Some radeon 7500/8500 questions

[DaddyMac]

Hi,
I'm in the market now for a new video card, and I'm starting to zero in on the 7500. The general impression that i get is that the only difference between the 7500/8500 is the 8500 is clocked faster, is that a fair statement?
Also, I've heard that the 7500 is great for o/c ing, so if the only difference between the two is the clock speed, wouldn't it just make sense for me to buy the 7500, o/c it, and make it close to if not just as good as an 8500?

 

[Rand]

<< Hi,
I'm in the market now for a new video card, and I'm starting to zero in on the 7500. The general impression that i get is that the only difference between the 7500/8500 is the 8500 is clocked faster, is that a fair statement? >>




No. They are based upon entirely different chipsets, with a different memory controller. The R8500 is based on the R200 chipset, the R750 is based on the RV200 chipset which is effectively the same as the R100 chipset with a slightly modified memory controller that fetches in different sizes.
they have VERY different feature sets, and will perform quite differently even when clocked the same.

And yes, the R7500 does overclock very nicely indeed.

 

[AA0]

the 7500 also misses out on a lot of features that the 8500 has. Truform, is my favorite of them all. IMO, the 8500 is one of the biggest improvements in video card revisions I've ever seen.

 

[Menacer]

Think of it this way, if you know much about nVidia chips:

The Radeon 7500 is a GeForce2 Ultra (though I believe it performs worse than an ultra, this is an analogy)
The Radeon 8500 is a GeForce3. They're very different.

Your "one is clocked higher" should be Radeon 64megDDR->Radeon 7500. The main difference is that the Radeon 7500 is clocked a LOT higher.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Easiest way to know what ATI video card does what is look at the model number.

Anything in the 7X00 series is a DirectX 7 compatible part: i.e. a GeForce2 competitor
- The 7500 is ATI's best DirectX 7 compatible card, it competes with the GeForce2 Ti and the GeForce2 Pro.
- It has a fixed T&L rendering engine.

Anything in the 8X00 series (actually there's only the 8500 and the 8500LE) is a DirectX 8 compatible part
- a GeForce3 competitor
- It includes support for such things as pixel shaders and vertex shaders.
- It includes a programmable T&L engine, making it more future proof


-Ice