Anandtech Radeon 8500 preview up!

[Yzzim]

Yippee!!

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1517

 

[Wingznut]

"GF3 killer"??? Not hardly.

Sure, it has potential. And with some very nice driver upgrades, we might see that potential realized. But I hope nobody is holding their breath for some groundbreaking drivers from ATI.

 

[Yzzim]

Did you read the first page?



<< Thankfully, on the driver side, ATI is improving. Windows 2000 performance is virtually on par with Windows 98 performance in games, and compatibility with games has been improved tremendously. >>



Edit: I can even vouch for that myself. Got a 3DMark score of 3400 in Win98SE and a 3100 in Win2k. A mere 300 point difference.
Had about the same difference with my GTS

 

[Wingznut]

Yeah, I know. My last card was a Radeon 64mb DDR.

 

[Leon]

GeForce 3 killer? Not even close.

Nice, fully featured card-yes.

 

[jeffrey]

&quot;The Radeon 8500 and 7500 won't be going up against the GeForce3 and GeForce2 Pro when they launch, instead NVIDIA will have a new set of cards to compete with so ATI had better work on that pricing a bit.&quot;

 

[LukFilm]

I think Radeon did better in Tom's review compared to Anand's/

 

[Daemon_UK]

GeForce 3 killer? Not even close.

Leon: I agree totally, however the point in the article that kept on appearing was the drivers. If by Sept, ATI can get better drivers out, and the price down to a good level. For the oridinary consumer who wants a feature packed card, which has good frame-rates, then this will be the card to buy.

TruForm looks like a good feature, so does their MSAA.

 

[erichui]

if u read the toms PREVIEW, u will get a different view on the card, from there they had stated that with higher quality the ATI card fall behind.
HOWEVER at lower quality, ATI is kicking nvidia's ass.
i think this problem is mainly due to their imature drivers, which should be improved much more by the times it comes out..
and i am very excited about this card.
that i can finally get out of nvidia's hand, and have better quality 2d too.

 

[damocles]

GeForce killer? No

However if it is priced correctly i'm still buying one

Edit: Just saw the price dammit

 

[Rage187]

&quot;HOWEVER at lower quality, ATI is kicking nvidia's ass.&quot;

uhhh, whos playing games at low quality on a high end video card???

 

[joohang]

Watch nVIDIA announce a new one by the time this one ships.

It's been a while - hmm.. just over 6 months? - since the release date of GeForce3, isn't it?

 

[Zebo]

<< I think Radeon did better in Tom's review compared to Anand's/ >>



First let me say I am a big fan of Tom's I read him since buying the asus p2b. But he seems to be getting more and more &quot;looking out for the little guy&quot; in all his reviews.. Well he is a Dr. perhaps they are more altruistic.

Is it just me or does Tom's need a new website. His site has to be the hardest to navigate and it's ugly with all that yellow.

 

[Yzzim]

&quot;Even at higher resolutions the Radeon 8500 is not able to come forth and outperform the GeForce3; ATI engineers must be very irritated at this point that their baby was shown to the world prematurely.&quot;

If I had to pick a sentence that sums up both reviews I've read, that's it.

 

[DaLeroy]

Get out of the review pages damnit!!! I can't connect!!!! ARGH!!!! I wanna read the review!!

ssssslllloooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww...........

 

[Sugadaddy]

I think it looks very promising if they can get good drivers for the launch date... IMO, if they can achieve that, it'll beat the GF3 in most aspects regarding performance, and I think it already has it beaten on the features side. Regarding the price, don't worry it'll come down to GF3 level the day it comes out, they know they're dead if it doesn't. The only problem is I'm 110% sure nVidia will have a GF3 Ultra or something like that out by the time the Radeon 8500 is on the shelves.

ATI needed to make a big entrance with this card, and they haven't. But who knows what decent drivers will do?

 

[LukFilm]

Decent drivers won't do much, ATi needs EXCELLENT drivers at this point.

 

[RanDum72]

The reason why it did not do as well as the GForce 3 in most games is that these games are pretty optimized for Nvidia plus ATI's drivers need some more polish. But from a technical standpoint, the new ATI chip is superior in just about every spec to the GForce3. Its T&amp;L unit is more powerful. 400mhz RAMDAC? Probably the best DVD playback. Although I'm big Nvidia fan, the 400 lb. nvidia GEforce3 gorilla may have finally met a 500 lb. ATI gorilla that just needs more practice in order to kick some serious behind.

 

[Sugadaddy]

<< Decent drivers won't do much, ATi needs EXCELLENT drivers at this point. >>



alright, EXCELLENT drivers... Anyways, it looks good enough to make me want to wait for it and see how the final product does.

 

[Zebo]

I wonder if this card will work in our nForce mobo's???

 

[Aquaman]

Like Anand said........ it's preview Hopefully things will go well for them. I think they will be in the same position they were in when the Radeon was released and competing with the GF2 (then Ultra/Pro). By the time the card comes out the GF3 Ultra/Pro will be announced and the latest versions of the Det. 4 will be out. By the time it actually hits the streets the price will come down (because GF3 U/P will be announced)

Personally (not being a hardcore gamer), I would probably get an AIW version of the card.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Orbius]

Give the card a break, its a pre-production card with beta drivers! And had it been reviewed against a Geforce 3 yesterday it would have soundly beaten it.

Tom's benchmarks are better, Anand's card seemed more flaky, and he picked some odd games to benchmark.

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;and he picked some odd games to benchmark.&quot;

Who did? Anand? UnrealTournament, Quake3, Aquanox, DroneZ, SeriousSam and Max Payne have all been used previously by Anand. The only new benches I noticed was CounterStrike, 3DMark2K1 and Black&amp;White. The R2 took one out of the three &quot;odd&quot; benches. I personally would like to see Anand add Giants to the testing, and have long advocated Evolva also, but I don't really see how you could call running all the usual benches plus a few new ones odd?

 

[Orbius]

I have been on Sabbatical from video card reviews so I haven't been keeping up, but I called them odd, because they mostly seemed to be CPU dependent. I guess people are demanding them for specific games though.

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;I have been on Sabbatical from video card reviews so I haven't been keeping up, but I called them odd, because they mostly seemed to be CPU dependent. I guess people are demanding them for specific games though.&quot;

Well you shouldn't disappear on us for months at a time and you wouldn't be behind on the benches used now would ya?