Ok, The Ti series are out

[Nuno]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1539

The most impressive card is that GF3 Ti200 at $200 MSRP. Nvidia just trounced the Radeon 7500 with that one.

Matrox, ATI, PowerVR, please do something

[ZokesPro]

I think it's Matrox's turn for a new video card if they want to stay in the game.

That's my opinion.

[Fat Tone]

Nuno, don't forget the dual outputs and (possibly) better image quality of the 7500. ATI may also pull some performance out of the bag with this weeks forthcoming drivers.

Tony.

[isochar]

Don't forget that hardware isn't complete until you have solid drivers under Win2k/XP. (Which from recent comments, people still have complaints with ATI)

[Nuno]

If someone are really into dual-monitor using, they have one choice: Matrox Dual-Head. Nvidia and Radeon VE implementation are just too flakey, specially on win2k (and winXP will be the next big thing). You´re better with a AGP+PCI video card that with twinview or hydravision, IMHO.

Image quality is a point. Geforce3 ranges from poor to good, depending on the phase of the moon But remember those "cheap" Radeon 7500 and 8500 will NOT be manufactured by ATI, so quality issues may arise.

The question is: Price. I never imagined Nvidia brough GF3 technology at under $200 this soon. Everything was pointing to a castrated GF3 (less rendering pipelines, hylarious memory bandwidth), like MX was to the GF2. But no, it´s a plain Geforce3, only lower clock rates (that should be easily fixed with Powerstrip), it performs like 10% slower than a Geforce3 and 20% Slower than a Ti500 (aren´t they shooting them on the feet here? 20% less performance, same features and half the price wasn´t something were used to from Nvidia)

Because of price and features, the Ti200 was a totally unexpected call drom Nvidia. If $200 is their MSRP by christmas will be having Geforce3 for $150. I think that´s VERY hard to beat.

[windigo]

ATi' Radeon 7500 and 8500 are being produced by a number of other companies like ASUS and Gigabyte hopefully this will drop the price even lower of the ATi
and even the Ti series from Nvidia should hopefully
price war like the sound of that

[Wombat]

Heh, wonderful choice of 3rd party mfrs.

Asus: "ATi cards with their record of speed and driver support, now with Asus's famous video quality!"


Gigabyte: "No overclocking features whatsoever. And it will work with all Gigabyte boards that support our Video-BIOS-on-MB breakthrough!"

Dammit, why couldn't they get Canopus to make one? I'd probably be sold on that.

[mdhome]

Nuno, its maybe naive of me to say this but the low price is possibly in part due to the the 8500 which some people say will come in at under $250. Being the poor Brit that I am this will probably translate into a £200+ card.

regards Michael

[Ashley]

The Radeon 8500 - from ATI, not a 3rd party - is already listed at ecost.com at $245. At stock speeds with the current drivers it is slightly faster in 3dmark2001 than a GF3 clocked to Ti500 speeds (240/500).

And it does 2048x1536x85Hz on both heads (XP provides the independence one wants, but only gets from Matrox, under Win2K).

The ATI drivers do not have the polish one expects from Matrox, but it is hard to fault the hardware itself, or the price. In some ways, it is what one might have wanted the G800 to be.

[Nuno]

Actually I´ve already saw a Rising Rich, inc. 8500 for $190

Video card market is getting interesting again.

I just hope ATI can give Nvidia good competition. Problem (AGAIN) seems to be the drivers. They promised they´d do diferent with the Radeon, they took ages to release an half-decent driver for it. They didn´t supplied a new driver for Anandtech Geforce3 review. If they didn´t that´s because they haven´t it, just imagine the impact of a Radeon 8500 at the top of those charts and for $150 less...

And Radeon 8500 should also have awfull anisotropic filtering (moire effect - for that you don´t need anisotropic, just render without mipmaps) as the previous radeon had. It has been confirmed by some ATI guy at Rage3d.com

Believe me, anisotropic is really something you want, if the video card can do it. Like KyroII, it´s just fantastic to play without the distent blurry looking of mipmaps and without texture aliasing. Shame that you can´t use it in not much games because it´s sloooow

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Wombat
Heh, wonderful choice of 3rd party mfrs.

Asus: "ATi cards with their record of speed and driver support, now with Asus's famous video quality!"

It could be worse. Imagine Asus wrote the drivers themselves...
Or even a Creative Radeon with custom Creative drivers...

[superfly]

One thing is for sure,if ATI gets to write drivers that can make the radion 8500 perform to it's full potential,especially since it going to be clocked even higher that first anounced,it might very well be the fastest card out there,at least for the next six months.


How's that for a nice change of pace...,especially since pretty much everyone(including Nvidia itself)was used to seeing GF cards always as the fastest out there.