Guys, what would you do in my situation? Please give advice!

[purbeast0]

Well i am kind of in a debate now, and I shouldn't be. Heheh, but after seeing those Radeon 8500's for sale this weekend for $150 after MIR I don't know if I can hold off.

I have a gainward GF2 Titanium XP/500 card right now. It is giving me nice results. My question is would the Radeon 8500 upgrade be worth it? I could probably sell my gf2 off for like $110 or around there. So would it be worth it in your guys opionions?

Also, with the All in Wonder 8500 vs the regular 8500, would I get the same performancece as far as gaming? I know it wouldn't have the same features witht he card, but would the gaming performance be the same? Thanks.

 

[PowerYoga]

i would probably hold off on the radeon... nvidia has better driver support and a geforce 3 ti 500 is just as good as a radeon.

 

[jcmkk]

You already have a nice card. If you were gonna spend the money for another card, then I don't think it would be worth it unless you got a GeForce 4 Ti. You aren't gonna notice the performance difference even close to as much as with a GeForce 4. The All in Wonder is actually has a slower clock 250/250 compared to the normal 8500 which is 275/275.

 

[Rand]

<< i would probably hold off on the radeon... nvidia has better driver support and a geforce 3 ti 500 is just as good as a radeon. >>



Once I would have agreed with that but with the proliferation of the long standing infinite loop bug, smooth blinn shading rendering errors, the former NMI parity error and a handful of others I don't think nVidia is nearly as good in that respect as they once were and ATi has improved tremendously.
At this point in time I'd say nVidia's drivers are still somewhat better, but not enough to pass on the R8500.

The GF3 Ti500 I don't view as a viable alternative as it's literally twice the price for only slightly better gaming performance and is inferior in almost other way.

If your happy with your current card then I'd say keep it. It's still reasonably decent and should be quite fast enough for most uses.
That said, the R8500 is clearly superior.... and if you can get $110 for your GF2 Ti then you've almost paid for the R8500 right there so it's hard to turn it down given the versatility and superior performance/features of the R8500.



<< The All in Wonder is actually has a slower clock 250/250 compared to the normal 8500 which is 275/275. >>



The Retail Radeon 8500 runs at 275/275. The OEM or Radeon 8500LE runs at 250/250, along with 95% of all third party R8500's though there are one or two third party R8500's typically refered to as the 'LELE' that run at 230/230.
The All In Wonder R8500 runs at a distinctly lower 190/230... it is quite clearly lower performing then the regular R8500.. it's real world performance tends to vary from slightly below to slightly above the GF3 Ti200. By no means a slow card at all, but a decent margin slower then the regular 8500.