I have Retail version ATI 8500!!!

[Default]

yes it did come at 275/275:cool:
still havn't gotten the latest drivers but here is what i got in quake3 with the shiping drivers:

1280*1024 32 bit all setting up : 135 FPS:D

1024*786 32 bit all settings up : 170 FPS:D :p

[OnDborder]

from where?

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

You must be psyched! It'll be a great card in 6 months or so!;)

[funnyperson1]

please update us on how it runs, and show Ritteri that its a great card right now :)...

[The Overclocker]

yep, cards are great when they have been around for a while no driver problems and half the price. i will get one in a few months for a small price. he he

[Default]

ok, well here is some more info:

i got 7200 in 3dMark 2001

and 3600 with 6X smoothvision (equal to my gts without AA)

well i realy can't say much more because i only have that benchmark. but i can tell you that all of my games now run smooth as hell at thier top reses

don't even ask about overclocking cause i'm not guna do it!!!
all the games don't even use the full 270/270 :D

and drivers ver. 4.13.7191 still kinda suck thier is even some artifacts in 3dmark 2001, but atleast their is smooth vision now:p

and FYI i got my card through Supercom (Canadian hardware supplyer)

[Default]

if anyone wants some other benchmarks done just ask and give me a link so i can get it! or tell me what to do if it's a FPS in a game that you want.

[funnyperson1]

hmmm could you check the framrates in unreal...if you got to tools they have timedemo opyion...72003dmarks...that is beautiful.....you really should try overclocking it....who knws with a little tweaking and ocing you could prolly get really high in the Madonion datbase like 10,0003Dmarks or something...ocing normally gets you about 300 points(since your cpu isnt the bottleneck)from what ive read the 8500 ocesa pretty well....

[Default]

well with some more FSB overclocking i managed to get 7450 3dMarks:D Maybe i'll try a little core overclockingand i'll get back to ya. also will install unrealT and try the frame rate counter

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Get back to me when the card is 100% stable with no artifacts,no BSOD, and can run all games as well as a Geforce2,GeForce3 or Ti series card. At the rate ATI is at right now, they should have all problems fixed in 6 months, 17 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 13 seconds!:D

Sorry but considering we sell both card lines, the ATI has (like it always states) the potential on paper to be better, but comes through with a less than stellar product with horrible driver support. After using their latest drivers, there are still too many artifacts, their feature sets still dont work very good, many games still run and look horrible(or dont run at all many times properly)and has shown me that this card is still not ready and should not have been released. Sure, its got great 2d and DVD playback, but so does an All-in-Wonder card.

Yeah some sythentic benchmark scores are good, but who cares??? I would rather have a plain ol' Geforce DDR card over it because at least I can finish a simple game of NFSPU on it. And not have funny things popping up all over the place. ATI was stupid and put under pressure to release a card that should still be on the drawing board. Too bad, maybe they will learn someday.

For now, enjoy those synthetic benchmarks! THats about all they are good for,...............and DVD movies(who honestly watches DVD movies through their monitors anyway?!?!?!?!)!!!!!!:rolleyes:

[Default]

well here are some overclocking scores:

3dMark 2001:

280/280 : 7443

285/285 : 7530

290/290 : 7518

297/297 : 7783

300/300 : 7826

decided to stop at 300/300 cause the card was getting a little hot for my liking. and the old man fishing in Nature bench had his fishing pole grow about 100 feet!

as for UT thier seams to be some driver issue cause here is what i got with it.

UT:

1024*768*32 : 85 FPS

1280*1024*32 : 60 FPS

this was done at default speed.

any more question?

[Default]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Get back to me when the card is 100% stable with no artifacts,no BSOD, and can run all games as well as a Geforce2,GeForce3 or Ti series card. At the rate ATI is at right now, they should have all problems fixed in 6 months, 17 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 13 seconds!:D

Sorry but considering we sell both card lines, the ATI has (like it always states) the potential on paper to be better, but comes through with a less than stellar product with horrible driver support. After using their latest drivers, there are still too many artifacts, their feature sets still dont work very good, many games still run and look horrible(or dont run at all many times properly)and has shown me that this card is still not ready and should not have been released. Sure, its got great 2d and DVD playback, but so does an All-in-Wonder card.

Yeah some sythentic benchmark scores are good, but who cares??? I would rather have a plain ol' Geforce DDR card over it because at least I can finish a simple game of NFSPU on it. And not have funny things popping up all over the place. ATI was stupid and put under pressure to release a card that should still be on the drawing board. Too bad, maybe they will learn someday.

For now, enjoy those synthetic benchmarks! THats about all they are good for,...............and DVD movies(who honestly watches DVD movies through their monitors anyway?!?!?!?!)!!!!!!:rolleyes:

i have nfsPU and it runs fine.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Get back to me when u can honestly say it runs fine with EVERY game and app. And have no conflicts. Go to hardocp.com they also have a great honest review of what is up with this card currently.

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Get back to me when u can honestly say it runs fine with EVERY game and app. And have no conflicts. Go to hardocp.com they also have a great honest review of what is up with this card currently.

So your saying he's lying? And can you HONESTLY say that a GF3 can run fine with EVERY game and app.

Give it up already.

Congrats Default, 7800 on 3dMark01, wow!

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Zuck: Man you are a smart one arent u!:rolleyes: Never said he lied about 1 single thing, its common knowledge this product has driver problems (ATI is famous for releasing products that arent what they claim, why dont u just read all the threads concerning the card)and that it should have never been brought to market in its current state. I sell both products, and actually have 4 machines at the front of my store that display current hardware(2 which are identical AMD machines and 2 which are Intel machines, each one having either a Geforce3 or Radeon 8500 installed)so that people can get a taste of what the current equipment can do(or cant do). I think I have sold 3 Radeon 8500's(1 of whcih has come back so far for an Nvidia swap out)compared to dozens and dozens of Nvidia products. People can either use the default games loaded on the HD's or are free to load on their own games to see the scoop. Its a great display idea that allows people to see what they are paying for. So far not too many people want to pay $299 for The Radeon, regardless of useless benchmark tests which only show "potential" of the card. The card isnt ready no matter what driver is used for them, they all suck to date. The Geforce 3 on the otherhand runs on most apps without 1 single glitch or problem. Nvidia is known for having not only good to great hardware, but excellent driver support. SO what about benchmarks??, I want people to be able to run programs besides 20013d mark etc. You also got to love the fact that ATI has different specs cards too between their OEM and "Retail" versions, this is in itself a shame. The only reason why I currently do carry their product line is their cheaper basic video cards which do have good 2d images and DVD support(All-in-Wonder)at a great price. But for performance gamers, Nvidia is still king, whether u like it or not. Get in line for a GeForce3 or Ti series card, at least you wont have any "artifact",freezes,BSOD's,or other issues like you do with the Radeon series.

[funnyperson1]

1. You are charging too much for a Radeon8500 i could get it for 220$ online (that would definately change the mind of a consumer)
2. OEM cards are NOT made by ATI they are made by third party manufacturers:
Q:Some customers claim that ATI is selling RADEON 8500 boards with 250/250 (500) MHz GPU/memory instead of 275/275 (550) MHz frequencies. Is this true?

A:ATI sells only retail RADEON 8500 boards and they are clocked at 275/275(550). Actually, they are with "Built By ATI" sign.

We should mention that ATI sells its graphics processors to its partners, that produce mostly OEM videocards. Of course, those partners have the right to clock their boards at whatever configurations they require. As a consequence, there are boards available from third parties today with RADEON 8500-based chips of a 250/250(500) configuration. We will be making a related announcement about this in the next few days. Third parties such as OEMs, ODMs and AIBs have the discretion of selling RADEON 8500 based cards into retail, as well as to all other customers they serve.
3. If the man can run all his games with his new video card how does it bother you?

[funnyperson1]

PS: Im not trying to flame you, just setting up some facts.....Also i really like your idea about setting up to computers up front for people to test, more stores should do this.....

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Not harm taken, as far as the pricing goes, Im not an online or mail order store, I dont do that kind of volume, I do have wholesaling pricing available, but only if 3 or more units are bought. For me to sell a Radeon at $220 right now wouldnt be worth my time, and besides, I have only sold 3 of them, plus I have much better buying power with my ditributor that carries Nvidia products! My displays sell my products, they also curb sales of problem products too, which the ATI is currently(until they get some good working drivers).Oh the price is $259. sorry that was a typo on my part!

Also I would like to mention that all 4 display units can be tweaked with by any customer of mine, as I know some are into the ocing fun of this hobby. If somebody knows of a better driver or configuration, he is happy to set it for me! If it crashes, all displays do have hot swap drives attached!:D So loading in the current "parameters" are a breeze to restore. Also, I dont think he claimed that all his games or apps do work, he just countered my comment by saying that NFSPU on his rig does work, I never questioned that, I just know that getting ALL games to run PROPERLY or OPTIMALLY along with all apps on a rig with this card is pretty damn near impossible at the moment with their current drivers that are available. The GeForce on the other hand is quite stable over a very wide field. Hey, its not me claiming this, its the actual cards themselves.

