Concern about ATi Radeon card i have

[Brentonian]

Hello. I am sadly holding this Radeon8500 card i have here wodnering what to do with it.

I could try to ebay it
i could use it.

I dont know !

right now im using my old Geforce2.

Mostly i play Counterstriek and Everquest.

The features of R200 ilike:

FSAA smoothvision: Is this THAT much less efficient than Nvidia's multisampling/quincunx? In theory? assuming drivers were perfect which algorithm is more efficient and by how much? I want 4x fsaa with decent framerates.

Trueform: Is nvidia have anything like this? i havent noticed it really.

Dual vision: i have no doubt this is better than Nview but i dont use it =)

DvD playback : same as dual vision

HYPERZ2 - Hidden surface removal is ESSENTIAL in eq. it has ENORMOUS amounts of overdraw.
However i dont think hyperz-2 is working! in areas where i know theres a lot of overdraw its terribly frame laggy, maybe 5fps as opposted to 60fps normally. Is there a setting i may have screwed up, and IS the Geforce4's HSR algorithm more effective ?


Aniso: The R200 takes MINIMAL performance hit from ansitoperic highest quality filtering - far more efficient than GF4 even. Good.



I suppose then im pretty happy with my Radeon 8500 in terms of performance, assuming ANiso ON and FSAA off. but fsaa matters a lot to me. Im wondering if driver updates can Save SmOOTHVISION or if its not such hot technology after all, and if the HYPERZ-2 can compete with GF4's LMA-2.

So should i wait for drivers, or wait for a Geforce4?
(and hope i can sell my R200)

BTW i got my Radeon8500 which normally runs at 230/230 flashed to the retail bios. IT took it beautifully. No artifacting at all, ran for a few days straight now pushing some 3d apps. 275/275 no problesm no voltage or hardware modifications, stock cooling . That is also nice =)

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

you have a Radeon 8500 and you're using a Geforce 2???

Sell your Radeon and buy a console.. so much cheaper...

Anyway.. i believe waiting for drivers is the best solution (probably never will come, but does it matter?) because the Geforce4 isn't that much of an improvement over the Geforce3 and its probably makes more sense and wait for the R300 or perhaps the Geforce5. Save up!

 

[Fattz]

Brentonian

I too had concerns when I bought my radeon 8500.

I was happy with the geforce, but not content. Hard to say what I mean because the geforce was a great card for the longest time. But eventually it just needed to go. So on came the Radeon.

I don't know the issues your having with Counterstrike, but I do know that Verant/Sony has a nice patch coming (crosses fingers) that fixes a few issues with ATI cards. And the fixes are on their test server and seem to work, at least for me. So no more looking inside your head as you melee, which is totally annoying. and supposed to fix the boats. But I was only able to test it a bit and on patch server the head bug thing seemed to be fixed 100% better than what it was. I want to see them patch it live before I comment on it to much because we know how they screw things up most times

Anyways. give the card a chance

 

[Brentonian]

but what about FSAA?

Doesnt SMOOTHVISION have more potential than this? Geforce3 even in Quincunx mode is DOGGINg the ati champ in unreal2 with 4x fsaa on.


Is the SMOOTHVISION algorithm only good for quality but not speed? i need both!
does anyone know enough about FSAA to say in general that smoothvision has the potential to do UT2 with 4xfsaa and still fast, just a driver issue?

IF someone could assert that and back it up id definitely keep my r200

 

[zsouthboy]

Try getting the Omega drivers for your Radeon..... they work great, much faster than "beta' ATi ones...

zs

 

[sipre]

Since the market is going on a 6 month cycle and sometimes even less then that you should probably sell it while you still have the chance becuase the amount is high right now. When the G4 comes out the price will drop dramatically. As well as the fained R300 or K3 which is like a fantasy world now. So sell it and wait a couple of months. Then you will have even more money and will be able to upgrade even more.