Radeon 8500 vs. 9000

[frostgiant]

I am looking to buy a good video card for my new 2.2 Ghz machine. I just have many questions on what is the best.
I was thinking about an 8500, because it does have a bit more power than the 9000 in benchmarks, but it is not DX8.1 compatible and I have heard ATI is phasing it out. If they are phasing it out, that probably means no more drive support, right?
There is also the 9000. It is ATI's new card and I'm not sure if I should get it. There is only a $10 difference between the 8500 and 9000. If I get a 9000, I think I would get a 128MB version though.
Which card should I buy? I was also considering a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, but I have heard those cards are very noisy and I want this computer to be quiet. Are there any "quiet" versions of the 4200?

 

[rbV5]

The 8500 has hardware support for DX8.1, ATI will also continue to support the card as well and the drivers are mature. The 4200 will be faster, and has solid driver support, and the 9000 will have better dual head\video display capabilities, but the drivers haven't exposed all the cards feature set as of yet.

Any of those cards will be great for your rig.

 

[PING]

The new Ati Radeon are nothing but a neutered Radeon 8500. Very much the same as geforce MX to geforce 3. Ati remove the extra texturing unit from the rendering pipeline. Therefore performance wise geforce 4 ti4200 > radeon 8500 > radeon 9000. All are DX8.1 compatible.

I don't personally know how noisy geforce 4 are, but I know how loud the fan on P4s are. The fan on the P4 cpu will definitely drown out any sound eminating from the vid card.

 

[Rand]

Therefore performance wise geforce 4 ti4200 > radeon 8500 > radeon 9000. All are DX8.1 compatible.

Just to clarify something, the GF4 is not DX8.1 compliant. Or more specifically the pixel shader is not DX8.1 compliant, though everything else is.
Doesnt same much difference really, anything that can be done with DX8.1 can be duplicated with DX8.0... DX8.1 is just just a little more flexible/efficient under some scenarios.

The Radeon 8500 is fully DX8.1 complaint, as is the Radeon 9000. The R9000 is nothing more then a more integrated R8500 with half the texel pipes.

Radeon 8XXX driver support is not going anywhere. The Radeon 9XXX uses the same driver source code of the R8XXX series and will be supported for quite some time to come.


Some GF4's do have a rather noisy fan, but personally I've never found it terribly bothersome. Perhaps someone else could comment on what Ti4200 offers the quietest fan.
If noise is a huge factor then you might want to consider a Radeon8500LE. The 8500LE runs pretty far under it's thermal limitations, and power consumption is remarkably low given it's performance. The fan on the 8500LE is almost an extraneous factor intended to give a more 'high end' impression. You should be able to disable the fan entirely and still maintain stability as long as you don't overclock.
Indeed, there are a few third party fanless R8500 should you wish to purchase one that comes default without a fan... they tend to be in relatively low supply though so it might be difficult to obtain one.

 

[CelticDemolition]

grab an 8500 now... quickly! before they stop being produced and the price goes up...

 

[jiffylube1024]

I would recommend against getting the Radeon 9000, it's just and 8500 MX ;-) ... It's up to you based on how much you're willing to spend: get an 8500 128MB now for cheap (around $100), or get a Ti4200 128MB, which is faster, for <$200 .

 

[AnAndAustin]

Rand tells it pretty good.

Even Rad9000pro is inferior and slower to the Rad8500LE and it's only saving grace is that Rad9000 cards can run without a FAN (IIRC, will double check if you wish). Basicly the Rad8500 cards were designed to do battle with the GF3 while the Rad9000 has been designed to do battle with the GF4MX (less capable than GF3). As mentioned noise is tiny compared to the noise of case fans, PSU and CPU HSF. I know Abit use among the quietest fans for GF4TI4200, but I believe the diffs are small between brands.

So simply, Rad9000 is slower than Rad8500LE but runs cooler, if you want speed the Rad8500LE is much better. If you want perf then GF4TI4200 is easily the way to go (Rad8500 aren't far behind AA aside) and I haven't heard anything which suggests that Radeon cards are quieter than GF4TI4200.

 

[BFG10K]

The Radeon 9000 has the same DirectX 8.1 core as the Radeon 8500 has but it only has 1 texture unit per pipe instead of the Radeon 8500's 1 texture units per pipe (4 total instead of 8).

The 8500 is usually significantly faster than the 9000 for this very reason.