[Default]

here is an interesting tid bit. I just reinstalled the drivers for my radeon and i get 7640 3d marks at default speed!!:D

[Default]

some more info:

DON"T USE POWERSTIRP!!!!!

reason: it disables Hyper-Z

now i have to reinstall the drivers again:mad:

[Default]

does anyone know of a good radeon tweaker?

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Yeah, its called Any Nvidia GeForce Chipset! LOL!:D

On a serious side, no I dont know of any, tellin ya, your going to wait quite a bit before that card does what you want it to do(unless u just bought it for benchmark scores), so I would sit tight and be patient.:eek:

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Zuck: Man you are a smart one arent u!:rolleyes: Never said he lied about 1 single thing, its common knowledge this product has driver problems (ATI is famous for releasing products that arent what they claim, why dont u just read all the threads concerning the card)and that it should have never been brought to market in its current state. I sell both products, and actually have 4 machines at the front of my store that display current hardware(2 which are identical AMD machines and 2 which are Intel machines, each one having either a Geforce3 or Radeon 8500 installed)so that people can get a taste of what the current equipment can do(or cant do). I think I have sold 3 Radeon 8500's(1 of whcih has come back so far for an Nvidia swap out)compared to dozens and dozens of Nvidia products. People can either use the default games loaded on the HD's or are free to load on their own games to see the scoop. Its a great display idea that allows people to see what they are paying for. So far not too many people want to pay $299 for The Radeon, regardless of useless benchmark tests which only show "potential" of the card. The card isnt ready no matter what driver is used for them, they all suck to date. The Geforce 3 on the otherhand runs on most apps without 1 single glitch or problem. Nvidia is known for having not only good to great hardware, but excellent driver support. SO what about benchmarks??, I want people to be able to run programs besides 20013d mark etc. You also got to love the fact that ATI has different specs cards too between their OEM and "Retail" versions, this is in itself a shame. The only reason why I currently do carry their product line is their cheaper basic video cards which do have good 2d images and DVD support(All-in-Wonder)at a great price. But for performance gamers, Nvidia is still king, whether u like it or not. Get in line for a GeForce3 or Ti series card, at least you wont have any "artifact",freezes,BSOD's,or other issues like you do with the Radeon series.

You used the word 'honest' and 'honestly' a few times. Implying that you don't believe him.

Don't change your story.

You also said, 'works with EVERY game and app' . Have you, or anyone else proved that a Geforce card can work with EVERY game or app?

Ya you can say I'm not too bright, but I'm alot more mature than the way your acting.

[Cisco Kid]

Default,

How do you like the card overall?? I have a radeon 64 DDR vivo that I am gonna start to mod and in time I will get the radeon 8500.

I know this will be the card of the very near future. The bugs will be ironed out shortly. BTW what driver are you using, have you tried the beta xp 7189 that Pinky has, give it a whirl or try the 7530 win2K driver. I am using that one and it works fine in XP.

I have not tried the 7189 but plan to this weekend. How much did you pay for the card btw, cause I can get one here in Vancouver retail for

$332 OEM @ www.anitec.ca


or

$390 Retail at www.atic.ca

Anywyas I hope you like the card and would you recommend it cause it is what I want once price has dropped at Christmas/new year

cisco kid:D

[Zuck Gou :)]

Hey Cisco www.a-power.com has the 8500 for $389 retail, hehe you could save a whole buck!

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Ya you can say I'm not too bright

Zuck: I believe you in that statement 100%! If you're going to quote me, prove to me you can interpret what was said in context. Talking about "mature" levels here.............

As far as the Geforce running on all apps and games, yeah it pretty much does run them all without a hitch. Sorry, since I see you're just a kid who feels he has to defend his own buying decision to justify the Radeon's many problems ill let this subject lay where it may, as it seems that you're the only one in this whole thread taking any offense whatsoever. :rolleyes:

You want to get ****y at somebody, then get ****y at ATI's front office for letting this product hit the stores in its "beta" form. By the time they do get it right, Nvidia will already have a properly working product that will be clearly superior to the current ATI product. Its been this way as far back as the Ati "RAGE FURY" cards. They too were "superior" in design on the blueprints, but as usual nobody could do a thing with the software drivers to make the product better as claimed. Leave it to the Canucks with their hockey sticks!

For all of you ATI lovers, check out this thread.......

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/default.asp

[Cisco Kid]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles


Zuck: I believe you in that statement 100%! If you're going to quote me, prove to me you can interpret what was said in context. Talking about "mature" levels here.............

As far as the Geforce running on all apps and games, yeah it pretty much does run them all without a hitch. Sorry, since I see you're just a kid who feels he has to defend his own buying decision to justify the Radeon's many problems ill let this subject lay where it may, as it seems that you're the only one in this whole thread taking any offense whatsoever. :rolleyes:

You want to get ****y at somebody, then get ****y at ATI's front office for letting this product hit the stores in its "beta" form. By the time they do get it right, Nvidia will already have a properly working product that will be clearly superior to the current ATI product. Its been this way as far back as the Ati "RAGE FURY" cards. They too were "superior" in design on the blueprints, but as usual nobody could do a thing with the software drivers to make the product better as claimed. Leave it to the Canucks with their hockey sticks!

For all of you ATI lovers, check out this thread.......

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/default.asp


Firts nvidia has released cards in the past that have not allowed all features to work right out of the box.

Second nvidia releases drivers quite often , each time getting a performance increase. If they are so good, and (I agree they're products are good) why do they just not release one driver to improve performance rather than a slew of 2- 3 drivers in succession.

I think the whole ATI issue will be sorted out. Once the drivers have been fixed and optimized this card will outperform the Ti series imho, I may be wrong but I think technology wise it offers more but then again the only way to take care of this is with the right drivers doing the job.

Bottom line is why would I pay $100 US more for a Ti500 when I can get a radeon 8500 for less, yeah some of the features do not currently work, but do you really think they will remain that way forever?

last imho I own a radeon 64 DDR vivo, I have not had a single driver issue the card performs great in all applications, do I really care about 3dmark2001 (a synthetic benchmark test that offers nothing really more than bragging rights) I currently use the Win2K 7530 driver, all apps games that I use have worked without a hitch. There are a number of variables with the new Radeon 8500 as to why some features have not worked and one of them appears to be an issue with AMD based chips vs ATI themselves.

What I have said above is based on articles I have read that have made these points. Thats about it tkae it as you will, I am not here to flame you at all, but I believe the 8500 is alot better than you think and it is alot cheaper than its competition and not that far at this time behind in performance.......

cisco Kid;)

[Default]

actualy all the features work on my card!! including smoothvision. it just has some minor issues now.

oh and one more thing, if ya wana overclock this baby get ram heatsinks cause my ram gets fairly warm to the tuch and shows artifacts at 301MHz (300 100% stable :D ). i still have yet to put them on but i have got the gpu cooler off of there and replaced it with a socket a cooler:p

[Cisco Kid]

What driver are you using Default?

Cisco Kid:)

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles


Zuck: I believe you in that statement 100%! If you're going to quote me, prove to me you can interpret what was said in context. Talking about "mature" levels here.............

As far as the Geforce running on all apps and games, yeah it pretty much does run them all without a hitch. Sorry, since I see you're just a kid who feels he has to defend his own buying decision to justify the Radeon's many problems ill let this subject lay where it may, as it seems that you're the only one in this whole thread taking any offense whatsoever. :rolleyes:

You want to get ****y at somebody, then get ****y at ATI's front office for letting this product hit the stores in its "beta" form. By the time they do get it right, Nvidia will already have a properly working product that will be clearly superior to the current ATI product. Its been this way as far back as the Ati "RAGE FURY" cards. They too were "superior" in design on the blueprints, but as usual nobody could do a thing with the software drivers to make the product better as claimed. Leave it to the Canucks with their hockey sticks!

For all of you ATI lovers, check out this thread.......

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/default.asp

I took offense when you personally attacked, not when you attacked the 8500.

And I don't have an 8500, I have a Radeon Le. So how am I justifying my buying decision?

Your the one who's worried that forking over 400 bucks for a GF3 wasn't the wisest option.

Or your so weak-minded that Nvidia has brainwashed you, and taken away your liberties to choose a card based on performance.

Haha. period

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles


Zuck: I believe you in that statement 100%! If you're going to quote me, prove to me you can interpret what was said in context. Talking about "mature" levels here.............

As far as the Geforce running on all apps and games, yeah it pretty much does run them all without a hitch. Sorry, since I see you're just a kid who feels he has to defend his own buying decision to justify the Radeon's many problems ill let this subject lay where it may, as it seems that you're the only one in this whole thread taking any offense whatsoever. :rolleyes:

You want to get ****y at somebody, then get ****y at ATI's front office for letting this product hit the stores in its "beta" form. By the time they do get it right, Nvidia will already have a properly working product that will be clearly superior to the current ATI product. Its been this way as far back as the Ati "RAGE FURY" cards. They too were "superior" in design on the blueprints, but as usual nobody could do a thing with the software drivers to make the product better as claimed. Leave it to the Canucks with their hockey sticks!

For all of you ATI lovers, check out this thread.......

