64MB GF3 or 128MB Radeon 8500LE?

[JHsu]

Hey all, I'm in the market for a new 3d card, and I now have a choice between two cards, a Visiontek 64MB Geforce 3 for about 100 dollars, and a 128MB Radeon 8500 LE for about 120 dollars...which one should I choose? I know a Geforce 4 is better than both of the cards I'm looking at, but the 128MB versions of the TI4200 are just out of my price range(~160 dollars at www.fticomputer.com), and I need a new 3d Card now, I can't wait to save up money. Any suggestions on which card I could choose? Also, for about 130-140 dollars I could get a Visiontek 64MB Geforce 3 TI500 is it worth the extra dough? My system specs(if it helps) are:
Athlon XP2000+
Asus A7V333 with 512MB of DDR333
running Windows XP Professional.

 

[Plester]

you need to do a search on this, it gets asked alot. quickly tho - the 8500LE is a slightly superior card tech-wise and a hair faster, the GF3 offers better compatability, i have a 4 year old son and so older games like monster truck madness, NFS 3, lego island, etc, etc, are what get played when games get played, and the GF3 runs them all well and the 8500LE does not.

 

[JHsu]

Thanks for the help, but I've heard that the Radeon 8500LE(when O/Ced to stock Radeon 8500 speeds) can compete with the GF4 TI4200 on some points, whereas I haven't heard how the GF3 performs in comparison to the GF4....also, by reading some people's posts, it seems that the Radeon 8500LE's drivers are pretty good, and should provide speed and compatibility like Nvidia's Detonator XP. BTW, I forgot to mention that the Radeon 8500LE is "Built by ATI", so it's not one of those cheap OEM versions.

 

[Rand]

The full R8500 can hang with the Ti4200 in a decent number of current games, but it still generally falls a bit behind. I havent seen the LE model to cinsistently quite pull up to that level though.

Between the GF3-R8500LE there is no question the 8500LE is superior IMHO.
8500LE is a bit faster, offers a slightly better 3D feature set, better 2D quality, DVD playback etc etc.

Anisotropic filtering visual quality and FSAA performance are the only areas I'd give the GF3 the edge. It's a solid card, the the 8500LE is simply slightly better in almost every respect.

 

[bharris162]

Actually, Sapphire LE's are clocked at 275, one of the highest 3rd party clock speeds, not the slowest

 

[bharris162]

disregard above post, wrong thread...sorry

 

[AnAndAustin]

As already covered you should find LOTS of info in these forums in this subject.

The Rad8500LE is about 10% slower than a full Rad8500. As you know non-ATI (powered rather than built) as well as oem (vs retail) tend to carry lower clocks, use cheaper RAM and o/c poorly, the non-ATI cards have question marks over their '2D' image quality unlike true ATI cards which have excellent IQ. Rad8500LE is simply better than GF3TI200 in everything except AA, even when the GF3TI200's excellent o/c is taken in to account, similarly Rad8500 is easily on par (but not generally any faster than) GF3TI500. 128MB is a distinct advantage in some current games, but will be very important in the newer games, well worth paying a little extra for. Bear in mind the Rad8500LE costs 20% more, but given it has 128MB it is well worth it. The Rad8500/LE cards when compared to GF3 do offer better TVout and IQ while the GF3s offer much better AA. It's very close, most people can live without AA prefering to simply up the resolution anyway, I'd go for the RAD8500LE 128MB. The GF4TI4200 isn't hugely faster than GF3TI500 or Rad8500, but it o/c's MUCH better often reaching GF4TI4400 or GF4TI4600 speeds, if it is too pricey localy then don't worry, but I would imagine the 4200-64MB (which do tend to reach GF4TI4600 speeds) would be in the same price range, and are enormously better than GF3TI500 64MB. To be honest you'll be very happy with GF3TI200/500, Rad8500/LE or GF4TI4200-64/128 so really go for what you prefer, give and take it pretty much evens out.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Links showing gfx card perf with AthlonXP2000+ (or very similar):

TomsHW VGA Chart

TomsHW GF4TI4400/4600 roundup BUT also shows other cards using grey bars

GotApex benchmarks of GF2, GF3, GF4, Rad7500 and Rad8500

AnAndTech 4200 roundup shows GF4TI4200-128 vs GF4TI4200-64

 

[JHsu]

how about the drivers? I've just been talking with my friends, and they say that despite all that ATI's done, their drivers still aren't very compatible with games, unlike Nvidia. What's the deal?

 

[AnAndAustin]

I'd say that's just 99% nVidia bias personally. The biggest slip-up ATI made IMHO was cheating with their drivers to recognise the Quake3 engine and then lower details to up the FPS, of course this was quickly rectified when it came to light, but I was appauled. ATI used to have several issues with their drivers (most game developers ignored ATI and optimised for nVidia), but I would say ATI are right up there with nVidia now, any diffs will be VERY small.

The biggest diffs don't relate to drivers but to hw AA and Ansio perf, GF3 and GF4 cards have much faster AA and much better quality Aniso, ATI have better looking AA (but painfully slow) but much faster Aniso. As also mentioned Radeons have more consistent '2D' image quality, although GF4TI cards now offer excellent IQ too. Another plus for the Radeons is the much better implimentation of TVout, DRIVERS do play a part here, the biggest gripe with nVidia is that they still use 3rd party chips for their TVout and these result in a nasty black border all around the edge, this can be overcome with sw (TV-Tool) but nVidia still do nothing to rectify this in their own drivers. Without ranting on, believe me it all evens out!