Help!

[stewie25]

I am in the market for a video card for my computer but after reading many reviews, I am only more confused. I have really narrowed it down to 2 choices: ATI Radeon 8500 vs. a GeForce 3 Ti200. I am basically looking to spend about $200 or less. I'm curious what others think. I have heard the 8500 is faster, but there have been multiple driver issues. Especially ones with Windows XP, which is the OS I am running. I welcome opinions on which video card is the best for my price range. I am very interested in today's games (i.e. Wolfenstein and Medal of Honor) and want a card that can handle them easily.

My System
Sony Vaio RX 572, P4, 1.8 gHz, 256 megs RAM
OS: Windows XP
Hard-drive: 60 megs
Monitor: Sony Triniton flat screen

I welcome all opinions

 

[powerMarkymark]

I am in the same position as stewie25, going to set up a new system and would love to hear from owners of both cards.

Personnally I'm leaning towards the GeForce 3 Ti200, I heard the drivers a virtually problem free. Not exactly what I've heard about drivers for ATI Radeon 8500.

Thanks guys.

 

[FlamingPanther]

Depends, the Radeon is around 150-190 currently if you get an OEM card.
OEM cards run at 250/250 as opposed to the 275/275 that the Retail cards run at.

But powerstrip can easily overclock the card to 275/275

I like my radeon 8500 because of the quality, which I think is better than a GF3.

I like smoothvision better than quinc-a-cunx becuase quinc-a-cunx smears the textures, and smoothvision doesn't.
Smoothvision is a bit slower than quinc-a-cunx though, but if you enable AF like everyone says
then they perfrom just the same!

Like someone once said, "you just have to see smoothvision in action to become a believer!"

The Radeon uses a more efficient AF method than the GF3, so AF can be enabled all the time without a big performance hit like the GF3

Also, The Radeon had HARDWARE DVD decoding, the GF3 only has what Nvidia calls DVD acceleration.

I've saved the best for last.

N-patches.

I love em, they make everything look soooooo high quality in SS2 and Counter-strike,
They may distort some things but they make everything have 1000 more polys.

I luv it.

But thats my augument for getting a Radeon 8500!

FP

 

[Rand]

If you were comparing it to the GF3 Ti500 it might be debateable but there is no way I would even consider a GF3 Ti200 over a Radeon 8500.

You'll get better performance in 3D games, you get a slightly better 3D feature set, you get better 2D quality then virtually all GF3's, you get Dual display, and DVI-Out, and TV-Out natively, the best DVD playback in the industry, and a better FSAA implementation. Along with much better performance when using anisotropic filtering.

With the Retail R8500 available for only $130 now I wouldnt dream of considering the GF3 Ti200.

nVidia driver support is somewhat better, but their FAR from perfect themselves and quite clearly have their own large set of issues left to fix.
ATi's driver support has improved quite a bit over the last 4 months or so, and most remaining issues are minor. At this point I'd actually say ATi has better system compatibility in-sofar as their drivers are concerned, though application compatibility is still better with nVidia.
In any case, the minor driver advantage of the Ti200 isnt nearly enough to off-set the fact that the R8500 is clearly the superior offering at this point in time.

 

[stewie25]

Are any of you guys running Windows XP? I have heard that there are compatability issues with the 8500 and XP. Can anyone confirm or debunk that rumor?

 

[Mem]

<< If you were comparing it to the GF3 Ti500 it might be debateable but there is no way I would even consider a GF3 Ti200 over a Radeon 8500. >>



I`m going to disagree with Rand here for once, the 2D quality on GF3 cards like Gainward etc is excellent so 2D quality is not a real factor,plus not everybody wants all the extra`s on a card(I don`t) as for drivers well the latest 23.12 WHQL drivers in WinXP are excellent and I will take Nvidia drivers over ATI drivers anytime.

ATi Radeon 8500 has more features,peformance and very good image quality.

Yes the ATi Radeon 8500 is faster but I would personally feel more comfortable with a Nvidia card then ATi(mainly because my friends that have ATi cards are having driver problems while my other friends with Nvidia do not,one of my friends is actually going over to a Nvidia card because of his gaming driver problems) ,at the end of the day it`s your money your choice and both are good cards so it comes down to price ,features, performance,drivers etc and only you can decide which are more important to you.

Btw no disrespect to ATi owners.