**please give opinions**- which is better video card radeon 8500LE 64 MEG or geforce 3 TI200 64 MEG?

[hclarkjr]

i have both cards in my possesion and can't decide which one is better, they both are good cards. so looking for somebody to persuade me one way or the other. also, the geforce card does not have a fan on it, just a heatsink. where can i buy aftermarket fan for it. thanx

 

[tenoc]

The 8500 usually has better 2D and is faster. Check it out.

Fan.

 

[Rand]

I'd definitely go with the 8500LE hands down. One could at least make an argument for the Ti500 over the 8500LE... but with the Ti200 there is no doubt IMHO.

8500LE is usually going to have better 2D visual quality, along with a significantly better DVD playback implementation along with a better TV-Put implementation on the driver level.
The 8500LE is also faster in 3D in the majority of cases, though it's not a huge boost by any means. You'll get a marginally better feature set with the 8500LE.

Only real advantages to the Ti200 IMHO would be that it has a much faster, though lower quality FSAA implementation. It also has a higher quality, though slower anisotropic filtering.
The 8500LE's also got more powerful vertex shaders, which should bode well for the future.


The Ti200 is by no means a "bad" card... but it's not nearly as impressive as it once was and falls slightly below the 8500LE in almost all respects.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yeah it's quite an easy one, although both cards are good the Rad8500LE certainly has the edge (that's mostly why nVidia came up with GF4TI).

To go on 3D ... Rad8500LE is about 10% slower than the fully blown Rad8500 although LE should easily hit 8500 speed. Rad8500 is perfectly equivilent to a GF3TI500 which is significantly faster than the GF3TI200 BUT again the TI200 tends to reach TI500 speeds. The GF3 owns the Rad8500 in AA and there is little diff in quality but any AA mode on Rad8500 verges on unplayably slow, but AA is about all the GF3 has over the Rad8500.

So on to other things ... Rad8500 has much better image quality, TVout, dual display and DVD playback.

If you really need the GF label and AA perf then GF3TI200 is your card, if image quality, TVout, dual display and DVD playback are important you should def go Rad8500 UNLESS the price diff is too steep, as is common outside the US & Canada. You really should consider the Rad8500LE-128MB as it is well worth the extra cost, but if you go Radeon do note that unlike GF cards clocks and dual display are often things which can change by manu and also with oem/bulk vs retail, so DO check. Another thing you could consider is the GF4TI4200, it is certainly faster esp when o/c'ed, takes great advanatage right up to the top CPUs and even has slightly better AA than GF3 ... but in a way more importantly nVidia significantly improved image quality and dual display while also slightly improving TVout too.

 

[hclarkjr]

thanx guys for helping me decide. looks like i need to sell a geforce now.

 

[AnAndAustin]

LOL oh yeah, you'll get more when selling a GF3 as well!

 

[Mingon]

Birmingham ENGLAND (some say Mars, or was it Uranus).

LOL - reminds me of a jasper carrot quote 'birmingham is like an empty rugby players bath - empty in the middle and a ring of scum around the outside'

 

[pillage2001]

I thought the 8500 edges the GF3 in the AA area with very little slowdowns?? I got the 8500 over the ti200 because of the AA, it seems faster than my ti200 anyday with AA on. weird.

 

[hclarkjr]

for those interested i have the geforce 3 TI200 for sale in the for sale forums, thanx guys for helping me decide to keep my radeon

 

[AnAndAustin]

pillage2001, the GF3 have hugely faster AA, they use fast and efficient multi-sampling AA (MS-AA) whereas the Rad8500 use the slow and inefficient super-sampling (SS-AA) method. Perhaps you never o/c'ed that TI200, always a good idea to o/c a GF3TI200 or GF4TI4200 as these are intentionally clocked far below their true potential in order to sell on the more expensive cards. Anyway, SS-AA is slightly higher quality but when you look at the perf hit you are much better off simply upping the res where-ever possible. Rad8500 is certainly faster at applying AF, although it is slightly lower quality. If you have a GF3 you should always run with 2xAA on and consider a little AF, while for Rad8500 you should always run with some AF on, prob 8tap - 16tap ... but unless you max out the res of your monitor AA is best avoided on Rad8500 IMHO. Of course things do vary by game, additionally those with good gfx cards coupled with slower CPUs it is a good idea to stick on AF and AA in order to use some of the untapped gfx card potential. Anyway it is largely down to personal preference so play around a bit in a few diff games and see what you prefer.

