You know, I've seen some damn long descriptions of where people live, and I was just wondering how freakin' long of a location they actually allow you to write in here. Looks like it's quite a bit. Oh well, if the space is here I'll use it!!! :)
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Unfortunately, yes, it's still driver problems. As much as I thought the drivers would be better than this at launch, they still have some problems.
I guess the positive outlook is that they are much better than release drivers for the Radeon last year, and performance compared to the Det4's (something like the 13th release since the GF3 came out) is really pretty decent. In 98/ME the 8500 does quite well, winning some and losing some. In win2k it gets beaten most every time, but not by a large margin (probably less than the boos the Det4's gave the GF3). WinXP is pretty sad, but nVidia's having trouble getting performance up to par there too. It is a brand new OS, and we'll probably see performance go up with all video cards in the coming months.
The biggest dissapointment is the lack of Smoothvision. Sure, the GF3 had broken features at launch (and the Det4's fixed them while breaking another one), but Smoothvision is a major feature. Hopefully it will be enabled in a matter of weeks.
ATi has come a long way in the driver area, but it still has a long road ahead as well.
------------------ Only 30,000 to 40,000 genes in an Einstein, a Michael Jordan, or a Bach? Boy, can that God guy write tight code or what? - David Rudloff
IMO, Mr. Derek Smart is a hypocrite: Only someone who is either (a) lying (b) ashamed of their products (c) just plain ashamed, would hestitate to give out some simple and straight forward information. - Derek Smart, Ph.D.
Well they seem to be getting better with the drivers. They do not seem to have as much compatibility issues as they used too. It just seems that they have only optimized the drivers for a few games and benchmarks. they really need to expand their driver team a bit. nVidia always kills them in drivers, of coarse I always had less trouble with my Voodoo3. Why did 3DFX have to screw up so much with the Voodoo4/5. They should have built off the Voodoo3 instead of their doomed VSA chip. Take the Voodoo3 and ad 32bit color, larger textures double the pipeline, add DDR and manufacture it at 18 micron and it would have smaoked the GeForce256. Oh well. I still wish they could have sold the Rampage chipset to another company for them to release.
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The COMPUTER is your FRIEND!
Happiness is manditory.
AMD Phenom II x4 945 3Ghz | ASUS M4A77TD | 2X WD 1TB SATA 2 hard drive | 2x2GB Corsair XMS3 | nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS | ATI TV Wonder Theater Pro 550 | Antec P-160 case | Antec 650w Earth Watts | LG Blu-ray Super Drive | LG DVD RW | Windows 7 Pro
Yeah... and if my Auntie had bollox she'd be my Uncle
Evolution selected 3DFX for extinction and the same fait awaits nVidia just down the road if they make a wrong turn. Lets hope ATI builds on what we see, as we all need a new cheaper player at the sharp end.
The Radeon does seem to outperform the Ti500 significantly in Anisotropy though. We just need Bitboys to join the party now
It's good to see ATI come out with a good gameing card that can keep up with NVidia. Maybe we all will benefit with faster cards comming out sooner.
For now I am happy with my GForce 3 though.
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2 x P3 1ghz
Abit VP6 Motherboard
1 gig PC 133
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XP Pro
Check out this page. It compares the performance of the Ti500 and the 8500 under ME, 2K, and XP. Aside, from Max Payne (which went from 68 to 57) the difference was less than 3% in all cases.
I would say that the 8500 has potential but it remains to be seen how much of it is actually delivered.
I am also curious to see how the Kyro 3 does. It sounds interesting.
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Friends don't let friends buy P4s.
If you happen to work for a retailer that sells ATI there is a 50% off ATI program called ATI CLUB 3D. It allows you to get the Radeon 8500 for $150 retail and the Radeon 7500 for $100 retail. I know which one I'm getting.
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