I posted about needing a video card to get my Blu Ray burner to play blu ray movies After some shopping i decide to buy a Video card that has a 256 bit interface. that's a first for me.

Its a 1 gig DDR3 video card but with the 256 interface and a fairly good ATI GPU (Radeon HD-485X which shows real good in the standardized tests at Tom's Hardware) its supposed to give high performance.It also has VGA , DVI and HDMI outputs so I can be flexible about running it to my TV and monitor.

Its list $109 was way more than I wanted to pay and even with a $30 rebate , at $79 AR , it was still outside my budget since I'm not a gamer I couldn't justify $79. However , I stumbled across a $40 coupon code on FatWallet so that should mean a bottom line of $39. That's good for even a 128 bit 1 GB DDR3 card so for this card its a steal. the card is also a crossfire card so i guess if you are into gaming you could run 2 of these with a bridge and be in the performance neighborhood ofr the $200 or more cards.

Anyway , the coupon code worked and now if i successfully get the rebate (always an issue) i got a good deal. I seems like you need to really work at computer component purchases thes days. It would have been really easy for someone to spend 3X the price on this card. I kno lots of people who would just order something like this with no knowledge of the rebate or available coupons. Doesn't seem fair in a lot of ways but whoever said life was fair?

Got the 256 bit card. It went in to the box easy except I had to move the USB 3 card down a slot cause the graphics card has a big fan sticking down. Just turned on the machine and windows found it and installed it. I then (as recommended by the manufacturer), installed the new drivers instead of the windows drivers.

card works fine.

Bummer is I still have no Bluray playback. I need new software. The Cyberlink software is crap. It simply does not do what they say it will. I know this because their utility keeps telling me the video card is not capable of blue ray but I can play the Blu Ray one chapter at a time using DVD Fab and its beautiful with the new card. So its definitely a Cyberlink software issue and i will never install their $hite software on one of my machines again.

So anyway success in the hardware department and now I need to bird dog some software. I am hoping for freeware but if worse comes to worse , I know the Arcsoft theater suite 5 works . Its $69 but I seldom if ever pay for software so this will be a test of will power. :)