The issue surrounding ATI and its drivers seems to be getting worse, I used the 7000 running 98SE and get occasional 'twitches' and lockups, annoying but in general not too much of an issue. I recently 'upgraded' to XP and the problems really took off. The system won't run for more than a few minutes before it locks (monitor drops to standby, but system appears to still be running) sometimes its resets itself and other times just stops....... Windows XP has a useful feature that identifies system problems for you, and every time it is due to the ATI driver. I have downloaded and installed every available driver I can find, to no avail. I updated the motherboard drivers even flashed my bios, still no joy.
It seems that the card itself is OK but the drivers are rubbish. If you get it to work then you are lucky, the vast majority seem to have problems. Unfortunately most people don't realise what is causing the trouble.

I say simply this, until ATI improve their drivers, the radeon series of graphics cards is an area to avoid. I base this statement on the fact that I replaced the card with a similar spec version from Nvidia (geforce mmx400 64mb) and it runs perfectly with no more lockups !!!

I am not alone in this opinion of ATI ... go see bulletin boards all over the internet !!!

The problem is not HP's fault. I have a Pavilion XG833 and the real problem, as a few of you have stated, is the onboard graphics. The onboard graphics are by Intel. I have an intel i80 chipset, which on intel's website it says you cannot update the graphics AT ALL... NO CARDS EITHER. However, if you have an i80e chipset you may disable the graphics driver and install the Radeon 7000. So basically, if you have an i80 chipset you're screwed.

When I compared video cards while looking for a replacement, the ATI Radeon 7000 certainly seemed to be a good value - lots of bang for the buck... At the time that's what it was, but it was never really anything to write home about.

Now this is essentially an obsolete product, but if you still have to buy a AGP card there are not many out there, so this one will work OK, I guess. But I have a better alternative for you. Read on.

I ended up replacing this card with a NVIDIA GeForce 6200, which is a *great* bargain and performs awesome for for someone like me who isn't a gamer and mainly writes software for a living. It dramatically improved my system performance! Sorry, ATI but, at least for the moment, NVIDIA is rocking in the budget market.

-- Lawrence J. Sylvain has 22 years of software engineering experience with small and large organizations. He uses part of his time and talents to develop new technologies for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

O.K. Here is the deal: if you go to the ATI website and do some digging you will find a nasty little lump of coal that reads as follows:

"Systems with onboard VGA controllers may hang during boot of RADEON 7000 graphics adapter is installed...A number of systems are currently known to exhibit this issue, including:

hp Pavilion xe783, HP Pavilion 7940, eMachines TI 140, eMachines TI 150...

Now if you do not believe that then go to virtually any tech support group like yahoo or hp or anywhere, and type radeon 7000. Boom there are the huddled masses crying to be free.

If you have one of the above machines DO NOT BUY THIS CARD unless you just want to practice selling things on ebay or half.com or Amazon or anywhere else you can off-load this albatross. The fault lies with HP and their crazy machines I am sure but don't expect any help from them or ATI. You are [toasted] if you have one of those machines and this card and friends, there is no escape. If you really want this card and have one of those machines listed, its more fun to take out[money amount]from your wallet and set it on fire, at least that way you can enjoy the pyrotechnics, which is more color display than you will get with this thing on one of the above machines. Here endeth the sermon, you have been warned!!

I have a Dell 2300 and installed it myself. If you have a built in on-board video card (intel graphics card) you have to disable it and uninstall the driver to get it to work.

People who did not like the Radeon 7000, did not know how to install it. Here is the down and dirty for the novice computer users.
BEFORE you do this next step, install the software that come with the Radeon 7000. Then you are ready to uninstall the old graphics card & driver.
Click Start:
Click Contol panel, then System Properties, then click on hardware. You will see "driver signing" and "device manager". Uninstall the intel driver & disable the Install graphics chip in these places. Then reboot your computer and plug your monitor into your new card.

The Graphics are great...