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/default.asp


hey, i coulda held myself back, but dont diss the Rage Fury Pro.......that was one nice graphics card :).......considering it lasted me two years and i ould still play max payne very smoothly.....not to mention the 2D quality-amazing......

[Default]

Originally posted by Cisco Kid
What driver are you using Default?

Cisco Kid:)

mine came with the latest 4.13.7191 win9X

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Zuck: There is no such thing as a great ATI card, sorry. There are average cards at best. The DDR 7500 comes to mind. But the LE was another card that wasnt anything as good as a GeForce at the time.

As for the Rage Fury card, please............it was one of the cards that gave ATI a real bad rep with software drivers to begin with.......yeah it had great hardware potential, but it took em over a year to get half way decent working drivers for it, so lets not go there,

No Im not an Nvidia worshiper, but there is nothing really better out now is there? I was a fan of 3DFX when they has there ***** together with their SLI Voodoo II Max PCI cards, after that though, Im sorry but Nvidia just took over the scene as everybody knows. I sure didnt ask em to, nor is it my fault that they put out good products. They got tons of great cards out and for under $150 you cant beat the Geforce 2 Ti thats for sure with anything close to that price. But what makes Nvidia so good is not necessarily their hardware, but they make sure that the software is good too. Unfortunatly ATI cant compete in that important dept., but they had better quickly because as everybody knows, they are losing more and more ground to Nvidia every year, they too may eventually become another 3DFX casualty. Nvidia is the Microsoft of Video cards now. And they did it with superior products and great marketing. Remember just a couple of years ago they were the small grafx company with 3DFX and ATI reigning supreme in the computer market. Now its the other way around. Besides, I have never really seen a good product come out of Canada besides hockey sticks to begin with!:D

[Quizno]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
The DDR 7200 comes to mind.

ummmmm.......the 7200 is an SDR card. arent you suppose to be a hardware retailer??

might wanna research the prduct line before you criticize it.....

oh, and as far as good canadian products go. you forgot about beer:)

[Pinky]

9 times out of 10 a long thread in Video and Sound is a Nvidia / Radeon debate. And this one is no different.

If I can spare us all some hurt feelings and wasted words, let me summarize what the last 50 debates on this subject concluded:

Some people like Coke, some like Pepsi.

[RocknBull]

Hey Defualt

have you tried the daul monitors yet?
I would love to know how it works with the new card i use Matrox
for that purpose.

Thanks:)

[Wicked Klown]

i'm planning on getting the Radeon 8500 as soon as I can cause this D#$* GeForce 2 board sucks big time. Hell it`s freezes just on desk top no apps running nor any games.

[funnyperson1]

the LE when tweaked can whoop any mx.....i never said nvidia makes bad stuff ( i own two of their cards) but weve got three video cards in this house (TNT,RageFuryPro,Geforce2Pro) and when it comes to do work i sit down on my dads computer with the ATI and it is absolutely beautiful......for gaming i use my comp but i agree with Pinky it really depends on preference and i really like the pacakge deal you get with ATI of 2D and 3D, and i really think theyll fix the drivers, before the next Nvidia six month cycle.....

[Cisco Kid]

QUOTE]Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Zuck: There is no such thing as a great ATI card, sorry. There are average cards at best. The DDR 7500 comes to mind. But the LE was another card that wasnt anything as good as a GeForce at the time.

As for the Rage Fury card, please............it was one of the cards that gave ATI a real bad rep with software drivers to begin with.......yeah it had great hardware potential, but it took em over a year to get half way decent working drivers for it, so lets not go there,

No Im not an Nvidia worshiper, but there is nothing really better out now is there? I was a fan of 3DFX when they has there ***** together with their SLI Voodoo II Max PCI cards, after that though, Im sorry but Nvidia just took over the scene as everybody knows. I sure didnt ask em to, nor is it my fault that they put out good products. They got tons of great cards out and for under $150 you cant beat the Geforce 2 Ti thats for sure with anything close to that price. But what makes Nvidia so good is not necessarily their hardware, but they make sure that the software is good too. Unfortunatly ATI cant compete in that important dept., but they had better quickly because as everybody knows, they are losing more and more ground to Nvidia every year, they too may eventually become another 3DFX casualty. Nvidia is the Microsoft of Video cards now. And they did it with superior products and great marketing. Remember just a couple of years ago they were the small grafx company with 3DFX and ATI reigning supreme in the computer market. Now its the other way around. Besides, I have never really seen a good product come out of Canada besides hockey sticks to begin with!:D [/QUOTE]

Ritteri&Bubbles

We are going around in circles, bottom line is people have a choice and they will give their view why they made that choice.

As far as products coming out of the Canada , I could but won't make a comment that sums up your weak minded opinion/attitude of Canadian products because I think we are all adults and we are just voicing our opinions and having some fun.

Remember the NHL is basically made up of majority Canadian players..... but why am I being caught up in the drudgery of this useless debate that at end will have accomplished nothing but displaying the video card preferences of various individuals.

Oh by the way you forgot about the grade "A" cannibus that you boys so greedily pay large $$ for, LOL..... (hmm is this all we are about beer and pot ?? LOL)

CAN WE ALL JUST GET ALONG

For you enjoyment check out some of Canada's leading great products especially the "Moosuito" beer mugs down the page...... This is becoming to be a very funny and entertaining thread.....

Oops I had to edit to add the link http://www.productsofcanada.com/

Ohh and what about the CFL the greatest pro football league hehehehehe it does have its moments , bada bing , bada bong gotta go ya ding dong (all in fun , peace my friend sure we will see some more replies to follow)

Cisco Kid:cool:

[el]

Originally posted by Pinky
9 times out of 10 a long thread in Video and Sound is a Nvidia / Radeon debate. And this one is no different.

If I can spare us all some hurt feelings and wasted words, let me summarize what the last 50 debates on this subject concluded:



I like TAB dammit and that is the best soda ever but gone now like the voodoo5 5500!!!

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

We'll if you all read my posts, I did say that Canada made some great hockey sticks. I thought the players came with them!:D

As for the beer, NO WAY! I'm not a big fan of Labatts or any other crap beer from Canada...............as for the pot.......................well.................... I'm not gonna comment there...........:D

Yep, Im having fun on this thread, so I hope nobody besides Zuck takes it personally!:D As I noticed all people who seem to respond to the thread run the Canuck card series anyway.;)

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
We'll if you all read my posts, I did say that Canada made some great hockey sticks. I thought the players came with them!:D

As for the beer, NO WAY! I'm not a big fan of Labatts or any other crap beer from Canada...............as for the pot.......................well.................... I'm not gonna comment there...........:D

Yep, Im having fun on this thread, so I hope nobody besides Zuck takes it personally!:D As I noticed all people who seem to respond to the thread run the Canuck card series anyway.;)

Crap?! Because its not watered down like yours!?

[Kingslayer]

The guy sits here and preaches how bad the 8500 is, yet he still stocks and sells them....

Obviously your customers money means more then the customer. If you can't handle the 8500 and it's performance, then pull it off the shelves. This "My displays curb selling of bad hardware" is crap. You run the store YOU should be curbing bad hardware by not having it in your inventory.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Actually, I dont really sell them, if the customer really wants one AFTER trying the card out on one of my demo machines then its his choice, but I push the Nvidia products if somebody wants my own personal opinion. The only ATI product that I do push is the ATI All-In-Wonder card, which is a good cheap alternative card for people who are not looking for 3d gaming capabilities and want a good basic card. I let the card speak for itself, and running the 8500 head to head against a Geforce3 in identically configured computers there is no constest as of right now. Hey, if ATI decides to post some good drivers before Xmas I may be singing a different tune, but right now I tell everybody, its got the potential, but its not there yet, and dont know when and if it ever will be. Check out the earlier link I posted why dont you?

[Cisco Kid]

Ritteri&Bubbles,


You gotta try some of our micro brewed beer not Labatts, how bout Sleemans, or Granville Island Cream Ale or if you want a kick in the head try the 9% Modite..

hehe gives a nice headache

cisco kid:D

[Cisco Kid]

"Ya ain't got no Schlitz Malt Liquor, WHAT!!!

"How do you expect to run a successful business if ya ain't got no Schlitz Malt Liquor!!!!??

Now that stuff is good when you are on a budget or wann get there fast , no what I am saying!!

truthfully though the beer is better in the north!!

cisco Kid:D

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Im sure the micro breweries do have good beer, they do down here too actually. But if were gonna talk about alcohol then beer isnt my cup of tea to begin with, lets get right to the good hard stuff, with some Sour mash whiskey, or Russian vodka, Im not a beer freak to begin with anyway.:p

[krakerman]

hey el (i think you are the one who wanted the tab)

its on the shelves here in good ole charlottesville, va. in kroger only though. perhaps its from an old secret vault somewhere, or maybe they started producing more ;-) anyways, check out the ole grocery store and see if you have any near you!

