Throwing Radeon 8500 out the window - need replacement!

[Citadel535]

I have had it up to here <- with problems with my graphics card. Neverwinter Nights is acting all funny but my friends PC running a GF4 4200 is working fine. I want to replace and go Nvidia but don't know which one to get. I want to spend $200 AT MOST, preferably underneath. I was looking into the GF4 4200 w/ 128MB RAM.

Please let me know your advice. BTW ATI IS NOT AN OPTION!

Edit: I also play Morrowind. What card will be better than the 8500?

 

[CraigRT]

There isn't much if you want to go NVidia, I'd say a Ti4200 will be fine.. it's faster than an 8500 and much less than $200 now.

you can find them anywhere.

 

[nRollo]

Best Buy or CompUSA has Ti4600s in their ad today for $229 after rebate, that would be a lot more bang for your $200 than a 4200.

 

[pillage2001]

How much you wanna throw your 8500 for?

 

[bearxor]

Buying a Geforce4 and getting rid of an 8500 would be like trading your red apple for a green one.

EDIT: Oh, i made a funny... lol

 

[nRollo]

I don't know about the red apple for green one comment, the 4600 is considerably faster than an 8500...

 

[MrCoyote]

LOL, NWN was a buggy game to begin with. All my games work on my ATI 8500. Your system must have additional issues which are causing the problem. People: quit blaming ATI for everything. Their cards own Nvidia. The 9700 blew the latest GeFart cards away.

 

[novice]

Let me know where your window is located and when you plan to throw that Radeon 8500 out of it! I have been dying to try one out to see how good/bad they are. I would agree that the Geforce 4 Ti4200 is the best way to go if you aren't interested in another ATI card.

 

[PliotronX]

Have you tried experimenting with BIOS versions? I hadn't taken any chances with the stock BIOS on my 8500 and went right to the 7008 BIOS and my R8500 (64Meg has been just as stable as my previous GF2 card (only MUCH faster and better looking with the AF ). I don't play NWN though. Also have you tried experimenting with different drivers? For cleaning out the drivers, follow the steps here and if you're using Windows XP with SP1, perform this under Safe Mode (hit F8 just before the Windows shows the splash screen) to avoid the File Protection from replacing the newer driver files with much older ones (details here). Good luck, and if you still want to get rid of it, please don't trash it.

 

[Mingon]

LOL, NWN was a buggy game to begin with. All my games work on my ATI 8500. Your system must have additional issues which are causing the problem. People: quit blaming ATI for everything.

Unfortunately some games just dislike ATI cards - but same with nvdia cards. I cant get rally masters to work on a ati 9000 but it works first time on a gf4ti4200 - whereas starship troopers works fine the opposite way around

 

[bearxor]

let me restate...

Trading one DirectX 8.1 video card for another DirectX 8.1 video card seems pretty pointless.

Yes, the 4600 is faster, but not by some huge amount that makes it justified, in my opinion at least, to shell out another 250 bucks for a 4600. If you're gonna shell out that much for a 4600 (cheapest on PW is 210), you could at least shell out just another 10 dollars for a R9500 Pro, or another 90 for a 9700.

Or wait for a GFfx launch. It's not like the card you have now is worthless and a POS, it should last you another 3 months, right?

 

[nRollo]

I don't know Bearxor.
The 8500 had more hardware/software compatibility issues than the 4600 by far. (says the man with the Epox 8KHA+, who had a 250 watt psu at the time) GF3/GF4 Ti4400 ran perfectly on my system, R8500 never did. (and yes I tried everything, I've also made my living in IT/IS the last 5 years and have been building boxes for over 10 years)

Beyond that, at some games, the 4600 is a LOT faster:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1647&p=8
There's a pretty big difference in running UT2003 at 94 vs 57 measly fps.

I guess beyond all that he said no ATI, so why begrudge him the switch? He won't be buying a GF Fx for $200 any time soon. And Dx9 games aren't exactly demanding you upgrade these days, is there even one?

I like ATI plenty, love my 9700pro, loved my VIVO/MAXX/Rage Fury/etc.. The 8500 was/is just a flakey card.

 

[CurtCold]

Why don't you throw it out your window into mine? I love my 8500, went to that from a gf2mx400, I don't think I'll ever go back to Nvidia card. I just like having more options with the Radeon card.

 

[nRollo]

"I love my 8500, went to that from a gf2mx400, I don't think I'll ever go back to Nvidia card. "
I hope that's not the basis of your opinion? GF2 MX400 is "Mom won't give me more than $5/week allowance, but I can buy this in a few weeks" bargain basement junk card, whereas the R8500 was ATIs flagship card made to compete with nVidia's best?

 

[spanky]

throw ur 8500 my way.

 

[CurtCold]

Originally posted by: Rollo
"I love my 8500, went to that from a gf2mx400, I don't think I'll ever go back to Nvidia card. "
I hope that's not the basis of your opinion? GF2 MX400 is "Mom won't give me more than $5/week allowance, but I can buy this in a few weeks" bargain basement junk card, whereas the R8500 was ATIs flagship card made to compete with nVidia's best?

I've bought everything I own, mom doesn't buy jack squat, and when I bought the gf2 it was the hottest thing on the market, best I remember I bought it for $140


I know the 8500 is/was supposed to perform with the GF4 series, I know how the 4200, and 4600 look, my friends have them, yes the 4600 looks better, the 4200 is almost the same. I paid $80 for mine, they paid $130+ for theirs, I didn't have the dough at the time to get a "bleeding edge" card, and I won't pay more than $150 for anyvideo card.

