Radeon 8500 Revealed

[superfly]

i'm pretty impressed with the initial performance of the 8500 given that the chip isn't yet considered final yet and the card has the potential to beat a gf3 once better drivers are released.


Ati is definately not going down without a fight and that's definately a good thing for consumers,i just wish matrox would do the same.....


One thing is for sure,the radion 7500 is targeting pretty much the same market as the G550 is and i'm pretty sure that most people would choose the ATI card hands down,even if the card ends up costing a bit more than the G550...

[Admiral]

And just when ATI gets out a product that matches the GeForce 3, Nvidia will release the Detonator 4 drivers.
Got a feeling of deja vu.

[superfly]

well i believe that the 20.80 drivers are probably the first set of drivers that are specifically optimized for the gf3 architecture...

One thing's for sure though,a 30% speed up due to driver optimizations is very impressive no matter how you look at it...wonder how they'll perform on my o/c'd gf3(230 core,540 memory...).

It's rather amusing that nvidia chose to unveil their existance precisely when ATI's new card is unveiled....deja vu indeed.....

[dZeus]

Originally posted by xortam
How well does your system handle HD content?

no difference whatsoever from playing through network mapped smb drive or dvd (dvd and hd are SCSI), though I doubt ATA drives would change this situation much, as they all use DMA for transfers nowadays which doesn't put a significant load on the CPU any more.

The chip also supports encoding acceleration. Matrox could use this feature if they haven't alienated too many of the video customers.

It does? anyway, encoding mpeg2 is a much more demanding task, as the incoming datarate is much higher, and needs to be analyzed precisely to determine compression parameters. In such a case CPU offloading would increase the target audience (as in percentage of CPU owners that are capable of the task) a lot, as compared to decoding, which almost the entire target audience can do without hardware acceleration.

[xortam]

To explain ... I meant High Definition by using the term "HD" (I would say HDD if I meant disk storage.) Specifically, processing of 1080i and 720p ATSC formats.

[PeTe]

ACE:Hmm.. Did you pay attention to the current Estimated Price? Compare that to the GF2 Pro you were going to buy. Maybe the extra 2D quality (assuming it lives up to past ATI products, anyway, since 2D quality wasn't mentioned in the reviews) is worth the major cost difference to you..

Sure, but the extra cost will get me better picture quality ( assuming atleast at this point ) and much faster 3D. I was going to get a GF2 PRO because i dont have that much money to spend at the moment, but things are looking pretty good for the rest of the year, i SHOULD finnish my studies FINALLY and get my Master of Science in Engineering papers out... =)

And when buying graphics cards, I would like to buy one in 2 years, so thats why I'm hoping to get the best one and stick with it.

PeTe

-------------------
1.2@1.33G Tb on Abit KT7, 256 MB PC133, Matrox G400MAX, Hitachi 19", 57GB HD and loads of other crap.

[PeTe]

LOL

Just wondered how could i make a signature-file and checked my profile, guess who's user id is 666 ?



PeTe, but just call me SATAN.

[dZeus]

Xortam: why HD content? btw. Any idea where I can find such contents and player for it?

I don't think HD stuff will come to the consumer market (in optical disk form, FMD) for some time still, so isn't this a bit of a off-topic question?

[Guru]

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/previews/radeon_8500/index.shtml

Another review of the cards!

[Snake-Eyes]

Aaaaaaiiiiiiii....

I'm talking to the devil!!

PeTe, as far as the 2D goes, your probably right. The ATI should have better 2D than the majority of GF3 cards. I tend to disagree about the 3D speed though- look how long GF3's been out already, and now with the Det4 drivers, it's beating the Radeon 8500 in most benchmarks. I have a feeling that nVidia's next product will have all the requisite extra features and have been on the market for several months by the time games taking advantage of even the ones in GF3 are here..

Personally, I love the specs on the Radeon hardware, but ATI has yet to get their drivers up to snuff (they're doing better, but still not there yet). Not to mention that a friend of mine had certain ATI hardware for which all the features were NEVER supported in drivers, even though certain of those unsupported features were among the selling points used by ATI to promote the hardware. So before I go out and replace my 3 month old GF3 with the Radeon, I'll have to wait and see if ATI can actually support everything the new hardware has to offer, write drivers that work well for ALL the OSs I play with (I'm a programmer, so I like to mess with most of them at some time or another, heh), and especially, take the hardware to its true potential performance-wise. (Yes, I know. 500fps is ridiculous. I'm more concerned that the minimum framerate in any game doesn't drop below a certain amount, and usually cards that hit higher average rates have higher minimum rates too..)

If ATI pulls of the above, I might end up with a Radeon 8500 AIW, or something of the sort, in the future. of course, this is contingent on nVidia NOT doing the SAME thing with their next gen part, and FIRST. (nVidia is rumored to have changed plans due to ATI, so the 8500 is a good thing, whether I buy it or not, hehe. Competition rulez!)

[Snake-Eyes]

Man, I'm just to darned long-winded. lol

[mdhome]

It seems that the G550 has some competition

[The Rock]

Umm, before taking the benchmarks seriously, do NOT forget that the GF3 has been out for months, and those PREVIEWS are benching with ALPHA drivers. Nvida has had time to tweak the drivers. Pretty damned impressive overall I'd say. The current Radeon kicks butt, so I'm liking the way the 8500 is shaping up.

Bart

[Tom]

Originally posted by Ace
I might end up with a Radeon 8500 AIW, or something of the sort

Now, that sounds like fun. I was able to borrow a friend's
Radeon 64MB VIVO a week ago and found that to be an excellent
gaming card with good 2D and very good video capture.
If ATI builds a Radeon8500 AIW, or even a 7500 AIW,
I would be VERY interested.

[PeTe]

From SharkysExtreme preview:

" ... From this early look at the card, the RADEON 8500 is shaping up to be one heck of a great option for gamers; and it should breathe some new life into the market, much to the delight of those who feared it became a one-man show when 3DFX dropped out of race and seemed to leave NVIDIA as the only option for gamers. We can't wait to see what it can do when it's ready for final release, drivers are finalized, and Win XP and DX 8.1 are available; as right now, all we're seeing is the raw power, not the features that make promise to make this card not only a great performer, but a leader in terms of image quality ... "

So things are looking VERY promising at the moment.

PeTe