[Cisco Kid]

harder is faster , I agree and much easierr than putting back a pale ful of beer LOL

Cisco Kid

yep vodka is good but nothing can beat Crown Royal Whiskey or some good Blue Agave tequila

[krakerman]

oh yeah, i forgot to post what i meant to about video cards
i own a radeon 32ddr and ive seen my friends geforce2 cards in action. personally i wouldnt trade my radeon for even geforce2 ultra. the 2d is better and dvd playback (and yes i watch dvd on computer moniter). im getting a radeon 8500 soon, for those same reasons, as well as the nice features it has (svideo out i think, and dual moniter support). and even with its crappy drivers its still competing at a good level. once the drivers are fixed it will beat the tar out of geforce3s imo. also, why does ati have to have drivers perfect on first try? we all know that nvidia doesnt even do that and everyone is always saying they have best driver support. ok, enough 'facts' hehe. anyways, who would wanna spend the money for a ti500 when they can get a retail 8500 for just a little over $200 (from dell). thats just silly.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Never said the Nvidi's products come out perfect, but come on now!!! I got the proof in my store! Seriously, what ATI did was put out a product that should have been held off for a few more months until they had at least half way decent drivers. They arent even that.

As far as DVD and 2d goes, I do think that ATI has the advantage there, in the less expensive cards for sure, but on a Geforce 3 series, now we are talkin about miniscule details at best. I see them both run DVD movies flawlessly, colors out of the box go to ATI but using a simple color correction program like 3D colorific cures any lack of clarity or color the Geforce may lack out of the box, but this seems to vary from vendor to vendor(Gainward comes to mind with bland colors)as a stock PNY Verto card matches the RAdeon. ANyway, we can keep the argument going, but if you want to continue it and you happen to be in NH, then come by my store and see for yourself, bring some games or whatever u feel will prove your point, you may be shocked at what you find. THe only thing I c right now that ATI has going for it is the $100 dollar price difference. For people on a budget this may be the ticket, but with real drivers, not what they currently have out, and I dont see them putting out good drivers anytime before xmas at least. Youll be waiting for quite a few months before they do get good drivers going, and by then, we all know Nvidia will have their next chipset out which will be setting the standard once again. ATI just doesnt have the ability to compete like they used to. They are losing this battle in the pockets(where the money is for R&D)pretty quickly.

[Cisco Kid]

Ritteri&Bubbles,

As you see the person who started this thread owns a 8500. He has found all features to work incl smoothvision, couple of features do not work. ATI will release a driver in the next 4 weeks.

ATI does have the better 2 d video 3 d clarity and qualtiy and dvd playback thats a fact. All reviews back this comment up.

Also $100 is a big difference for a video card and with the way cards become obsolete or out of date why would you spend over 300 for a ti500.

the Radeon 8500 will outlast the Ti500 in technology features and it will the type of card that will last the average user longer so he can avoid having to buy a new card. Do a few frames really matter, no they do not only to the hardest core gamers, but for the average nope.

With the drivers the way they are the 8500 still competes fairly decently. Price , future performance/current performance, 2d video , dvd playback cause alot of people do watch dvd via their 17, 19, and 21 inch monitors hooked up with 5.1 digital sound cards, they clearly have the edge.

I have owned geforce line and I would have to say the 2d video quality was fuzzy and no where near as good as an old rage fury I had, and this was an ASus v6800 32 DDR Geforce deluxe. Now I no the ti is a few generations ahead, but why should I have to use a separate colour prog to have the 2d quality of a nvidia match a ATI card outa the box.

I would much rater save the $100 myself and put it towards some other pc gadget, and have a pretty darn good video card and the best video card once drivers are optimized. Nvidia has been doing the same thing themselves it is just covered up...

I just plain out do not see spending $100 more for what amounts to performance gains that probably to me would not be that noticeable unless I gamed alot, but for real world use I would give the edge to ATI and thats what it is a slight edge imo....

Cisco Kid:D

[Kingslayer]

This is the way that I look at it.

Why should I pay $100 more for inferior 2D, color, and DVD support? Why should I pay more for 20fps more? Why should I have to save an extra month to buy a card that isn't much better than the 8500? Just because everyone else is?

Not.

I will buy the 8500. I will save that $100 and settle with better 2D and color. Why in gods name would I spend more money on 20Fps when both of these cards will run any game smooth. I'd rather invest in looks at that point.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Better 2d and color is not necessarily so, that all depends on the Vendor of the Geforce3 Ti chipset. People who have been in this industry know that. Actually nothing in this post has been PROVEN at all. Smoothvision may work, but not very well and at a big performance hit too. It is PROVEN though that ATI is the poor man's performance card, AT BEST. Take a trip down to NH and I'll show you how good the 8500 is compared to a Ti500, in 2D,DVD, and games. Its a PROVEN POINT though that ATI has to disable features and "blend" high performance with low visual quality to even come close to a Nvidia product. Please somebody explain to me this link. Nobody will because this card is inferior and needs cheesy "optimized drivers" as they call it, to even look decent next to a 2 Ti200 card.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/default.asp

This review site doesnt lie, and neither do my displays with both cards running on identical systems. Its junk currently. Sorry kiddies, bring back the argument when ATI can figure out how to use their product.

[Angry]

To me this debate is like art.

Different eyes see different things.

Same as a book.
Different amounts of imagination produce different opinions.

[Cisco Kid]

Ritteri&Bubbles,,

http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev=rad8500/index.html

Here is a link , not biased one way or the other just an objective look at the 8500

bottom line is they believe that value is the best available for performance, and in time with drivers corrected it will be a very good card. I believe you will see a huge improvement in the cards performace with the next drivers and I expect they will appear shortly say in the next 4 weeks from what I have read..

Cisco Kid

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Cisco Kid: Here are some quotes from your link to back up what I have been saying all along. All you ATI lovers, read this juicy info:

The drivers provided by ATi enabled pretty thorough tweaking of numerous settings. What was dissappointing was that, in our testing, it appeared that the SMOOTHVISION™ feature, touted by ATi as being superior to traditional FSAA, was not functioning. Sure, you could toggle the slider to your desired degree of SMOOTHVISION™, but in games the only difference we witnessed was a significant slow down in framerate without any visible benefit graphically. We still saw plenty of jagged edges present.Wow this is a great feature, makes me want to get rid of my Ti500's killer framerate capability!
In the past months we have received several complaints from our readership regarding issues they were experiencing with the 2D image quality of their newly purchased GeForce3 product. Unfortunately, we did not experience nor could we recreate any of these issues in our lab, Its called incorrect refresh rate of the driver card or the monitor 99% of the time, save money and get a decent monitor, or learn to read FAQ compatibility guideswe came across a couple of issues. The first such issue we discovered was that while you can set separate resolutions for each monitor on the fly, upon a reboot both monitors will default to the lowest resolution. Furthermore, we did not successfully manage to execute the feature that allows for Windows to be maximized or minimized to a specific window. We had little luck in assigning applications to a specific monitor as well. When attempted, our system, running Windows 2000, would hang. This is unfortunate because this would have been a pretty cool tool for workstation useAnother feature that doesnt work like it should.........
as found to be the case with the RADEON 8500 in general, driver fixes are needed in a hurry to make this product competitive and, more importantly, stable. Like I have been stating all along, worthless buggy drivers, I just love playing games that lock up and crash dont you????
After reading the reviews that trickled out onto the net last week from respectable review sites, my preconceived notions of the RADEON 8500 were replaced with feelings of disappointment over the published bencmark results. I had been secretly hoping for the RADEON 8500 to be a true "GeForce3 Ti500 killer". Unfortunately, if those sites are to be believed, which I think they are, then the RADEON 8500 was turning in some lackluster numbersYeah, and on my demo machines with REAL GAMES PLAYING the Radeon gets crushed in terms of performance AND reliability by the Ti500
The first test up was 3dmark2001. Much to my vex, 3dmark2001 crashed consistently. Unable to execute the benchmark in its entirety,A Radeon crashing?!?!?!?!?! NO!!!!!!!
In GLMark, the RADEON 8500 gets a mad spanking by the GeForce3 Ti500 under lower resolutions, but then redeems itself at resolutions of 1280x1024x32 and above, but is still trailing behind nVidia's flagship to the tune of only a couple of frames-per-second. What is most interesting about the 3dmark scores is that even though the RADEON 8500 soundly outperforms the Ti500 across the board of theoretical testing, especially by tripling the Ti500's "High Polygon" (8 Light) scores, it still loses the bout in the 3dmark Nature demo. And with the lastest detonator drivers out now, the Ti500 crushes the Radeon in EVERY test! After all is said and done, the only thing that really matters is how a card performs in the games you play.Or in most people's cases, how it crashes!!!!
Across the board, the GeForce3 Ti500 defeats the RADEON 8500Like I have been saying, and how everybody who sees them both head to head at my store says too!
It is important to mention that this is a brand new product and its drivers will need time to mature. Boy, do they need to mature!Yup, like Ive been saying all along, this card should never have been released till ATI gets a decent set of WORKING drivers for this "BETA" card
There appears to be a growing concern over ATi's shipping clock frequncies for both OEM and Retail. Our good buds over at HardOCP addressed these issues in an editorial not too long ago. Basically, it turned out that ATi was shipping OEM boards at a lower clock frequencyOnce again, people getting burned by ATI....... In terms of gaming power we were very pleased with the RADEON 8500's numbers, with this one major caveat; in all of our benchmarks, save Quake III and RTCF, the RADEON 8500 crashed at least once. Sound like a broken record?????
This is indicative of a piece of hardware with poorly written drivers.Broken record?????
because the RADEON 8500 did crash frequently, as I mention a few short sentences ago, we scored it only 2.5/5 for Reliability.Broken record????
Unfortunately, the poor state of the drivers does force us to reduce its overall value, because whether or not ATi is capable of providing functional / stable drivers is yet to be seen. Broken record???

