radeon 8500LE vs 9000 pro?

[var1ety]

Both are priced very affordably on Pricewatch, $85 for the 9000 pro and $87 for the 8500LE. Is the 8500LE a better investment?

 

[RaidZERO]

I had the same decision as you and I went for the Radeon 9000PRO. The major difference is that the 9000PRO has only "one texture unit from each pixel pipeline". This will result in a very minimal performance drop, when compared to the Radeon 8500 LE 128MB, when playing games that use multi-texturing. One game coming up that does is UT2003. If you take a look at Anand's review of the Radeon 9000PRO, you'll see that in some benchmark results in UT2003 Performance Test the Radeon 9000PRO comes out on top, and in others, it falls short due to multi-texturing. The Radeon 9000PRO also has some enhanced features that in some situations bring it above the 8500LE. So, it's up to you. I felt better about going with the newer product at the risk of losing a few frames in upcoming games.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well in the vast majority of benchmarks the Rad8500LE beats the Rad9000pro, the Rad9000 cards are a cut down, cheaper to make card designed to compete with the GF4MX cards which are inferior to the GF3 cards the Rad8500 was designed to compete with. Still diffs are pretty small between the Rad8500LE and Rad9000pro, but do go for 128MB what ever you get. Rad9000/pro's enhancements over 8500/LE are standardised dual display and TVout across the manus, enhanced MPEG playback, more o/c'able and the snazzy higher model number (like GF4MX!) which will at least help the card to sell on when the time comes.

For more detail check THIS thread out!

 

[maverick24]

guys thanks for the info. i am in the same type of situation - i already have one system with a gforce4 ti4200 128 MB DDR and am looking to get an ati card in my next machine.
just couldnt decide between 8500 and 9000 - now i have some food for thought.

also a quick question - how important is dvi support for flat panel displays ? it is a requirement if u get a flat panel monitor ? or is it just a way to get a high detail/resolution picture ?? thats the one part i need clarification on before i decide..

 

[AnAndAustin]

DVI is well worth having and is included pretty much for free on most modern gfx cards. DVI basicly does away with all of the messy and needless converting to and from Analogue/Digital. Since an LCD is digital and your gfx card is digital it makes no sense to kepp converting back and forth. To get the best quality output DVI is well worth using. If you were thinking of running a dual display then a Rad9000/9000pro is IMHO the best choice, unless you fancy forking out for a nother 4200

 

[Wasert]

do both of the cards come with tv-out?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Always makes sense to check, but all types of both Rad9000 and GF4 cards come with CRT+DVI+TVout (some GF4 use VIVO instead of TVout). As for Rad9000 vs Rad8500 the 8500 is more hit and miss with both TVout and dual display, esp throughout diff manus, but this shouldn't be too difficult to check.