You think I'm an ATI lapdog, because of the differnece in the 8500 and a gf2 let me throw in my VooDoo 2 while I'm at it? Your really funny, yeah let me compare the 533Celeron to a 1600xp while I'm at it.

Moron

 

[nRollo]

"I've bought everything I own, mom doesn't buy jack squat, and when I bought the gf2 it was the hottest thing on the market, best I remember I bought it for $140"
Er, Curt, I wasn't trying to say your mom bought you the card. Look here:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1453&p=2
"The GeForce2 MX core is based off of a crippled version of the GeForce2 GTS core. In order to separate the high-end part from the lower-end one, NVIDIA choose to limit the power of the GeForce2 MX in three ways." etc.
The GF MX-anything isn't a real GF; they're crippled down to about half the performance so people can buy a VGA for <$150. When the R8500 came out, it was the most technologically advanced gaming VGA you could buy, and cost $300..
Before you call me a "moron" , why don't you look at who just said their GF2 MX was the "hottest thing on the market" when it suxored, like every other GF MX?

"I know the 8500 is/was supposed to perform with the GF4 series"
Actually, it was supposed to compete with the GF3 series, GF4s came out many months later.

"You think I'm an ATI lapdog, because of the differnece in the 8500 and a gf2"
No, I think you're trying to compare apples and oranges. You can't compare one company's cheapest card to another company's best. Like I said, I've given ATI a LOT of money over the years- starting with their 2MB VRAM card back in the mid 90s with the Mach 32 chip on it. This year I bought a R8500 and R9700 off them, both retail box. Last year I bought a VIVO and a 32DDR. The year before that a MAXX and a Rage 32- get the picture? I like ATI as much as anyone. (although I could post the same about 3dfx or nVidia)

"yeah let me compare the 533Celeron to a 1600xp while I'm at it."
You basically did, and then called me a moron for pointing it out.

 

[UncleWai]

I own a retail r8500, worked perfectly fine for me.
I find most of the time gaming problems are caused by other components.
When BF1942 first came out, I couldn't play it smoothly 800x600 at low details.
But after turning off the music, I could do 1024x768 at max details with no slow down.
Also background application kills fps.
And another strange problem I faced was when I hooked up my ps controller to parallel adapter to my computer,
GTA3 will skip every couple seconds.

What you should do is borrow a gf4 card and try it on your system rather than shelling out two bills.
Your friend's system is probably different, or should I say more advanced than yours
seeing you are using athlon 1200mhz with 600mb pc133.
There may also be the KT133A and sblive incompatible problem.
You can't just blame ATI.

 

[Bovinicus]

Most likely your problems are some kind of software configuration problem. I have an 8500 which was having some troubles in NWN as well. One problem still remains, but I fixed it easily. First of all, the autorun program from the CD would cause a BSOD every time I would click any command button on it. Even if it was just to exit the program. Also, my mouse flashes in the game. I just disabled hardware mouse and that stopped. Also, I couldn't get the game to load. It said the module was corrupt or something along those lines. Anyway, I formatted my OS partition and reinstalled it. Everything has been working 100% since then. In fact, it cleared up another problem I was having outside of the game. I have Win2K SP3 by the way. Anyway, my conclusion is that the problem does not lie in the video card but in the OS junk that piles up after a while. Make sure you keep your OS on a separate partition and format it every once in a while, or keep meticulous care of it as I have been trying to. Sure, you will lose your registry entries and make your programs unable to run, but you will maintain all your data (Music, movies, saved games, etc.).

 

[Qwest]

one program i would not live without...RegCleaner. Cleans up all those old unwanted entries. try this out before tossin that card out.

FREEWARE, download here.

 

[Lizardman]

I suggest the Radeon 9500 It can be had for about $180. Its the best bang for the buck at the moment.

 

[KaranG4]

Get a 9500pro =) retails for a lot less than ti4600 and still way up there, competative to ti4400 and when the aa is on it is better than 4600. I know I'll be either getting this or 9700pro refurb if I can find it cheap.

Dont hate ati, they seem to me as the best out there right now.

 

[nRollo]

"You can't just blame ATI. "
Yes, you can. The 8500 has issues. Check out Rage3d. I've never seen "buy a new motherboard" or "buy a new psu" or "reduce clock speeds from 275>250" to run a GF anything, there are PAGES of it there.

Trying to get the 8500 to run I tried new bios on my Epox 8KHA+ KT266A, new drivers for the 8500, fdisk/format, no shared IRQs, no card in slot next to it, new 4in1s, and that POS still locked up. When I asked for help on Rage3d, they told me to "get a new psu or motherboard". BS. To run a VGA? Don't think so. It had been running a GF3 original for months before that, no problem. When I put a GF4 Ti4400 in, it ran for months without problem.

You can blame ATI.

 

[b4u]

I have an Apollo NVIDIA TNT2 32 full Mb video card!!!!

Here's what: wanna trade?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: KaranG4
Get a 9500pro =) retails for a lot less than ti4600 and still way up there, competative to ti4400 and when the aa is on it is better than 4600. I know I'll be either getting this or 9700pro refurb if I can find it cheap.

Dont hate ati, they seem to me as the best out there right now.

The benches I saw on the 9500 were not so good.
I like the 8500LE I got too... it actually plays everything great.. and its a very inexpensive card too.