ATI Radeon....8500 of course

[jeff_harrison_344]

I am really excited about the new Raeon 8500. I cant believe there is a new card out that can beat the GF3!

[Placid]

Go buy one the price is $299.00.
Wonder what happened to $399.00
This is gonna mean a price war :)

http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/products/product.asp?pf_id=210086

[Kingslayer]

Hmmm....

Price wars, GPU wars, FPS wars, DVD wars, Laptop wars, memory wars....

Is ATI starting to raise the haunches of ole nVidia?

There is only one problem with this. nVidia can't take care of this competition like they did 3DFX. They might actually have to.....work.

[Nagorak]

Still too expensive.

Frankly, I think it is ridiculous that $300 is now considered a decent price (don't let that $299 mislead you, it is $300+).

The graphics sector is definitely in need of some competition and hopefully the Radeon 8500 will provide it.

Really what we need is for S3/VIA, ST Micro, BitBoys and even SiS to all check in with their next generation parts. I can just see the prices tumbling. ;-) That will be a glorious day for us consumers, even if it will put a dent in Nvidia's golden bottomline.

(Please no naive BS about how the card's really cost $300 to make. Check Nvidia's stock price and financial outlook: they're rolling in their fat profit margins).

[funnyperson1]

all i know is that 300$ is a lot less than what the gf3 debuted for....

[Nagorak]

If street price is <$250 I may consider buying it. GF3 and GF2U launch prices were absurd, and I expect the GF3U will be totally overpriced too.

[Placid]

Ohh..no.
I just went to my video card news site and read this.


And just when you got all excited about the 8500, ATI has the 8800. Apparently the 8500 has serious compatibility issues, that's why Anand and Tom both said that ATI should not have announced it. And this is true. This is pretty bad for ATI. They still have no clue about how its driver team needs to improve either. For all you ATI lovers out there, do serious research before jumping the bandwagon this fall or else you'll get heavily burnt. Just some advice. Hopefully by then, ATI will fix all issues.

http://www.nvnews.net/

Also a nice look at 4000 pc's at nvidia used for driver testing.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1526&p=7

[jeff_harrison_344]

Man I really hope ATI doesnt mess up this time, I really want to see Nvidia worried, and drop the prices :)

[_jubei_]

wow $299 is a good price... We can expect GF3 price to come down below $300 , and GF3 Ultra will probably be around $350..

But hold Your HORSES people... Wait for GF4... Then you can TRUELY appreciate your cards while playing DOOM3 and UT2...

[WillysNut]

Originally posted by Placid
Ohh..no.
I just went to my video card news site and read this.


And just when you got all excited about the 8500, ATI has the 8800. Apparently the 8500 has serious compatibility issues, that's why Anand and Tom both said that ATI should not have announced it. And this is true. This is pretty bad for ATI. They still have no clue about how its driver team needs to improve either. For all you ATI lovers out there, do serious research before jumping the bandwagon this fall or else you'll get heavily burnt. Just some advice. Hopefully by then, ATI will fix all issues.

http://www.nvnews.net/

Also a nice look at 4000 pc's at nvidia used for driver testing.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1526&p=7

And we have another Kyro II on our hands!! I read that article and a few more and ATI's contention is that newer games demand better capabilities and that software developers will "immedately" adopt newer standards to develop cutting edge games.

Frankly..I'll believe it when I see it.

[Nagorak]

That's an unsubstantiated rumor that's been floating around (which frankly sounds like total BS).

Also, when it comes to you from the unbiased nvnews.net site how can you not believe it??? /sarcasm

Come on guys, this is like posting something from Rage3d.com about how the Geforce 4 is going to suck. It has little or no credibility.

[Placid]

From NV News.

Radeon 8500 Comment - 8/31/2001 7:33 am - By: MikeC - Source:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People are narrowminded at times that they fail to see the forest through the trees. Yesterday, I posted a link to a report at Tweak 3D which was in regards to the Radeon 8500. The report stated that the card "has serious compatibility issues."
I thought it would be a good idea to report this information, not out of spite for ATI, but rather for consumers that are considering purchasing the card. It's unfortunate that the Tweak 3D report didn't elaborate on what compatability issues were seen, but you have to think that they found something problematic in order to mention it.

Our own Typedef hit the nail on the head when he mentions in a message thread at Rage 3D (click on headline) that it's not our policy at nV News to berate other products. While we are an NVIDIA fan site, we've always provided numerous links to video card reviews of competing products including the Radeon (23 pages worth).

We link to these reviews in order to give our visitors a greater appreciation of what's available in the 3D graphics card market. We normally don't engage in flame wars and don't make comments out of ignorance. If you would like to express your concerns about the report at Tweak 3D, click here.
http://www.tweak3d.net/cgi-bin/comments.cgi?view=2024

[FunkyTechnician]

I was quite pleased to hear about that on rage3d.com. I was planning on waiting until Christmas to upgrade but who knows now.

I'm sure they will straighten out the driver issues and hopefully live up to their promises of developing drivers faster. It seems that they have been getting better with this in the past half-year (at least beta-wise).

Amiel

[Phil]

when you consider that I bought a tnt2 ultra 2 years ago for £130 ($200) then the current prices are just silly, everything else has gone down in price and yet these price cuts haven't tranfered over to the graphics market, and why? because rather than cutting the price of the card when they can get memory chips cheaper etc.. they just make more profit.

[FunkyTechnician]

Am I the only one who remembers that about 10 months ago the GF2 Ultra debuted at $500.00???!! And people actually bought that! It is quite insane that a video card can cost more than an Athlon 1.4Ghz, a motherboard, 256 Megs of memory and a case/power source.

Unfortuantely, It does seem that 300-400 USD seems to be the pricepoint for the flagships of ATI and Nvidia. Hopefully ATI and Nvidia will have a pricewar like that of Intel/AMD and all the comp users will come out as winners. (Please do not turn this into an ATI vs Nvidia, ATI Vs Intel thread)

;)

Phil brings up an excellent point. I was thinking about the same thing when all of the memory prices have dropped between 60- 75% from this time last year. My guess is that the gamers are still willing to pay that much and the video card market hasn't taken a hit like other companies. I believe Nvidia just released a hell of a profit margin from what I remember. Hopefully ATI will be very competitive and the prices on both will drop.

Amiel

[Nagorak]

Ok, so Nvnews.net isn't as bad as I originally suspected.

Even so, it's a little early to be concerned about the Radeon 8500's compatibility (seeing as it's not even available yet). I guess this might be a good reason for those intending to buy the product at release to wait a week or so for the truth to come out.

It doesn't seem too likely that the Radeon 8500 would have serious incompatibility problems though. I mean, the Radeon pretty much worked fine with all hardware out there. Supposed driver quality issues aside, the Radeon hardware didn't flat-out not work on any platform. The AGP specs, I'm sure, are very specific, and as long ATI followed them (which I'm sure they did), I have no doubt that the Radeon 8500 will work properly with all properly configured motherboards.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see, but I have a hard time beleiving any major 3D card maker would produce (or even design?) a card with serious incompatibility problems.