As a pretty accurate guide:

AA:
GF3 take about a 20% hit for 2xAA, 33% hit for QxAA (4xAA effect but blurs eveything a lot, best used with AF) and 50% for 4xAA.
EDIT ADD LINE: GF4TI take about a 10-15% hit for 2xAA and QxAA, IIRC you're still looking about 50% for 4xAA.
Rad8500 take about a 50% for 2xAA and 80% 4xAA. Forget perf modes as they really suck, always use quality.
Parhelia (why not) take about a 20% hit for FxAA (partial and selective 16xAA) and a 60% hit for 4xAA.

AF:
GF4TI (and I assume GF3) take about 10% on 4tap (L2) and 25% on 16tap (L8).
Rad8500 take about 5% 4tap and 10% 16tap.

 

[vancenase]

i've got a GF ti200 64mb card ... and when i TV out the DVD ... i get these verticle scaling lines on the TV (light ones; that sort of "move up" the tv screen). do you think the 8500LE card is a better card for DVD output? i do absolute NO gaming, but a small out of 3D rendering (molecular visualization; but not much and not terribly important)

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: pillage2001
I thought the 8500 edges the GF3 in the AA area with very little slowdowns?? I got the 8500 over the ti200 because of the AA, it seems faster than my ti200 anyday with AA on. weird.

Not even remotely. The GF3 has considerably faster FSAA, and it also consumes a significant deal less RAM.
On the flip side it's not as compatible or versatile as the R8500's FSAA implementation, and cannot anti-aliase alpha textures at all... which can lead to some unusual artifacts in some circumstances.
The GF3's MultiSampled AA implementation also tends to blur the textures a bit relative to the R8500's.
The actual edge antialiasing capabilities are very close.
The R8500 also tends to remove pixel popping in the distance considerably better.

The GF3's MSAA is a quite a hefty amount faster then ATi's pseudo-random SuperSampled AA though, and doesnt consume anywhere near the amount of DRAM that SSAA does.

The GF3 also has the dubious honor of supporting nVidia's Quincunx AA, though the implementation changed slightly in the GF4/ GF4MX line.
It antialiases edges almost as well as 4X MSAA, but causes textures to be extremely blurry.
IMHO it's worthless without applying anisotropic filtering along with it... which removes much of the blurriness but comes at a performance hit and you still lose much of the visual accuracy of the textures.
Quincunx is something you either love or hate.... I personally despise it, a few others consider it the best FSAA implementation out.

8500LE card is a better card for DVD output?

There is little doubt about that. ATi's been tuning their DVD playback implementation for years now, an excellent and versatile implementation on the driver level. And hands down the most fully features DVD playback on a hardware level.
If there is one area ATi has always done well with it's DVD playback.
Even the old Rage 128 has a considerably better DVD playback capabilities then the GF3.

 

[rogue1979]

I've had both, and I prefer the Geforce3 Ti200 over the Radeon 8500LE. Granted, the Gainward GF3 is low-pass filter capacitor modded and overclocks above the defualt speeds of a Ti500. The Radeon 8500LE hit 300/315 and was a little faster in 3DMark 2001. But in real world games the GF3 Ti was almost always ahead by more than a small margin. Especially when using AA, the 8500 dropped well behind. 2D image quality I give the edge to the Radeon, but for 3D I liked the Geforce3 more. I guess it depends on the kind of Geforce3 Ti200 you have, where as the Radeon 8500 of all flavors has more consistent performance.

 

[tuan121]

Go w/ the Radeon 8500LE. Better image quality and its faster! Its comparable to the Ti500 and Ti4200. Its b/w those 2 cards in my opinon.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yup 3Dmark is certainly one area which favours the Radeons, it is real games where the GF3 tends to sneak past the Rad8500 but it is pretty close at all times. Rad8500 tends to keep up with GF3TI500 while Rad8500LE is about 10% slower, if you don't o/c a GF3TI200 then that is pretty far behind, once o/c'ed most TI200 will reach Rad8500LE speeds if not TI500 speeds. The main thing which bugs me about the Radeons is the lack of consistency in terms of clock speeds and capabilities. Just for example Rad8500's can come clocked as low as 250/400 or as high as 300/600 (or there abouts) andf there's a whopping 40% or so perf diff there on something which to most punters would seem the same thing. Clocks not only vary by manu but also with retail vs oem/retail, then there's Dual Display, another area which can vary and often very discretely. ATI seemed to have addressed this somewhat and Rad9000 series cards seem to be much more consistent, certainly for image quality, dual display etc as more flexibility is taken away from the end manufacturer. Of course there are always variances with any hw, even the popular GF4TI4200 cards although very consistent in clock speeds and features still have the odd 'bad egg' where manus skimp. All very annoying.

 

[pillage2001]

I o/ced my ti200 pass the speeds of the Ti500. I'll go back to see if AA really kills the RAdeon. I was very impressed with the AF of the 8500. There's practically no slowdown when you use it.