8500 image quality worth the drop in performance?

[Gunslinger08]

So can anyone help me? I need to buy either a radeon 8500 or a Gainward ti500 soon. I'm having a very difficult time choosing between the two though. I've read way too much about both. I know the 8500 has superior image quality, tv out, dvd playback, etc, but that it also has a TON of issues still, and might not be fun to deal with. The 8500 is about $255, and the gainward is $320 or so. I'm basically a hardcore gamer, though I do sometimes watch dvds on my current voodoo 5. Is the image quality of the 8500 worth losing the performance of the ti500?

Josh

 

[AA0]

IMO, its more than worth it. Seeing as the 8500 is faster in some games, and really not that much slower, I'd take it anyday.

I've no issues or hassles with the card so far.

 

[spanky]

here's what i think...
when u say the ti500 is faster, how many fps do u really need? i guess if u do need the fps, just get the ti500 plus a dvd decoder. otherwise, u could prolly find an 8500 for less than $255. some ppl say there are major issues with the 8500...some ppl are perfectly happy. i'm sure ppl have rants about the ti500 too. there are two sides to every story.

 

[moocat]

I wouldn't trade my 8500. It's fast and looks great. I've had some minor issues with Smoothvision but no show stoppers. I'm hoping new drivers make an already great card even better.

You should be able to find the 8500 for less than $255 also.

 

[Rand]

I'd prefer the R8500 just because it's considerably cheaper with near the performance of the Ti500 even ignoring all the other ways in which it's superior to the Ti500.
The driver issues are SEVERELY overblown. They exist and the drivers arent 100% but most people are having very few issues, and the latest drivers have been showing considerable improvements each time out. The remaining issues arent too big IMHO.

Besides, with the nv4_disp infinite loop bug that seems to be plauing an overwhelming number of nVidia board users, I can't exactly say nVidia's drivers are perfect anymore either... though they are quite good.

 

[Gunslinger08]

<< You should be able to find the 8500 for less than $255 also. >>



Where? Keep in mind, I want retail.

Josh

 

[Rand]

<<

<< You should be able to find the 8500 for less than $255 also. >>



Where? Keep in mind, I want retail.

Josh >>



I remember PowerStart Computers used to have it for $236. I know ENPC still has it for $238... those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, but you may be able to find cheaper.
There are about 3 or 4 places that sell OEM R8500's with guaranteed 3.6ns RAM, at under $200. With the 3.6ns RAM they should be an easy BIOS flash to retail speeds.
FWIW, you should be able to find Ti500's for a bit cheaper then $320... but they wouldnt be Gainward and I presume you specifically want Gainward.

 

[Fattz]

this what you looking for ?

ATI RADEON 8500 64MB AGP DDR 3D/DVD 2X/4X DVI INPUT 275MHZ W/DVI ADAPTER (Retail) (*While Supplies Last!) Detail Specs $249.00


heres the link

MWave

 

[MrCoyote]

The 8500 is not without problems. The TV-OUT just down right sucks at 800x600 and above. There is some kind of "filter" overlaying the tv-out and anything you put on the tv, be it DVD's or whatever. It is a grainy looking "filter" which is motionless and overlays all video. It looks to be a hardware design flaw. ATI has yet to publicly come out and say something about this problem or offer to replace the defective boards. I believe it may be fixed with newer revision boards. Otherwise the 8500 is a pretty good board with a neat featureset.

 

[toadstool]

Well, It looks like I'm one of the unlucky ones who HAS had issues with 8500.

True, the image quality of the 8500 is great....especially its 2d, ......the color and clarity definately are better than my old Geforce 2.


However, the drivers for me , have been a real pain in the #@#! I don't play many games , but the 2 I DO play the most , have problems with this card.

My favorite game, "High Heat baseball", will not run at all without "locking" up. No matter what i've done.....reformatted.....installed latest drivers ......upgraded from Windows 98 to windows XP (won't run with either)......etc. I did not have any problem with the Geforce2.

Unreal Tournament ran fine with Windows 98....but stutters pretty bad with XP.......I had to disable "vertical sync" to get it to run smoothly.

Some people seem to be okay, but there are plenty of others that have complaints about the drivers (one look at the Rage3d forums will show you what I'm talking about). I knew about their driver track record before I switched from Nvidia to ATI, but thought I'd take my chances when I saw an 8500 OEM for $149.

Even though there is a lot to like about the card, it's definately not perfect. If you play a lot of games , and want compatibility. you might want to read up a bit on some forums and see if the card has problems running the games you like.

 

[AA0]

The tvout is fine on my 8500, Its better than the hollywood decoders, and looks a bit nicer than the rage series too.

 

[EMAN]

toadstool, directx suck for Unreal Tournament. Try using opengl. And make sure you have 256meg ram and set your AGP aperture to 128megs or more.

 

[BFG10K]

Is the image quality of the 8500 worth losing the performance of the ti500?

Unless you're talking about about slightly better DVD quality (or possibly bad 2D image quality on some nVidia cards) there's no reason not to get the Ti500 because nVidia's 3D image quality is better looking and technically superior to ATi's despite what the ATi zealots will tell you.

