Originally posted by: dexvx
Not so much as a performance gap... the difference is in WHO makes them (ATI, hercules, gigabyte, random generic factories... etc).
In the vast majority of cases ATi themselves manufactures them. There are presently only two third party manufacturers actually making R8500 boards, those being Gigabyte and Club3D... with hercules expected to start within the next couple of months.
Hence, 2D visual quality and quality of manufacture should be identical between ATi's own boards and those of the vast majority of third parties.
Currently ATi is manufacturing the boards per the tghird party companies requirements and reselling them to said third party for branding and resale.
The BIOS issue preventing you from intsalling ATi's drivers can be gotten around by manually installing said drivers instead of going through ATi's driver installation setup. FWIW, Hercules has stated they intend to issue a BIOS update to resolve this however.
With the noteable exception of Club3D I would not at all be worried about purchasing a third party ATi Radeon 8500 board, this is in marked contrast to the situation with the R7500 boards in which many manufacturers are using extremely lowly clocked DRAM, and in some cases even using SDR SDRAM.
FWIW, the 8500LE is clocked at 250/250, instead of the 275/275 of ATi's Retail boards.
Club3D is retailing a select series of their R8500 boards clocked at 230/230 however, as is another third party whom I cannot recall at the moment. The 230/230 R8500's are typically referred to as the R8500LELE.
are radeon8500 drivers for winXP = major sux0rs? and, is 8500 image quality (2d and 3d) really better than the ti4200???
The drivers still arent quite as good as nVidia's but I would say they are reasonably good at this point in time and I wouldnt expect you to have any issues at all. Most driver problems have long since been resolved.
The image quality issue is debateable, personally I don't consider ATi to have significantly better 3D image quality then nVidia. In fact, I'd say that image quality between nVidia and ATi can vary depending upon the individual game/application in question.
I would certainly agree that ATi offers superior 2D image quality then even the best of nVidia board manufacturers... but whether this is beneficial to you I've no way of saying. 2D image quality can vary dramatically depending upon the chosen reslution and monitor in use... and individual eyesight.
Some people are unable to see any difference between even the worst of nVidia boards, while others can see a clear and distinct difference between even the best of nVidia boards and ATi.
2D is as much influences by individual eyesight and other factors as the graphics card in use.
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