Geforce Decision...Which One

[Clocker]

Awesome performance, they tell me .... will the drivers work? Crossed fingers.

Probably a wise choice, Clocker, at least in value for money terms. Which Gforce is it most closely equivalent to, and what price do they go for?

To concur with Merc, I've heard the 8500LE with the latest drivers is on par with the GF3 Ti500 which goes for about $60 more than the 8500LE.

C

 

[Tea]

Hoolie Doolie! You're telling me a GF III Ti500 goes for ~ US$107 + ~US$60 = ~US$170 = ~AU$330? That's astonishing. That amount will buy you a quality Gforce II Ti over here, and leave enough change for about twelve ice-creams. Assuming you like ice-creams, which at this time of year I don't.

 

[Mercutio]

All the more reason that the Radeon 8500LE is a bargain, too.

 

[SoBizarre]

Huh? Just how much RAM do you think it needs to do a given resolution? For example, 1024 x 768 x 16.7 million colors?

horizontal * vertical / 8 * color depth in bits

2,359,296 bytes for 24bit
3,145,728 bytes for 32bit


Cheers,
SB

 

[LiamC]

What I consider to be a fairly insightful look into ATi and NVIDIA

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002q2/ati-nvidia/index.x?pg=1

Notes (my analysis, not TR's):
In the synthetic tests (3DMark), the ATi looks pretty impressive - mainly because 3DMark uses a lot of different texture maps. The ATi can do more textures per pixel per pass than the NVIDIA offerings. The downside is that in the real world, most games work within the NVIDIA limits so this is largely a theoretical victory. DOOM III should show the ATi cards in a good light as I believe that it is using 7 textures - which will mean an extra pass for the NVIDIA cards v ATi. This review is also a couple of months old so ATi may have scores a better performing driver since. The ATi looks to be a GeForce3 Ti 200 competitor in stock config - but the price is right...

 

[CougTek]

IIRC, early Unreal 2 benchmarks also put the Radeon 8500 above the GF3 and in the same ballpark as the GF4 Ti4400. Future games should favor the Radeon 8500 a lot more than the current generation, because the accent is restarting to be put on heavy textures.

 

[Clocker]

Some other reasons I chose to try the Radeon were:

• The excellent 2D quality I keep hearing about
  (How will this compare to my GF2 GTS 32MB Elsa Gladiac?)
  
• It is on the Tyan compatability List
  
• Full DX8 Compatibility

Comments?

C

 

[Clocker]

THis card seems to be working fine. I placed the order Wednesday and received the card on Friday. Using the latest ATI Drivers. Had the update the BIOS on my Tiger MPX to the latest beta for my system to even boot with this card in it.

2D seems about the same as my Geforce2 GTS or maybe I just need a nicer monitor. Haven't played any games yet. Maybe in a few days when I have time.

Any idea how hot these cards run? I'm assuming the fan will die in about a year and I will have to replace it. I will want a nice passive solution at that time (like I had on my Geforce2 GTS) if possible....

BTW: This is indeed a 275hmz memory/250mhz core card from ATI not a non-ATI made underclocked card..Great deal for $99 plus $8 for 2day shipping

C

 

[Pradeep]

i'm considering an upgrade to an ATI 8500 AIW or a GF4 4600.. 64mb is fine is i can get a card as such. i currently have a gf2 gts and i would consider a jump to a gf3 or low spec gf4 big enough to warrant an upgrade. that's just me though.

Jake, the 8500 AIW has pretty slow ram compared to the non AIW version. That said, the functionality of the video capturing / wireless remote makes it worth while anyway.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Extremely interesting article dug out by your e-pal Wizzy ( :wink: ) at X-bit Labs...
IT MIGHT CHANGE YOUR MIND!
http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/ti4200-rad8500le/

 

[Prof.Wizard]

...I know and understand that FPS hasn't got anything to do with RAM's capacity, but as you rightly said with the bandwidth. However modern, texture-rich games can be limited by exactly that amount. There's no doubt about that...

From the X-bit Labs article:
As for the graphics memory size by NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200, 64MB vs. 128MB, there is no single answer, like for NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200, which simply didn't need any extra memory at all. The graphics cards with 128MB graphics memory are more widely spread today and the developers will certainly find a way to use this memory to their advantage. It means that very soon, within the life cycle of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 we may see new games requiring more than 64MB of memory. So far, all the benchmarks except Codecreatures, didn't request these 128MB of memory on GeForce4 Ti4200.
Gentlemen, start your engines!

 

[The JoJo]

There is a test of Ti4200 cards over at anandtech, if someone is interested...

 

[Stereodude]

There is a test of Ti4200 cards over at anandtech, if someone is interested...

Good thing no one told him to wait for Parhelia. Oh, wait... Some people did

Stereodude

 

[Jake the Dog]

i ended up getting a leadtek GF4 4600. it has a massive wrap around heatsink and dual fans so it should keep the beast cool enough. i never would have considered using the words heavy and video card in the same sentence but this card is heavy.

coupled with my current XP2000+ cpu i get:

 

[Groltz]

3DMark2001 SE---Build 330

Detonator v29.42

 

[Jake the Dog]

nice one Groltz! what hardware are you running?

 

[Groltz]

nice one Groltz! what hardware are you running?

Thanks, Jake.

Visiontek Ti4600, Athlon XP 1900+, Epox 8K3A.

That benchmark was taken with the card clocked at 320.9Mhz Core and 756Mhz Memory (DDR) via RivaTuner. (I think this answers the question Handruin asked me about how well the RamSinks were working :wink: )

The CPU was running at 1825.55Mhz (10.5 X 173.86)

--Steve

 

[Handruin]

I'd take that card as a hand-me-down. That card has a score 2x the GF3 I have now. I can't keep up. :roll:

:mrgrn:

 

[James]

I'm still running a GF2 GTS!

 

[Tea]

No plan to change any of my current video cardsfor the next couple of years. Ahhh, that's two G450s, a G400, two G200s and a Millenium II, I think.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I'm still running a GF2 GTS!

I'm still running a GF2MX on my Athlon, and on this P3-733 right now, a 4Mb Intel one as found in the 815 chipset... (something like the i740 graphics card, only slower)

 

[adriel]

None of those. GF4 Ti 4400 128MB.