And as a pre-emptive strike against future arguments from possible ATi zealots, take a look here and here. If you need any more technical knowledge about any image quality comparison between ATi and nVidia, let me know.

That's not to say that the Radeon is a bad card and if you get one you'll almost certainly be happy with it. I'm just letting you know that the whole "ATi has better image quality than nVidia" is a myth.

 

[Mustanggt]

Why dont you consider a Ti200 ? This would cost you Less than the 8500. But you cant compare the 8500 with the TI500, the price difference between the 8500 and the TI500 puts the 8500 on top best bang for the buck, Anyone on any kind of budget would be crazy to buy the Ti500 over the 8500.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Anyone see a price drop for the ti500's in the next month? I can probably wait that long, but after that... I need a new card.
Also, where's the cheapest place to get a ti500 from a reputable company (Gainward, Leadtek, Visiontek, Asus, etc)? I'm still unsure whether to get a Radeon 8500 and another 256 megs of ram, or a ti500 for the same price of those together.

Josh

 

[AA0]

You don't want Asus nvidia cards, they have poor 2d quality, some of the worst. Thats the problem with buying GF3s, its hit and miss unless you really research and find which brand has the best quality, usually the more expensive ones.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Or you can remove the filter yourself. Believe me, I've researched this for about 4 hours a day, for 2 or 3 weeks.. there's too much information out there.

Josh

 

[MorpheusPhreak]

Dont listen to BFG10K he sounds too much like a guy that goes by BG9K on ieXbeta.com. I leaked the 6018 to the gaming community and right now we have people who work for nvidia asking us what ati did to the driver to make the image quality so high....at this point even at just 1024x768 antialiasing is almost completely unneeded. I have absolutely no issues with tv-out (other than it doesnt scale correctly on this latest dev driver) and would like to ask the people who do say that it is grainy are you watching avi files or dvds? and if its dvds are you connecting directly to a tv using ati supplied parts or do you have sumthing else in the mix? anything like connecting to a vcr first is going to limit the amount of picture data sent to the tv and cause lowered quality Second I am currently spaking the Ti500 with even my stock score on 3DMark 2k1

7310 100% ATI Radeon 8500

7201 98% NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500

As you can see Im currently scoring 100 Marks above the average Ti500 right now at stock settings. And this will only get faster and faster. The GF3 Line is running out of steam whereas the new line introduced with the 8500 is just getting started and will be here to stay for a long while

 

[moocat]

The latest leaked drivers look promising...now if ATI would at least release them as an official beta set with a decent installer I would be even happier. I'm not knocking the leaked drivers...I just don't have much faith in the install routine and don't have time to do a reformat to install them properly.

 

[AA0]

the leaked drivers are super easy to install, the only thing the installer does additional is to unzip them in c:\ati\support\(whatever driver # is) and then runs the setup file from there. I prefer them in leaked form, seems faster to me.

 

[Soccerman]

ooh deviations becuase of mipmap levels! wow, that's a driver thing not a hardware thing.

BFG10K, I don't know if you realize this, but did you actually LOOK at the pictures? IMHO the 7206 drivers look like crap, I don't disagree (which is why I didn't ever use them). did you look at the 7191 drivers? they look to me like they use settings that push the mipmap lines further back than even the reference rendering, or Geforce cards seem to be able to produce.

btw, notice how old these are? they don't have the 9008 drivers for the Radeon and the latest ones for the GF3. get with the times, stop throwing this old sh!t that doesn't prove that the Radeon is worse than the GF3 in quality around.

 

[BenAfk]

Where can these "leaked drivers be found?

 

[Soccerman]

if you're talking to me and want the latest Radeon drivers, go to Rage3d.

 

[MorpheusPhreak]

yup go to rage3d thats where i leaked them to and i will have the 2ks leaked with any luck by monday

 

[Rand]

<< Second I am currently spaking the Ti500 with even my stock score on 3DMark 2k1 >>



3DM 2001 is known to be unusually fond of the R8500 though, the overwhelming majority of real world gaming benchmarks still put the Ti500 as being slighly faster then R8500.

Not to say I wouldnt prefer the R8500 over the Ti500 as the price difference alone makes it the clearly preferable purchase IMHO.




<< Also, where's the cheapest place to get a ti500 from a reputable company (Gainward, Leadtek, Visiontek, Asus, etc)? I'm still unsure whether to get a Radeon 8500 and another 256 megs of ram, or a ti500 for the same price of those together. >>



Cheapest places I'm aware of....:

ATi Retail Radeon 8500-
PowerStart Computers $236.
ENPC $238
(There are about 3 or 4 places that sell OEM R8500's with guaranteed 3.6ns RAM, at under $200. With the 3.6ns RAM they should be an easy BIOS flash to retail speeds)

GF3 Ti500-
Micro-Pro- VisionTek Ti500 $318 (ETA Jan 29)
NewLine PC- Gainward Ti500 $329