[H]ard|OCP Radeon 8500 Review

[Snoop]

Just to let you all know, Kyle did test the nvidia card with the quake/quack thing, heres the quote:


quote:
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Originally posted by JayTee
Good review. Getting about the same performance we are seeing from other sites. I do have a couple of bones to pick though.

First, the quake/quack thing is completely worthless without proof the slowdown does not occur on other cards. The Nvidia card might have an even bigger slow down. Without testing quack on other cards there is no way to say that the slow down was because of the card and not because of the program. Building a new .exe file could certainly slow things down.
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The NVIDIA card was NOT effected at ALL by the Quake/Quack change.


__________________

Kyle "FrgMstr" Bennett
Webmonger @ Hard|OCP
Purveyor of Smoothness @ Ratpadz.Com

ATI, needs to confront this, and if it is an engine based optimization let all of us know. IMO it cant be, their are a bunch of Q3 engine games, its hard for me to believe that each would be recognized by the name of the game (ie.QuakevsQuack) instead of just optimizing the drivers for specific game engines themselves. If this is true, ATI has a public relations nightmare, not only do their drivers suck, they are artificially inflating benchmarks on SPECIFIC games, which is highly unethical.

edit: Also, why in the hell wouldnt the driver teams be working on compatibility at this point in time. WTF gives a dam about 20fps if their computer wont run with vsync off, or with AA on.

 

[MrGrim]

ATI is history for me.

 

[HendrixFan]

Taking into account the price difference between the Radeon 8500 and the Geforce3 Ti500, the Geforce3 isnt that big of a winner. The Geforce3 Ti200 is closer in price, but this review doesnt compare the two. From the benches off of Anandtech, the two cards are fairly comparable in the 3D arena.

I guess, just as always, if you want pure gaming goodness, go with the Geforce. ATI hasnt taken that crown yet. But if you want dual monitor support, a good TV out, DVD hardware assist, or video capture along with gaming; then ATI is still a solid choice.

ATI has been closing the gap between the two, and it wouldnt be too suprising to see that trend continue so that ATI offers the best video card in each aspect that customers look at.

 

[Pocatello]

Quack quack, damn I spewed my Coke all over the keyboard on that one!

 

[THELAIR]

well i still trust ATI for their AiW series of cards. So regardless of what happens, Im still getting a AiW Radeon 8500 card. Hopefully by the time it comes out, there will be a new driver update/release to make it even better

 

[Sugadaddy]

Man, nVidia must laughing their @sses off right now...


It looks like it's gonna be Ti200 for me, unless they can pull magic drivers out of their hat. What Agodspeed said is so true. It's barely outperforming the preview board with the old drivers of 2 months ago, and what's even worse, Smoothvision even worked back then since Anand tested it. What a joke...

 

[zzzz]

I have a theory on the poor driver issues of ATI.
As we know, NVIDIA hired a lot of aureal engineers after they went bankrupt. Not to be outdone, ATI hired a bunch of people from the driver develpoment team of creative labs...

 

[Narse]

<< I have a theory on the poor driver issues of ATI.
As we know, NVIDIA hired a lot of aureal engineers after they went bankrupt. Not to be outdone, ATI hired a bunch of people from the driver develpoment team of creative labs... >>




LOL so thats what the deal is!

 

[tjdavis1138]

I'm trying like hell to get my dell order cancelled. ATI can kiss my a@@

 

[nortexoid]

things aren't all that bad...and also..

if ATI claimed quake3 engine optimizations, they might not be lying, and probably aren't...however, they added ADDITIONAL optimization to a SPECIFIC game, namely, quake 3....again, nothing wrong with that.

what's wrong is everyone barfing up all over the place because of one horrible review that shows the ti500 beating the 8500, which has been no surprise since previews from months back...the only thing that still surprises me is the lack of their most touted features...

the card is still well priced for what u get...unless u run XP perhaps.

 

[Snoop]

<< if ATI claimed quake3 engine optimizations, they might not be lying, and probably aren't...however, they added ADDITIONAL optimization to a SPECIFIC game, namely, quake 3....again, nothing wrong with that. >>


Well thats great only IF ATI told everyone the Radeon 8500 is Quake 3 optimized(and will not accurately portray performance in any Q3 based games). The problem lies with the fact that Q3 is used as a 'benchmark'. Benchmark, by its definition (a standard against which something can be measured or assessed) is supposed to help consumers asses the overall performance of the card, not just the performance in Q3. So in 'optimizing' the card for a specific game they render the Q3 benchmark useless.


Further, do you actually believe that they optimized the Q3 drivers just so people who play Q3 will get a little better performance. I think the driver teams had some other pressing problems to work on. LOL

 

[JellyBaby]

ATi-don''t-want-it.