I love my RADEON 8500 !!! Scored 9803 in 3DMark2001SE, unbelieveable !!! Edit: Nevermind, many people scored above 10k.

[SFang]

I bought this RADEON 8500 for 76.50 bucks from BestBuy, which has it on sale right now, detail HERE. Absolutely LOVE it, with 1/5 price of the Nvidia G4 4600, it is only 15% slower, and have much better image quality, this is amazing.

Latest driver 6071 found HERE

With Windows XP default driver, I only get the scroe 8547. This latest driver rocks, make it 9545 before OC, 9803 after OC!!!

Latest Result after OC my Radeon 8500 to 290/290, which seems much stabler and faster than the default 275/275 settings, already played MOHAA, Commandos II, Unreal, Fallout Tactics, no problem at all.

=============================
3DMark Score 9803 3D marks

Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 149.4 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 56.3 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 165.0 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 88.9 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 145.1 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 64.9 FPS
Game 4 Nature 50.3 FPS

Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 866.7 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 2171.1 MTexels/s

High Polygon Count (1 light) 42.5 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 10.2 MTriangels/s

Environment Bump Mapping 117.0 FPS
DOT3 Bump Mapping 93.6 FPS

Vertex Shader 92.7 FPS
Pixel Shader 107.3 FPS
Advanced Pixel Shader 84.8 FPS

Point Sprite 29.8 MSprites/s

============================
3DMark Score Chipset

11316 115% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
10761 110% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400
9803 100% ATI Radeon 8500
9253 94% ATI Radeon 8500
8880 91% NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500
8615 88% NVIDIA GeForce3
8128 83% NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200
5642 58% NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra
5172 53% NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/Pro/Ti
4041 41% NVIDIA GeForce DDR
3228 33% NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400

===========================

 

[rudder]

cool downloading them now!

 

[Rand]

The default WinXP driver for the R8500 sucks, I'm not at all surprised you gained so much.In fact WinXP's drivers for almost any card are quite a margin slower then more recent official drivers from the manufacturer.
9500 is quite a nice score for a R8500 paired with a TBird 1.43GHz though.

 

[ronein]

are you sure about your score???
tweaked the settings or default??

I only got 8600 with my xp1800.

will DL them and test them later.

Thanks!

 

[BD231]

are you sure about your score???
tweaked the settings or default??
I only got 8600 with my xp1800.
will DL them and test them later.
Thanks!

ronein, dont bother if you have 605x on up, the only reason her/his score is that high is because her FSB is OC'ed, 3DMark really like's oc'd systems.

 

[SithSolo1]

Thats nice. Mine drop 622 points.

 

[ronein]

bdog231
thanks for the reply. Just the same i overclocked my system to run at 145 fsb(making it run at 1667----xp200 levels) and havenst seen anything dramatic as far as increases are concerned and like what sithsolo mentioned, my score actually dropped a bit.

 

[SFang]

Updated the score number after OC. Somehow my RADEON is very stable at 290/290. It is not so stable at its default rating 275/275, I also downclocked it to 250/250, absolutely unstable at lower speed. That is so wierd. You just have to overclock it.

 

[HowDoesItWork]

But you are comparing stock 4600 values in a non-OCed system to you values with an overclocked card in an OC'ed system, no?

 

[SFang]

Take a look here AnandTech Review, normally clocked Geforce 4 4600 only scored 9814 against normal clocked Radeon 8500 with Windows XP default driver of 8526, which means in your opinion, my OCed Radeon8500 almost beat a regually clocked G4 4600, that is pretty amazing too, right?

Frankly, I believe all the user reported results from Rage3D are in overclocked systems.

 

[Sunner]

I just cant help but throw in my .02$ about 3DMark.
3DMark sucks, plain and simple, allways has, allways will.

 

[Barrei]

Nice scores Sfang and I'm sure your right MOST people who post on 3dmark2001se have O/C systems.

 

[HowDoesItWork]

I usually go by FPS in games, but only because that is what I am interested in. The Radeon is not a bad card by any means, but it seems to lag pretty far behind the Geforce 4 lineup at higher resolutions. (In the review you posted, RTCW and such, the G4 caps about 50% more FPS than the 8500)

 

[rachaelsdad]

Yes that is an impressive score for your settup; Could you please give the card maker and the bios revision the card is running? Thanks.

 

[SFang]

The card is ATI retail box(built by ATI), made in Taiwan. Memory made by hynix of Korea.

The BIOS Version is 7.004, BIOS Date 2001/11/07.

Again, I still have the confusions of why this card is only stable at certain frequency, I tested it at several stage:

250/250: Some game showing blurry lines during pre-game demo.
275/275: In rare case, Windows XP reported problem created by ATI driver, asked me to send report to Microsoft.
290/290: Perfectly stable, hasn't find any problem yet.
300/300: Desktop turned pink after running 3DMarks2001SE, also didn't improve benchmarks score at all compared to 290/290.

Guess I just got lucky .

 

[InFecTed]

<< I just cant help but throw in my .02$ about 3DMark. 3DMark sucks, plain and simple, allways has, allways will. >>



True that.

 

[cool0221]

it is hard to believe your CPU doesn't offer enough juice for your 8500 at all I think. do you use some kind of performance settings in your driver? is the picture quality the same as previous drivers?

 

[SFang]

I just purchased this card last Wensday, didn't really feel any difference between different drivers, only scored differently truthfully speaking.

However, the image quality is noticebly better than my previous Geforece 2 Ultra by Elsa, since I played Unreal for two years, I notice the difference right after the installation of the new card.

At the beginning of the testing of this card, Windows XP reported ATI drivers(including 6071) errors randomly, so I formated C drive, reinstalled XP, still not very stable. Then, I downloaded Rage3D Tweak v3.1e, which allows me to OC the card to 290/290, now everything is smooth. I didn't change any driver settings besides that since I am still unfamiliar with a lot of ATI terms/technologies. I was a NVIDIA fan before, but am too poor to buy any new NVIDIA cards now.

 

[SSXeon5]

I got a 7200 with my setup and stable at 300/300 ..... im gunna try 315/315 when i order the ram sinks ...

SSXeon

 

[Adul]

nice.

 

[SFang]

Just did a search on MadOnion website for all the Radeon 8500 scores. Tons of people scored above 10000, I can't even find my score in the first several pages, the highest one is above 15000.

Now, I am feeling bad. I must have got a defective card or something, only scored 9803 and not stable at default frequency. Oh, well ...