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Guillemot don't put out products as well polished as the likes of Creative and Diamond, but what they do do is bring out very competitively priced reference designs- minus some of the added bonus tie-ins provided by the other aforementioned board vendors. Still what do you expect for $129 (after a mail-in rebate)? A bang for you buck? Well you get that but what you also get is the OEM Version of SiN, Half-Life: Day One and another full title, which is yet to be confirmed. And that's your lot, apart from a pretty well written manual, which won't win any Pulitzer prizes but I can't fault it for that. Oh yes you do get a box but I'll let other folks post 'exclusive' shots of the boxes and get kicks out of it. As for me, well it's a box. It has a nice picture of Lilu (that Multi-pass Milla chick?) taken from 5th Element on it. I was hoping that this meant there would be a hint of an OEM version of Kalisto's game tie-in but alas it looks as though the box, which apparently is for the UK only, has Lilu painted on it purely as a 'pulling' factor. I had no idea us Brits were so vain and taken in by stuff like that? I guess this means that Guillemot assumes that the Brits are all sex-crazed? Well are we?
Still cost conscious consumers may well opt for a Voodoo Banshee based board over the more pricey and 'Glide-less' TNT. But as with any Voodoo Banshee product don't expect it to be a Voodoo2 killer. The product itself is aimed at the mass-market and part-time gamers.
Since the Maxi Gamer Phoenix comes in two flavors, AGP and PCI I would say that since they are the same price you have nothing to loose by opting for the AGP version. But since I was reviewing the slightly slower PCI version I took off half a fin from the overall score and yet still warrant giving it a very respectable three and a half fins. Wow! I just went through a whole Maxi Gamer Phoenix review and never even mentioned River, Leaf, Rainbow Warrior, Beatle Dung et al.
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