Broken record????? Broken record???? Broken driver???? Broken Driver???? Get the picture???? Get the picture???? Get the picture???? Get the picture???? Get the..........

[Angry]

Man, drop it.
I was enjoying this debate up until u started downright murdering this card.
You are not going to get any customers here, you are not going to convince people other wise.
Yes you may and in most cases be right in with the fact that teh Radeon 8500 should have been released a little later but they like nvidia wanted to get the card out before christmas.
And they did it, but it didnt work out smoothly.
And, teh fact you even quoted, a few frames behind teh GF3 500, some people will take the card like that, specificly if its cheaper, you know drivers will be improved.

Every single card out on the market has its good points and bad points. Most people realize this. (not that im saying you dont now)
Also, this christmas through spring I will be building 3 computers, 1 with ATI Radeon SDR whish is what I have right now and im very satisfied with its visual quality.
another with Gainward GeForce2 Ti/500 XP VIVO Golden Sample and third ATI Radeon 64 DDR vivo

Now you may ask why Im not getting all ATI or Nvidia...its because I see strong points in ALL of the cards.

Ok im done had to blow some steam, hit me with what you have.

*edit* spelling

[Kingslayer]

Why are people blaming the difference in OEM and Retail clock speeds on ATI.

HELLO!!!! It's OEM......

Did people forget what OEM is all of a sudden. Call Microsoft and tell them you have a problem with your OEM copy of XP and they'll tell you to get bent.

[funnyperson1]

i agree with Kingslayer people really shouldnt be yelling at ATI for this whole OEM fiasco because ATI doesnt even make thsoe cards.....all they do is supply the gpus.....

[Zuck Gou :)]

Ritteri, I can't remember, but have you ever owned an ATI card?

Because most of us who support the Radeon have owned a Nvidia card(geforce).

I know you have a store with a demo playing side by side etc....but have you ever gone home and played with an ATi card as your main card?

I personally notice the difference between Ati and the Geforce lines picture quality, even though you say there isnt much of a difference, I just cant agree with that from experiene. I've never had a Ti500, though, so...

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Sorry, but what ATI did was wrong with changing the specs of the different cards. You dont see NVidia penalizing you for buying OEM by detuning their cards do you????OEM cards should basically be just the cards without all the free software, basically just a bare card. It would be like Windows selling XP OEM that couldnt use NTFS file system or disabling half the features that makes it worht buying in the future. Lame move, and lots of people are ticked by it, and I dont blame them. If Nvidia did it, I would feel the same way. Ati may not have made the cards but they should have put a clause into a contract stating the cards had to be made with these MINIMUM specs. THis is what Nvidia does, and it works so that everybody gets a good card regardless of brand bought.

Angry: as far as "murdering" the card goes, i didnt do a thing at all, I just brought up valid points and quoted text given to me by other people. Basically Im just throwing their own arguments back into their faces. Isnt that what a "debate" is to begin with????

Hey I sell this card too, and when ATI gets their own heads out of their asses and put up some decent running drivers I'll gladly restate my position on them gladly, but I think its wrong putting out an incomplete product, just for the sake of keeping up with other companies. All it shows me is that they are not up to speed with Nvidia, and putting out a "beta" product proves this point. If people are intent on buying ATI great! Im sure devoted ATI fans will WAIT for a proper product to come out. But to put out a product that isnt rdy or even close to it for the sake of making sales, is kinda wrong dont you think???? THere are the good folks like us who may be informed, but there are vast higher numbers of people out on the streets who go to the store to get a great video card that will work properly out of the box presently, not 3 months down the road. Can anybody argue this fact??? I dont think they can. I mkean the whole point of this card coming out is that its supposed to be vastly superior to any present Nvidia product at a lower price point. The price sure is lower, but being superior??Its not even as good presently. And there is the possibility that it may never be as good. The only way that it can be as good or even visially better is in the hands of the software engineers that ATI employs. And that my friends, is not necessarily a good thing. ATI's achilles has always been the software dept. They personally should hire some of Nvidia's employees for some help on this one!:cool:

Zuch: yeah from time to time I have used an ATI product for some testing, or fun etc. I personally have found that as a whole the ATI cards are better out of the box for desktop(2d) apps in terms of clarity and colors. Notice i said out of the box. This clarity though has to do with proper knowledge of your monitors capabilities,gamma correction,Hz,contrast,brightness etc. Normally each video cards output signal to a monitor is going to be different, so you have to have a basic understanding as to how to optimize your monitor to the cards signal, this along with the correction utilities your card already comes with. People dont realize the importance of these issues. Many sites that "review" cards do though, thats why you never hear them griping about 2d or DVD qualities, as all current cards now give excellent 2d and DVD results, its really not an issue anymore. But I have noticed that some Nvidia cards out of the box, look like the colors are washed out or bland compared to others, while the ATI cards look bright and colorful right away. Some of this is due in part to the "default" output signal of the card itself, and all of this can be corrected to the point where you cant tell one card from the next pretty much. This is the common misconception that is currently stating that "ATI is better at this and Nvidia is better at that". To be honest, they all can put out great 2D and DVD quality, and then it comes down to 3d abilities. And this is where drivers come into play. Card is no good without good drivers and software that supports the features.

[funnyperson1]

to tell you the truth i never buy the best and newest because with video cards they get old soon......if i were in the market right now i would get a 7500 listen to what Guru3D said:


quote:
ATI just made a statement that new drivers will be released mid-November that fix these issues. When ATI will get a grip on it then and only then they can become the true competitor towards NVIDIA.

quote:
Final words: don't let all the negativity, accusations and rumors on the web get to you .. this is a great product.

man, i shouldve waited before getting a new vid card...

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Funny: Ya know.I dont buy the latest card either...they're given to me by my distributor!!!!:p But it gives me a great unbiased approach to knowing where the real deal is at. When ATI is able to get some good drivers out, Ill reevaluate what was said in this thread, but until then the GeForce3 family is king of da hill. And its not me saying it either, its the actual cards themselves telling me that. But if anybody wants to come down to my place so I can kick ur ass at Need For Speed Porsche Unleashed to test out all the latest goodies, feel free!

Peace!:cool:

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Sorry, but what ATI did was wrong with changing the specs of the different cards. You dont see NVidia penalizing you for buying OEM by detuning their cards do you????OEM cards should basically be just the cards without all the free software, basically just a bare card. It would be like Windows selling XP OEM that couldnt use NTFS file system or disabling half the features that makes it worht buying in the future. Lame move, and lots of people are ticked by it, and I dont blame them. If Nvidia did it, I would feel the same way.



Hmm, lets see.

Microsoft did this. It's called XP home. XP home can't run SMP and can't log onto a domain. Microsoft hasnt advertised this, this had to be discovered.

nVidia does do this. They just rebadge it, give it a different name, take $50 off the price and throw it to the nVidia brainwashed. And they love it....

The only reason that people are whinning about ATI doing it is because it has nVidia by the nuts. They did this exact same thing with the Radeon 64DDR when it came out. And they did it to the retail ones. The retail 64DDR's come in three different clock speeds. Surely a store owner as yourself knows this. But this point is never brought up because ATI wasnt a big contender. Now that they are, everyone is rushing out to point out its flaws.

How quickly everyone seems to forget that the 8500 smacked the GForce3 in it's own benchmark. 3DMark2001. A program that was written around the nVidia chipset. A program that was up until now, your default benchmark.

Now you hear the same thing. Now that the ATI is taking the lead on 3DMark2001 everyone says "It's a synthetic test, it doesnt really count" Yeah, well a month ago it was the test that everyone used and loved. It was the test that every review site agreed is industry standard in doing tests.

God I hope that when ATI gets it together they obliterate the GForce. My god I'm going to point and laugh.

[thestramel]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
It is PROVEN though that ATI is the poor man's performance card, AT BEST.

Taking this statement at face value. Poor men don't play games (perhaps poor children would be more accurate). They probably don't have a computer to begin with.

Bottom line. Who cares which is faster. What matters is stability and acceptable playability in games (30fps or so). Have an ATI Radeon 64mb vivo and I haven't any experienced any of the problems you've described. Then again this is in Win98se not Win2k. So you get a zillion frames per second in quake and 1 million marks in 3dmark2001 with the Geforce. Good for you.

I understand that a hardware store would stock what is going to sell. That's just smart business. But can you honestly say that it's not profitable to include ATI's product line in your store (if you even actually work at a store at all)?

