A worthless investment

My reason for buying the ATI 9200
I bought this on eBay recently for my Dell Dimension 2400. After doing a little research for upgrading my new, humbly equipped Dell, I found that a new graphics card might give my system the "ummph" it needed to make it run more smoothly and give the visuals the extra kick to make it more life-like. Talking to a Dell Support associate, I was told that my system's graphics card could be upgraded up to 128 MB and that ATI makes graphics cards compatible with Dells. So I searched and bid on eBay and ended up with a new ATI Radeon 9200 PCI card for my system.

My installation experience
It was a mistake from the beginning...
From the time I opened it up to now, I somewhat regret having dropped $90.00 on a card that I'm not sure works. The directions given were not too difficult to follow when reading it but doing it was another story. The initial installation of the card was not hard. You just open your computer and stick it in the slot. Then close it up and start your computer. (I would read the directions thoroughly before installing.)
There was a slight problem. The card has a CRT connector for the monitor and that is where the monitor is supposed to be connected to. I turn on my computer and it is running, but nothing is showing on my screen. So I try putting it back in the computer's original CRT connector port and something shows on the screen but it isn't working correctly. So I read the directions again and it says that you need to do it exactly how it says to do it or it will not start properly. I try it again and it still doesn't work. So I keep it connected to the original port and just go on with the installation with a distorted screen which was supposed to be enhanced.
The next step was to install the software. So I pop the disc into the drive and let it do its magic.
After the installation and reboot I looked at my screen to see if anything is different. Nothing changed. It was still distorted. Then I tried putting the VGA back into the CRT connector in the video card. It worked but I couldn't notice any dramatic change in the graphics.

So now that the hardware and software were installed I had to configure everything. I had to go to the control panel and change the displays. After hours of messing around with the display controls and finally figuring out that I needed to disable my old system graphics card from calling Dell Support again, I got it to work ok.

Test
Now it was time to test my new upgrade. I decided to first try playing a song in Windows Media Player and watch the visualization to see if it was coordinated to the song better. After watching the mindless chaos of colors and shapes moving around for an entire song, I tried to see a change in my head. But I came to the realization that I was only imagining hopelessly.

But one test was not enough to prove anything. So I put in my new Lord of the Rings game, mainly the reason for why I bought this card. I put it in and it is running a little faster than usual but still no better graphics. I realized that I needed to change the setting in the options menu to Ultra High Graphics. It did it. The game was looking much better as promised. But still it suffered in the performance department. It ran much slower. I wish I had known about the graphics setting in the game before because I don't have anything to compare the graphics in the game with the card and before the card. My guess is that it would not have let me change it to the Ultra High setting without the graphics card.

My final word
So after hours of labor and worrying about whether I installed it correctly or not, I'm still not sure if it is even working. The fact that my monitor is showing something from the graphics card is enough evidence that it is working but it barely did anything to enhance the visuals. Nothing looks any better. 3D gaming didn't improve any. The responsive visuals of the media player are still not totally in sync with the music. Overall, this product is a huge disappointment. I feel like I wasted ninety dollars on a card that I'm not even sure works.