image quality was no different from my 9600XT. Remember that it has 64bit memory bus and will be limited on resolution, but should be able to handle most of the effects, and render them properly. UT2004 is a mostly DX 8.1 title, I will run it through on HL2/CS:S and possibly D3 to see if it can handle the latest and greatest (it would require my reinstalling D3 o_0)
UPDATE: CS:S Video Stress Test Runs: 6/10
I'm upgunning my CPU 2.0GHz for these runs. I don't want the results to be CPU limited. With everything on low except trilinear filtering, she gets 16.4fps in the VST in 1024x576, which is a supported wide screen mode for the card. After switching to 800x600, performance increases a little, going up to 18.82 fps. Looks like we're stuck with 640x480, where we get 25.23 fps. There were also some severe image quality problems in the VST. Neither character models nor the spinning tiles were rendered correctly. In addition, in 4:3 screen modes, reflective textures glowed, of all colors, magenta. XGI's driver team has some work to do. To their credit, the card never hanged during the runs, even when overclocked. Playing online in an actual game of CS, 640x480 was workable and there were no IQ issues, but I think you'll need to confine this card's gaming adventures to DX 8.1 and older titles. What did you expect for $47?
HDTV and HTPC work - 9/10
Using the included component video dongle, I hooked the card up to the 65" Hitachi CRT HDTV in my basement. This HDTV is somewhat limited, as it only supports 480i, 480p, and 1080i. Even tweaking with PowerStrip, I could not get a sync with the TV over DVI, despite the fact that PS picked up its maximum resolution of 1920x540. Component output fared much better. Using the driver control panel, I enabled the TV, switched it to 1080i, enabled 16:9 (You cannot use the 16:9 aspect ratio if you are cloning a CRT or LCD computer monitor, only if the HDTV will be an extended desktop) and set a desktop resolution of 800x600. After doing this, I got NO overscan, great picture quality, and everything looked great period. The computer boots straight to this, no regular comp display required, although having a regular monitor handy for setup is a good idea. Movie playback looked great, as did games rendered on the HDTV. DVD playback is also fabulous.
Overclocking and value - 10/10
Using PowerStrip, I got the card from 225Core/208RAM to 270/225, which gave a nice boost to minimum frame rates in UT2004 and allowed to me hang on to some eye candy. This is running on a 1.2GHz Mobile Barton HTPC, so a lot of my game results will be CPU limited as well. The 64MB version of this card is only $47 on Newegg. That includes the component video dongle, a $25 accessory from ATi. An excellent value in a card. It works, it gives you DX9 in hardware, and is actually one of the better performing cards you can get for less than $50. Throw in that you get HDTV support and the video playback assist chip, and you have a really compelling package, presuming that your system is compatible with it.