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Well as for me working, I dont "work" like most people do Im sure, its more like "overlook" the store!:p

As for ATI's product lineup, it is obviously profitable to carry some of their stuff (Basic video cards etc) as we do sell them in decent quantities, we do carry their stuff! And since the neighborhood that our store is located near is very well off financially we tend to cater to kids with a bit of money(or at least parents who dont know the value of a dollar anymore)besides our usual business clients. THis being said, our Nvidia lineup is what we sell the most of for the gaming community. Its our hottest sellers(Geforce 3 and 2 cards)with the Radeon cards taking the back seat in terms of numbers sold. But the reason behind this is obviously the online BB communities, test reports etc. But what seems to make the final decisions 9 out of 10 times are our test rigs at the front of the store, all 4 rigs(2 AMD,2 INTEL)have a clear plexi side window with a stat sheet next to them going over all the hardware,price,and current drivers used. The kids,adults,gamers etc are encouraged to use the machines to their hearts content, fiddle with them,tune them,update them, load in their own games, you name it. They can then do a 100% direct comparison between the 2 to see what they want to get, or what they think is worth the money. Instead of getting 2nd hand info from biased people on the net pushing what they bought, they get to see with their own eyes what the real deal is.

You can only deduce so much from articles and reviews, but when you can do a direct head to head comparison between 2 units at the absolut best, it makes the decision a whole lot easier!

How quickly everyone seems to forget that the 8500 smacked the GForce3 in it's own benchmark. 3DMark2001. A program that was written around the nVidia chipset. A program that was up until now, your default benchmark

Ummm no Radeon smacked NVidia by degrading all the textures in their driver program by combining high and low res texels. When this benchmark is run in high quality res mode, the NVidia kills the 8500.

Broken record?? Broken record?? Seriously, when new drivers come out in 4-5 months I said I would reevaluate my position on this. Until then, if you want to make a valid argument, come visit my store and show me with your own games and programs how the Radeon is better, but pointing fingers on the threads cant prove a thing.

If nobody believes me, then go to a local computer store and have them load up 2 identical computers side by side one with a Radeon, and one with Any Geforce Ti500 and then tell me the results.

[Dagon]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Yeah, its called Any Nvidia GeForce Chipset! LOL!:D

On a serious side, no I dont know of any, tellin ya, your going to wait quite a bit before that card does what you want it to do(unless u just bought it for benchmark scores), so I would sit tight and be patient.:eek:


Give it up already shhhesh, we all know you're opinions by now.:rolleyes:

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Well as for me working, I dont "work" like most people do Im sure, its more like "overlook" the store!:p

As for ATI's product lineup, it is obviously profitable to carry some of their stuff (Basic video cards etc) as we do sell them in decent quantities, we do carry their stuff! And since the neighborhood that our store is located near is very well off financially we tend to cater to kids with a bit of money(or at least parents who dont know the value of a dollar anymore)besides our usual business clients. THis being said, our Nvidia lineup is what we sell the most of for the gaming community. Its our hottest sellers(Geforce 3 and 2 cards)with the Radeon cards taking the back seat in terms of numbers sold. But the reason behind this is obviously the online BB communities, test reports etc. But what seems to make the final decisions 9 out of 10 times are our test rigs at the front of the store, all 4 rigs(2 AMD,2 INTEL)have a clear plexi side window with a stat sheet next to them going over all the hardware,price,and current drivers used. The kids,adults,gamers etc are encouraged to use the machines to their hearts content, fiddle with them,tune them,update them, load in their own games, you name it. They can then do a 100% direct comparison between the 2 to see what they want to get, or what they think is worth the money. Instead of getting 2nd hand info from biased people on the net pushing what they bought, they get to see with their own eyes what the real deal is.

You can only deduce so much from articles and reviews, but when you can do a direct head to head comparison between 2 units at the absolut best, it makes the decision a whole lot easier!



Ummm no Radeon smacked NVidia by degrading all the textures in their driver program by combining high and low res texels. When this benchmark is run in high quality res mode, the NVidia kills the 8500.

Broken record?? Broken record?? Seriously, when new drivers come out in 4-5 months I said I would reevaluate my position on this. Until then, if you want to make a valid argument, come visit my store and show me with your own games and programs how the Radeon is better, but pointing fingers on the threads cant prove a thing.

If nobody believes me, then go to a local computer store and have them load up 2 identical computers side by side one with a Radeon, and one with Any Geforce Ti500 and then tell me the results.

actually that was done in QuakeIII the ATI smacked the Geforce in 3Dmark all by itself.....

[Cisco Kid]

Ritteri&Bubbles

"And since the neighborhood that our store is located near is very well off financially we tend to cater to kids with a bit of money(or at least parents who dont know the value of a dollar anymore)besides our usual business clients. THis being said, our Nvidia lineup is what we sell the most of for the gaming community. Its our hottest sellers(Geforce 3 and 2 cards)with the Radeon cards taking the back seat in terms of numbers sold.


Bottom line is why can you not agree that for the price and performance the radeon 8500 for the average user is the better buy caue we know the driver issue will be sorted ut and the average person is gonna make use of their video card for maybe 2 -3 years on average??

We all know that the ganes that come out will not demand more than a P3-450 or even a P2400 with a decent video card to be played,

cisco Kid

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Funny: Where did u get that notion??? The Radeon didnt even come close to beating out a Geforce Ti500 in the Quake 3 demo, in fact it didnt even beat out a regular Geforce3 or a Ti200. In fact the bench score that came out was an inflated score with 8 bit and 16 bit texels interlaced with 32 bit texels in low and medium resolution so that its memory could be freed up to post "better benchmarks" but when done with REGULAr drivers, like the ones ATI supplies you with, the scores are more in tune with A Geforce 2 Ti. You should read this article fully here:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/radeonquack/page3.asp
It shows how ATI gave "benchmark drivers" to all the folks who reviewed this card. They were caught cheating. If Nvidia did the same thing with their drivers their benchmarks would be astronomical! How about reading this whole thread before sticking your neck out with information that isnt correct.

Cisco Kid: Well if you too read my comments earlier, you would have noticed that I did say I would reevaluate my statements towards this card when AND if they do get out some good drivers to take advantage of what the hardware can potentially do. But ATI has never been good at keeping their word. And word has it that some of the features (Like smoothvision etc)may never be able to be fully enabled in this card because of the memory constraints. They should have included this card with 128 megs of onboard memory for smoothvision, considering how cheap the card is compared to the Geforce, they could have added the extra RAM and still keep the price well below a GeForce, but didnt. This was something that they screwed up on. The card has all these great features that are bottled up because of not having enough RAM onboard. The next generation Video cards from Nvidia this spring and summer are going to have 128 megs of onboard DDR. ATI should have by all rights done this with their current card. Regardless of the fact, I can only say a card is a good bargain if it works properly, and for $250 A Geforce 2 Ti and Geforce 3Ti are better alternatives IMO. But the best alternatives are what the people in my store choose. It happens to concur with my opinion, thats why I sell tons of Nvidia products, as does everybody else.

[Default]

Just to let ya now this was NEVR MEANT TO BE A DEBATE!!!!

I simply posted for your information i could realy care less weather you think it is a good or bad card.

[Angry]

This does look pretty good for having buggy drivers dont you think?no of course you dont.

[Kingslayer]

And thats one of the worst 3dMark2001 scores yet. ATI didn't lower the quality for 3dMark. It was done for Quake. And if you read the whole story, you will notice that this is done by looking for "uake" in threads. This has absolutely nothing to do with 3dmark.

And nVidia puts out cheater drivers to. Only they cheat the consumer.

That is one question that has been constantly asked, yet has never been answered by anyone. Especially nVidia fans. They out right ignore it.

"Why does nVidia always offer drivers that increase performance, why dont they just put out one driver, that increases performance to it's maximum?"

And by not doing this, they are cheating the consumer. This is the exact reason that I will no longer run anything nVidia in my system.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Angry: Yes those 3d synthetic scores are good by all means, but why cant they keep up currently in visual quality and fps on real games?Or keep the card from crashing consistently? This is what matters in the end doesnt it?Hey, I know the hardware is in place, but utilizing it is showing to be harder than what ATI thought originally, if even at all.

I just ran real quake 3 on both systems this morning with the Ti500 and 8500. The game at 1024x768,1280x1024,1600x1200 all res modes run in 32bit color looked very choppy(it did smooth out a bit at 1024x768)indeed and crashed a total of 9 times within 30 minutes. The Ti500 was silky smooth at all res modes and people thought you could put your hand inside the monitor. The card didnt crash 1 single time, and in fact has yet to crash,lock up or show any artifacts at all and a customer is glued to the screen right now as I type this up. We keep the game at 1600x1200 in high res mode. Game looks incredible. When I can do this with the ATI product I will be happy too. It just means ill sell more of them.

Kingslayer: Well please show me an article where Nvidia puts out "cheater drivers". I dont call drivers that are available to the public, cheater drivers at all. As the idea behind a driver is to maximise and squeeze as much performance and reliability out of a product as possible. You say they hold back drivers??? Yeah, they held back the Detonator 21.81 drivers a whole 2 weeks to concur with the 8500's release. Those drivers werent perfect either, thats why they released the 21.83's 2 weeks later to fix the few bugs they did find with them. But see, they keep on developing new drivers to maximise their hardware. We have a choice between dozens of drivers to see which works best on our hardware config. ATI doesnt allow this luxury at all. THey are still trying to get drivers out that will work PERIOD.

