Radeon 8500 128MB

[Tom]

I guess it was only a matter of time...
Radeon 8500 128MB

[Wombat]

Well, we knew for a long time it was coming. But I thought they were going to have both the 128MB and the increased core clock in the same model. Guess they've having speed problems.

[Kruzin]

Yup.
Had to happen.
Before ya know it everone will have a 128meg version of their cards

[Wombat]

Oh joy. Just what I always wanted. A 128MB G550.

[Helevitia]

That's how Matrox is going to solve the memory bandwidth problem, they are coming out with a G550 with 128GB of RAM

[TdB]

128mb is peanuts compared to this:

http://www.3dlabs.com/whatsnew/pressreleases/pr02/02-02-04-wildcat_III.htm

416mb!!!!!

[Novdid]

How much does that card cost per MB???

[Indiana]

What I find much more interesting is that there still is the possibility to activate a MAXX-tab via a reg-setting (a SLI like thing, dual gfx chips) even in the newwest ATI 8500 drivers, and here also in the Win2k and XP ones (and this even though there were never real XP drivers for the Rage Fury MAXX.

Take this together with the rumors of a R8500MAXX (which is floating around since well before the R8500's presentation) - and I think ATI might be well prepared to any future NVidia offering even without taking the R300 into consideration.
I guess if we will see a DualChip R8500 is dependant on possible delays with the R300... it woukd make more sense at least than a single chip, 128MB card.

[Novdid]

The 128MB card seems to be very real. It even looks like they are discontinueing their 64MB 8500 offering.

http://www.ati.com/na/pages/products/pc/radeon8500128/index.html

If you read there is no talk about 64MB of memory, and the board comes at the same price as the 64MB version. This is likely to be the answer to the GF4 Ti cards which also boast 128MB. The uneducated thinks clearly that the 128MB board offcourse is much faster than the 64MB counterpart. A very silent transition indeed. They also probably haven't got good enough yields to increase the frequency to 300/300 it seems.

BTW the GF4 Ti comes with the following clocks:

Ti 4600:300/325
Ti 4400:275/300

http://www.pcpop.com.cn/read.asp?id=489&page=5

[lindberg]

...And from one thing to another, how is the image quality in the radeon? Especially in 2D is important. I work with industrial computers daliy and nowdays they have integrated ati-128 8meg cards, and they REALLY suck ass. I cannot understand how the image quality could be so poor, how could they even release such a card?! I mean, the 2meg matrox G100 in my very very old workstation is SO much better!

I once considerd to buy a radeon but after the experience with the 128 I'm not so sure anymore. I know that it's unfair to compare ati 128 with radeon but it still the same company! Matrox are well known for their GOOD 2D QUALITY, so maybe ATI is know for their poor 2D....

[The PIT]

The 2d image of the Radeon 8500 is pretty good. Not quiet as good as the Matrox cards but pretty close.
The drivers still need a bit of work the rumours of crappy drivers are true.

For example the latest leaked drivers by default turn off the plug and play off the monitor so you get stuck at 60hz. You have to edit a setting in the registry so you can set your refresh rate. If anyone tells you different they haven't cleaned out there old registry settings as the setting in the ATi inf file definatly turns this off.
There also seems a problem with Z buffer and stencil settings under 9x as well.