I got my 8500 about a month ago.
Have problems with picture quality w/ my TV wonder.
Tribes 2 drops to about 3 SPF (yes, sec per frame, runs like a freaking slide show) in win xp, half life also has some jumpy screens at high res.
Running a dual boot now so I can play games.
Is awesome under win 98
Color saturation is fantastic(as compared to my Geoforce2 GTS pro)
DVD palyback is great.
ATI's support sucks ( I miss having a massive support page like 'geoforcefaq.com")
Have yet to find what the optimal bios setting are.
Okay, all that being said, I'm very satisfied with the card. I purchased knowing full well I was buying 'potential'.
I'm more disillusioned with WIN XP then the Radeon 8500 ( other hardware/software incompatibilities).
I went into Best Buy to get the Ti200, but when I compared the that to the ti500 and the Radeon, there was something ti200 didn't list as being supported that the other 2 did( Advanced T&L,DX 8.1? can't quite remeber)