As far as offering drivers to maximise total performance, they do, but integrating stability to run countless different hardware configurations makes it a bit harder than u think. And besides, with fresh minds, come fresh ideas, they are always thinking of new ways to shorten up code and compress data to increase performance, this is something that is an ongoing practice, and it always will be. Thats why the hardware configuration(the card itself) must be software friendly. The ATI's card isnt as software friendly a design, hence longer wait times to get drivers, this has always been their big problem.

[Angry]

Okay, I think Im starting to see something here. One reason I was told that nvidia putz out drivers overall is they find certain thing in teh card that can be done to improve the performance.

I long time ago while I was in the Tribes 2 in game chat, they were discussing various versions of drivers for the Geforce card, and others ranging from the ATI's to the Voodoo series from 3dfx. The basic message was taht different drivers version worked best with different system setups, ranging from AMD and intel. Newbies were being told by older guyz what drivers they should try and how to set them up. The newbies would go, try them out and come back with teh results, sometimes tehy worked sometimes the resulst were good, others bad, but overall the main point was that different drivers had different results. But also in most cass teh latest drivers worked best. Now, the Detonator XP's are the best regaurdless of system setup. I use the beta versions of teh drivers for my Radeon SDR and they work teh best for me, i have ven tried 3rd party drivers with not so good results. Tribes 2 particuly likes them as it runs much smoother.

Anyway Im done, I will wait and see what this card does, because if you think about you have to realize invidia needs some good competition.
I also cannot wait to get my Geforce 2 Ti 500 Golden sample, ATI Radeon 64 DDR vivo and Radeon SDR systems built, im going to have some fuuuunnnnn.....just gota find soem good but cheap monitors....teh serach continues to go where man has never gone before. (no im not nutz, im sitting in history class infront of a 733mhz G4 mac, with OS 9.1, makeup work basicly and I have done all my work so I get to surf teh web or whatever. Laterz)

[Kingslayer]

Once again, my question goes unanswered.

New drivers come out almost every month. Are you telling me that technology comes within this month to gain the 20% performance gains that everyone is claiming with the Detonator 4's.

Fresh minds bring fresh ideas? Are you telling me that the job security at nVidia is so bad that they get new people every month.

I don't think so. On both statements.

You aren't going to compress anything within a driver that will yeild a 20% increase. nVidia is the only company that can bring on this kind of an increase with only a driver. No other company has accomplished this.

ATI
Matrox
3DFX

None of them. Only nVidia.

But saying that ATI doesnt give you the luxury of picking and choosing your driver to match your performance?

Umm the cards been out only 2 weeks. How many drivers do you want in that period. Well their on the third set.

And if nVidia would put out their drivers with max performance instead of hosing the consumer you wouldnt see the amount of drivers you see from them either.

[Default]

Ritteri&Bubbles

you forgot to mention that the stability issues is only with the latest version of Quake3 i have the original and it runs 136FPS @ 1280*1024*32 and that is with 4*4 AA and its still smooth!! I have first hand experience with this card now in an incredible field of areas and i can only conclude that overall ATI gives you more for your money.

[Angry]

Originally posted by Kingslayer
Once again, my question goes unanswered.

New drivers come out almost every month. Are you telling me that technology comes within this month to gain the 20% performance gains that everyone is claiming with the Detonator 4's.

Fresh minds bring fresh ideas? Are you telling me that the job security at nVidia is so bad that they get new people every month.

I don't think so. On both statements.

You aren't going to compress anything within a driver that will yeild a 20% increase. nVidia is the only company that can bring on this kind of an increase with only a driver. No other company has accomplished this.

ATI
Matrox
3DFX

None of them. Only nVidia.

But saying that ATI doesnt give you the luxury of picking and choosing your driver to match your performance?

Umm the cards been out only 2 weeks. How many drivers do you want in that period. Well their on the third set.

And if nVidia would put out their drivers with max performance instead of hosing the consumer you wouldnt see the amount of drivers you see from them either.

Ok, sorry i said anything.
I was just saying that I personaly have had better results with different drivers than other people use. I mean...these are BETA drivers..every one else claims they are unstable, im having no probs so far.
Anyway the 8500 does need to get its drivers up to par, BUT that doesnt seem to be the case with Defualt, go figur.
And about the Detonator XP's, I formed that conclusion from reviews of cards being revied with the Det XP drivers.
I wish I worked for ATI, that way I could know a few things...
hmm...thats a considerable job, video chipsets...sounds like fun.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Angry: I think me and you are getting to click on the same page here a bit, at least I know that you have some clue as to what Im saying, good luck with your projects! Sounds like some serious fun!

Default: I am sure there is a set of drivers that will run quake, as ATI pretty much optimized its drivers so at least 1 game would work decently, but I guess for you to fully understand you have to see it side by side with a Ti500 presently to see the huge difference though, especially in texture details. At 1600x1200 there is no comparison, 1280x1024 the Ti stomps it, but at lower hits they start to look similiar kinda.

Kingslayer: You are going to have to learn some things about software codes my friends, because yeah a simple driver upgrade can easily make a 25-50 percent increase in performance.

Take for example the ol' original Playstation. When it came out developers were getting out games that they thought maxed out the consoles grafx capabilities, the next year afterwards they found new ways to take advantage of the systems hardware in software code to improve speed and grafx abilities, the year after that, they did it again, and we were seeing effects,fps, and textures that everybody thought would be impossible to display on a measly console with only a few megs worth of RAM. Its the same for video cards, people come up with completely new ideas on how to get from point A to point B on current hardware. Like the playstation, it is not capable of displaying full texture shading effects, but they were able to pull off these effects a few years ago with a few games seamlessly, how were they able to do that???? Through software coding, and knowing how to remap the hardware chips that it did employ. NVidia does the same thing with their software drivers.

Another case in point were the old VoodooII Monster grafx PCI cards that ran in SLI mode(Scan line interleave)After Nvidia came out with their new TNT lineup of cards that hit the shelves, 3DFX came out with new drivers that bumped up the fps 30%, and a 16bit color enhancer that made their cards look like they were able to display 32bit colors while running in their 16bit color mode which was their max capability.

So to put it simply yes a software upgrade can account for a HUGE increase in performance for a video card, or sound card, or memory enhancement etc.

When you finish HS or College and after you take some software coding classes you will learn just how much can be accomplised by a "simple" driver.

[funnyperson1]

Actually the det XPs dont work with my Windows XP.....im still using 12.90...not that much of a performance dip so im not that irked but it just freezes up and says "Error: nv4.disp"

[funnyperson1]

guys, remember that this is a discussion on hardware and not personal attacks...keep the peace:)...its amazing how worked up people get about hardware....

[Angry]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Angry: I think me and you are getting to click on the same page here a bit, at least I know that you have some clue as to what Im saying, good luck with your projects! Sounds like some serious fun!

thanks man, just out of curosity, where is your store at?

Anyway, I ~~>guess<~~ I was right about drivers improving performance, but I belive what KS was saying was that, why dont people like nvidia go ahead and put out drivers that alrdy max out the cards speed?

The only reason I can think of is because, in the example Ritteri provided, 3dfx, and nvidias Tnt line up, 3dfx may have saved the drivers so that they would still give nvidia a run for its money, after they came out with thier tnt cards.
oh and personaly I have a Voodoo2 running with my ATI RadeonSDR, Athlon 550 @ 611, under win2k I play Tribes 1 with it and its sliky smooth, but teh card does run hot though, I plan to get another one for SLI and the use of 1024x768 res.

Well laterz guyz. This was a fun debate, learned a few things while at it.

[GERRY136]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Yeah, its called Any Nvidia GeForce Chipset! LOL!:D

On a serious side, no I dont know of any, tellin ya, your going to wait quite a bit before that card does what you want it to do(unless u just bought it for benchmark scores), so I would sit tight and be patient.:eek:

LOL

[GERRY136]

Originally posted by Kingslayer


Hmm, lets see.

Microsoft did this. It's called XP home. XP home can't run SMP and can't log onto a domain. Microsoft hasnt advertised this, this had to be discovered.

nVidia does do this. They just rebadge it, give it a different name, take $50 off the price and throw it to the nVidia brainwashed. And they love it....

The only reason that people are whinning about ATI doing it is because it has nVidia by the nuts. They did this exact same thing with the Radeon 64DDR when it came out. And they did it to the retail ones. The retail 64DDR's come in three different clock speeds. Surely a store owner as yourself knows this. But this point is never brought up because ATI wasnt a big contender. Now that they are, everyone is rushing out to point out its flaws.

How quickly everyone seems to forget that the 8500 smacked the GForce3 in it's own benchmark. 3DMark2001. A program that was written around the nVidia chipset. A program that was up until now, your default benchmark.

Now you hear the same thing. Now that the ATI is taking the lead on 3DMark2001 everyone says "It's a synthetic test, it doesnt really count" Yeah, well a month ago it was the test that everyone used and loved. It was the test that every review site agreed is industry standard in doing tests.

