Confused about video cards..too many out there!

[Doh!]

I see very attractive prices on ATI9000 and its benchmarks look impressive. How does it compare against ATI8500? Is ATI 9000 the best-bang for its price right now?

 

[wicktron]

Actually, 8500 is better than the 9000 due to its having more pipelines. Think of the 9000 as the GF4MX to the 9700's GF4Ti. Whereas the 8500 is the GF3. 9000 is the new generation, but still trails the older generation because of its crippled attributes. I hope that analogy made some sort of sense... The real truth of the matter is that the 8500 outperforms the 9000 in 'todays' games. I say todays games because the 9000 has DX9 support, whereas the 8500 only has DX8.1 support. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think we'll be seeing any DX9 games for quite some time. I say go with: 1) An 8500LE 128mb or 2) A GeForce4 Ti4200. Those are your best bets right now.

 

[warrenp41600]

I suggest you choose Gforce3 Ti200!! It's not good to get the Redeon 900 now!!

 

[bluemax]

Good GRIEF you guys.... read this article on the Radeon 9000 before you spout any more garbage.

Yes, the Radeon 8500 is faster in most cases, but the 9000 is still damn fast, beating the Radeon 7500 in every instance, even the 8500 in a few cases. It's just a more compact version of the 8500. They took out half the pipelines, but made it able to loop back more - in short, the performance really didn't change much.

It's still a dandy of a card. If it's a lot cheaper than the 8500, get one. It's the cheapest, best DX8.1 card there is. Beats the snot out of the GF4MX and its total lack of DX8 features. And speed too.

Did I mention it's cheap?

 

[Doh!]

bluemax,

Thanks for the linked article. That article actually helped me to change my mind from getting the ATI 9000 to getting the GF4 4200. GF4 4200 appears to be much faster than ATI 9000 while the price difference is only about $40 where I live. However, that $40 difference is between an ATI 9000 clocked at 275/275 and a GF4 4200 clocked at 250/510 (3.6ns DDR. I can get the 3.3ns version for $15 more). Both have 64MB DDR. Would the performance difference between those two similar to the benchmarks done by Anand in the articled you've mentioned?

 

[bluemax]

Glad the difference in price is so small. You made a good decision, and an informed one.
For me, the difference is WELL over $100 Canadian, so the choice isn't as easy....
$100 CDN for a decent-performing Radeon 9000
$150 CDN for the 8500 OEM
or $225 CDN for a TI4200....

Not so easy.... though the 9000 sure looks a tasty price! I can upgrade later....

 

[AnAndAustin]

As bluemax pretty much said Rad9000 is NOT DX9, it is DX8.1. The ONLY card at the mo with DX9 is Rad9700, but DX9 is very pointless for at least 12 months IMHO anyway.

Rad9000 is simply a cut down Rad8500, in nearly ALL games pas present and future the Rad8500LE will beat the Rad9000pro. ATI have done with the Rad9000 what nVidia did with their GF4MX, released a slower largely inferior product with a newer naming than the previous better card, GF3 and Rad8500 respectively. The Rad8500 gives GF3 perf while the Rad9000pro gives GF4MX460 perf but it also offers DX8.1, Rad9000pro is much better than any GF4MX BUT not better than Rad8500. With prices being so small between the Rad8500 and Rad9000 cards it makes NO SENSE at all for the vast majority of people to go for a Rad9000.

Here's a few good links about Rad9000pro (about 20% faster than Rad9000):

Tech Report
AnAndTech
Firing Squad
HardOCP

Doh!, if the 4200 cards are that cheap get them, they are killer cards and if so closely priced definitely the card to go for!

PS. Rad9000pro also uses DDR so it actually runs at 275/550 to GF4TI4200's 250/500, but clock speeds aren't in any way telling of perf and 4200 64MB cards o/c to about 300/600 (faster than 4400's 275/550), the 4200-128MB cards are still the better oiption, but if you can get a bargain for a 64MB version it definitely still rocks!