Radeon 8500/8500LE vs. GF4 Ti4200 current price/performance

[yakkowarner]

I'm looking to buy a graphics card now. Decent video-playback, speed at high resolutions, and OpenGL support are important. The very latest and fastest game support is not.
I'm running Linux.
I'm considering the Radeon 8500, Radeon 8500LE, and GeForce4 Ti4200.

Comparisons I can find at the moment show the GF4 with a significant (like 30%) performance edge, though they all mention the improving state of the 8500 drivers and are at least a couple months old. I wonder if the drivers have continued to close the gap and if people know of current performance comparisons (esp. comparisons under Linux/XFree86/OpenGL, not just Windows; all the talk about drivers in the usual articles may have been entirely irrelevant to my case).

Current prices I've found:
8500 64mb, apparently w/o DVI: $100
8500LE 64mb w/ TV, DVI: $100
4200 128mb w/ TV, DVI: $161

So I need to know (1) if these are indeed the best prices to be had and (2) how performance of the three cards stacks up, so I can weigh price/performance accurately.

 

[yakkowarner]

A couple quick things:

I apologize for this thread if it duplicates an existing one. I was a little surprised not to be able to find a thread covering this topic with all the talk about these cards lately. If it does, feel free to ignore it and just point me to the other thread.

In one AnandTech comparison, the GF4 Ti4200 w/ 64mb memory outperforms the GF4 Ti4200 w/ 128mb memory in every benchmark. I didn't notice a note about this. Improper labelling? What gives?

 

[Fulcrum]

The 128mb versions of the 4200 use slower memory to help offset the cost of doubling the memory. Combine this with the fact that there are very applications/games (if any) right now that need over 64mb of memory on the graphics card and that's why the 64mb benchmarked slightly faster. Doom 3 may be comming , but it's not here yet.

 

[yakkowarner]

Ok, so there's a thread discussing some 8500 vs. 4200 issues. But people aren't talking about two important things:

1) 2D quality is mentioned, but clear statements, not to mention evidence, is lacking.

2) Linux quality and performance

 

[apoppin]

CompUSA is selling the 8500 128MB (DDR-TV out, Retail, not LE) for $129 (no rebate).

That made up my mind. I really don't care that the GF4 Ti4200 is marginally faster. In six months to a year I will be looking at the 9700.

 

[bluemax]

I hear talk of ATI now having a good linux driver - but I'll admit that nVidia has had pretty solid linux drivers for some time.
There's a REASON why the icky Doom3 will only run in Linux if you have an nVidia card.
At least at this point.

For anyone else, I'd say ATI is a better bang-for-the-buck.... but this case is different.

Check into a nice GF3 Ti200 for price considerations.