God I hope that when ATI gets it together they obliterate the GForce. My god I'm going to point and laugh.

ROCK ON BRO!!!!!

[GERRY136]

Originally posted by Pinky
9 times out of 10 a long thread in Video and Sound is a Nvidia / Radeon debate. And this one is no different.

If I can spare us all some hurt feelings and wasted words, let me summarize what the last 50 debates on this subject concluded:



LOL

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Angry:Its not as simple as "having drivers that MAX the cards potential right off the bat" As they normally do, but only to the knowledge of the software engineers at the time, but new codes come out all the time, many of which can be implemented into the current drivers functions that use less line of code and less RAM to execute the function to begin with, hence the ability to upgrade and improve performance from hardware that physically stays constant. You should ask your computer teacher about this, Im sure he can explain it to you in much better terms than I am capable of.:D

Email me if you want info on my store.:D

[Default]

could this be a post record??:D i mean wholey crap!!! 5 damn pages!!

[Default]

not to mention 600+ views:cool:

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

:D

[Kingslayer]

And a raped thread that went from a statement to an arguement.

[Zuck Gou :)]

But is it over?

Dun dun dun....

[Zuck Gou :)]

Hey Kingslayer when'd you get a 7200? Hows that working for ya? Better than a 32/64 mb DDR?

[funnyperson1]

ATI just redid their naming system the 7200 is the same as a 64ddr VIVO and the 7000 is the VE....

[Zuck Gou :)]

I dont think so, 7200 are SDR I thought?

[funnyperson1]

hmmm....i think the 7000 is SDR and the 7200 is the standard DDRVIVO board.....

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Argument?? No arguments here, I'm just correcting all of you brainwashed kiddies who think that a canuck product is even remotely as good as a superior American made product built "ford tough"!

Here is one last article for the folks who made the wrong decision getting an ATI product. Maybe you folks will learn and lay off the beer and pot until AFTER you make a purchase!:D

http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=radeon8500&page=1&mscssid=&tp=


Kingslayer: Noticed your wife has great taste just like me! Give her my email addy when she realized how inferior you and your "tastes" are! Never unzip your "floppy file" lest u have something worth showing!:D :p

[Zuck Gou :)]

I just checked

7000 is 32mb DDR

7200 is 64mb SDR

Both are still using the original Radeon core.

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Argument?? No arguments here, I'm just correcting all of you brainwashed kiddies who think that a canuck product is even remotely as good as a superior American made product built "ford tough"!

Here is one last article for the folks who made the wrong decision getting an ATI product. Maybe you folks will learn and lay off the beer and pot until AFTER you make a purchase!:D

http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=radeon8500&page=1&mscssid=&tp=

the only thing that i dont like about nvidia is that there are too many features for me to screw with that make my games look like crap and not gain any speed:rolleyes: .....i finally resolved stability probs (ithink) by dling the drivers straight from powercolor.....while i have pride in America i dont think its right to deride canadians or their products.....as for the 8500 at this point i wouldnt buy it, i wouldnt but a Ti either, id probly only buy after a year or so when according to you the 8500 may live up to some of its potential....also i would like to point out that noone in this thread except for the person who started it has actually bought the 8500 so they have no purchase to back up.....hmmm i think thats my last post on this topic.....remember when it all comes down to it its just hardware.....im not trying to flame or insult you just putting my thoughts out there....

[Default]

come on people don't stop now!! we are almost past the 100 post mark!!:D

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Maybe KingSlayer's wife will get involved! With me that is!:D

[Default]

YES!!! YOU DID IT!!! 100 POSTS and 6 PAGES !!! THATS INCREDIBLE!!

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Maybe KingSlayer's wife will get involved! With me that is!:D

She said she wanted a meal not a appetizer...

[Quizno]

Originally posted by funnyperson1
ATI just redid their naming system the 7200 is the same as a 64ddr VIVO and the 7000 is the VE....

nope.

the 7000 has 32mb of DDR, and it does use the same mobile core that the VE did(no t&l, one less rendering pipeline)....but it doesnt have any dual display features and i believe no tv out.

the 7200 has 64mbs of SDR, it has a full radeon core with charisma engine......but it doesnt have any VIVO features.

[Zuck Gou :)]

Well lookie this, an 8500 LE

With a little tweaking this baby will probably be right up there in the 8500 range.

Now for the price...well I dont know yet. But it'll be cheap, just watch. :D

I think I'm gonna upgrade baby!

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Ouch!:(

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Zuck Gou :)
Well lookie this, an 8500 LE

With a little tweaking this baby will probably be right up there in the 8500 range.

Now for the price...well I dont know yet. But it'll be cheap, just watch. :D

I think I'm gonna upgrade baby!

LE is just a fancy name for the OEM 8500 cards the everyones been c0omplaining about....

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Quizno


nope.

the 7000 has 32mb of DDR, and it does use the same mobile core that the VE did(no t&l, one less rendering pipeline)....but it doesnt have any dual display features and i believe no tv out.

the 7200 has 64mbs of SDR, it has a full radeon core with charisma engine......but it doesnt have any VIVO features.

Ok then, I have a 64DDR Vivo, what drivers should I have, because the ones I get from ATI identify my card as a 7200.

[Cisco Kid]

The new ATI drivers identify the Radeon 64 DDR vivo as a 7200 Radeon in Powerstrip. dunno why it does that but I noticed it to.

I gotta get sanding my Blue Orb....

cisco kid

Kingslayer or anyone else who knows , btw when attaching ramsinks using superglue in the corners, do you put thermal paste between the ram and ramsinks as well.???:)

[Eliminator]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Argument?? No arguments here, I'm just correcting all of you brainwashed kiddies who think that a canuck product is even remotely as good as a superior American made product built "ford tough"!

OMG...LMFAO !!!

We all know what Ford stands for ... right ?!?!?

"F%#@ed Over Rebuilt Dodge"

I personally like Chevy :D

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Cisco Kid

Kingslayer or anyone else who knows , btw when attaching ramsinks using superglue in the corners, do you put thermal paste between the ram and ramsinks as well.???:)

Yep. Put paste in between the ram and the ram sinks.




Oh and the "Ford Tough" thing...most Fords are made in Canada.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Well its no worse than the secret behind ATI's number rating system for the Radeon cards. 8500,7500,7200........crashes per day..............:eek:

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Well its no worse than the secret behind ATI's number rating system for the Radeon cards. 8500,7500,7200........crashes per day..............:eek:

No. I have actually contacted ATI on their naming convention. It is done as a spoof on the number of useless drivers that nVidia puts out per week.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

Good comeback!LOL!:D

[Zuck Gou :)]

Yea, my LE is identified as a 7200 too. I think it's just the drivers apply to both or something.

[funnyperson1]

Originally posted by Kingslayer


No. I have actually contacted ATI on their naming convention. It is done as a spoof on the number of useless drivers that nVidia puts out per week.

nice....lol...weve gone from product disses to wife disses to penis disses to company disses, all we need now is a classic mom joke....

Yo momma so stupid, she bought a Geforce....
Yo momma so fat she lost a race to ATI....
:D

[Quizno]

yeah, my 64mb ddr vivo is identified as a radeon/radeon 7200 as well. i think its just because they all use the same drivers.

that info i posted is from ati's site, check the specs on both of them.......

[Kingslayer]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
Kingslayer: Noticed your wife has great taste just like me! Give her my email addy when she realized how inferior you and your "tastes" are! Never unzip your "floppy file" lest u have something worth showing!:D :p

Well at least his floppy will format into a hard drive....where yours.....yours just stays floppy.

from, Kingslayer's wife

[Kingslayer]

You're the one that got the wife involved....not me.

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

KingSlayer: LOL!!! Its all in good fun to me!:D


Tell your wife: It may "format" into a HD, but when that harddrive is "fully formatted" and equates to less than "3 gigs in size" it doesnt allow you to have that much fun really.

I may only have a "floppy drive" but its over "12 gigs" in size! You can do a whole lot more with a 12 gig floppy, than a 3 gig harddrive!:D

[krakerman]

this thread had degenerated too far... perhaps the crude sexual references might be dropped? surprisingly there are youngsters who frequent this forum.

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Ritteri&Bubbles
KingSlayer: LOL!!! Its all in good fun to me!:D


Tell your wife: It may "format" into a HD, but when that harddrive is "fully formatted" and equates to less than "3 gigs in size" it doesnt allow you to have that much fun really.

I may only have a "floppy drive" but its over "12 gigs" in size! You can do a whole lot more with a 12 gig floppy, than a 3 gig harddrive!:D

LOL, all the HD talk is pretty funny.

[RocknBull]

Hey Ritter

You sound like the two guys around my area that own the comp shops here. Tring like H@LL to force their opions and set ways on every one who walks in the store.

and that is why i BUY ONLINE screw them guys, hope their stores rot in h@ll

and thats my opion

Have a nice day:cool

[Kingslayer]

Kingslayers wife here

I may be new to computers, but even I know there's no such thing as a 12Gig Floppy.

Kingslayer here.

His dreams on a floppy are worse than his dreams on a GFarce!

[Maximus Nickus]

One word on this thread
in...con...clu...sive
summed up in one.LOL:D