ATI Radeon 8500

R

RobbieSan

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I currently have a Geforce2 MX400 64MB AGP.. it's a nice card and has served well but I want something better.. I have been checking reviews and stats on GF v ATI.. from what I have seen the Radeon 8500 does better than the GF3 ti500.. I want to know what your experiences are out there.. is it really a good card? are the beta drivers good? I see reference driver 6.13.1.6037 has a good rating from users... what do you think folks?


price wise the 8500 is a very good price, slightly more than the GF3 ti200 and almost half the price of a GF3 ti500..


I would like to get this card but I'm kinda scared of the driver issues with ATI...
 
i'd personally just get a geforce ti200 and overclock it then it will be about equal to a ti500.

I have friends who have radeon's and I notice slight quality difference among their cards and my geforce 3...although I could very well just be hallucinating :p
 
That's the thing.. I have spent some time on the web today checking a number tests of the 8500 vs ti500 and in many of them the 8500 beats the ti500.. one of the big problems is the ATI drivers.. in a test back in Oct. 2001 the 8500 did pretty lousy against the ti500.. in a later test done in Dec 2001 with a new ATI driver release the results were much better for the 8500..

http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidcards/ati/8500_revisited/


It's now March and I see there are newer beta drivers available for the Radeon.. I'm thinking the Radeon drivers have had enought to begin maturing as well.. this makes me more comfortable in choosing the Radeon... As well, the Radeon 8500 seems to consistenly beat out the ti500 in 3d2001mark tests.. how much that truly weighs in superiority is another story..

One of the big factors is price.. as a reseller I get a better price (usually) than retail buyers.. for instance, the ti500 (no TV out) at my cost $500 Canadian.. the Radeon 8500 (TV out) under the Powercolor brand is at my cost $233 CDN.. that's less than half price for equal or better performance... the ti200 (no TV out) is at my cost $242 CDN... so, the way I see is I am getting way more bang for my buck with the 8500.. the only real concern is the drivers.. I'm gonna go for it though... what the heck....
 
Give me your system specs. For performance and especially quality I'd get the Radeon 8500. With this, it should last you like a good 2 years, and your going to being playing games without hicups.

Another things is that, the Radeon 8500 and the Ti series will preform the same overclocked (Very high FPS) and you really won't notice a difference, on the other hand while that's happening the quality of ATI IS GREAT. 100+ FPS and like something very close to that can't be differed from the naked eye.

ATI for quality and performance...

Especially after the ATI Radeon 8500 had the big price drop (100.00), I'd definitely go for it.

PS: Don't get fooled by people telling you that ATI has driver problems, their much better than they ever be... Even if they are so "bad" their definitely kicking the Ti500..


Good Luck Buying,
Yodums
 
I've got an ATI 8500 and it works great. It plays DVD just fine. As far as 3D goes, I can't complain at all. I did have some issues with it, but new drivers fixed them. I haven't really hit it too hard yet, but that will change as soon as Jedi Knight 2 comes out at the end of the month. I'm very pleased with it. I probably won't get another card for a long time.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.. honestly that puts me at ease.. I decided to go ahead and order it.. for under half the price of the ti500 it's a no brainer...

it's good to hear that drivers are better now.. do you guys have any recommendations on drivers? I see a couple of beta drivers available at www.guru3d.com just wondering what you guys recommend.

here's my system specs:

AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
512MB PC133
SB Live 5.1
Geforce2 MX400 64MB (currently) V27.42 drivers
Win XP Pro w/DX 8.1


the system is running very well.. I just want a better card is all...

oh, and I will be playing JKII for sure.. look for me on GameSpy.. I'll be RobbieSan there too.. not very original but who cares... ;)
 
Originally posted by RobbieSan
Thanks for the feedback guys.. honestly that puts me at ease.. I decided to go ahead and order it.. for under half the price of the ti500 it's a no brainer...

it's good to hear that drivers are better now.. do you guys have any recommendations on drivers? I see a couple of beta drivers available at www.guru3d.com just wondering what you guys recommend.

here's my system specs:

AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
512MB PC133
SB Live 5.1
Geforce2 MX400 64MB (currently) V27.42 drivers
Win XP Pro w/DX 8.1


the system is running very well.. I just want a better card is all...

oh, and I will be playing JKII for sure.. look for me on GameSpy.. I'll be RobbieSan there too.. not very original but who cares... ;)

Join in their forums and keep an eye on which drivers are good etc which are giving them bad performance.
 
thanks again Yodums.. I had a look there and also found a link to www.rage3d.com, a superb ATI support site... looks good...

have any of you used the Rage3d tweaker? wondering if anyone managed to improve overall performance with it...
 
Yes, many overclockers use that program for their Radeon 8500.

Just make sure when overclocking to get some better cooling. Cooling is the key to squeeze everything to overclocking. Visit the forums and ask how their getting high and try to follow.

Yodums
 
Stay away from Radeon8500!

I mistakenly replaced my trusty GF2 Ti with a Radeon 8500, and I now have stability issues when I game. Ive tried running UT in D3D and OpenGL modes, but the end result is always a complete freeze, in which I have to flick the switch on the power supply to restart. Same in Undying and the Dronezmark demo. It will run 3dmark2001SE all day usually without locking up.

I used the recommended drivers on the ATI website, as well as some fancy ones I found over on www.voodoofiles.com. Ive added more cooling to my case, which sits stable @ 34 degrees C.
This system NEVER locked up before the Radeon, i've used a Voodoo5 5500, and a GF2 Ti, and I run it 24/7 doing SETI@home and downloading from edonkey2000.

When I installed this crappy Radeon8500, I had to reconfigure my PCI cards, because it caused extreme IRQ problems (something my 3dfx and nvidia cards have never done). It runs fine otherwise except for the rare freakout and crash (again, started after the Radeon) and except for a few hundred more 3dmarks (2001se) I see no distinguishable difference from my GF3 (except the digital vibrance on the GF3 makes all other cards obsolete for picture quality) Strike 3 for 3 for ATI products i've owned.
 
out of curiousity, when you installed the ATI card did you do a fresh OS installtion? when I first got it I tried to remove Nvidia files but found the machine unstable.. I did a fresh XP install and it's running great.. mind you it's only been a few days so much experimentation is necessary...
 
Robbiesan,
Well, after swapping in a Voodoo5 and three sets of its drivers, then back to a GF2Ti and testing 2 sets of drivers, I reformatted and reinstalled XP, adding in the GF2 Ti. Two weeks later, I installed the 8500. I was thinking about doing a reinstall, but its only been a damn month. Ive got a friend interested in purchasing the system, even thought it has the instability issue. I plan on reformatting it and reinstalling XP.

Yodums,
Hey man thanks! I joined the OCSETI program and am currently 404! I think ill run both of my systems at night and see if we cant catch the AthlonMB team :D
 

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