ti 500 - or - 8500

[GoatHerderEd]

what is actually the better card? ati, or nvidea?

 

[DKNG]

It really depends what you are using it for. If your a hardcore gamer who wants the fastest frame rates and good drivers then definitely the Ti 500. But if your looking for dual display, 2d quality, and good DVD playback get the 8500.

 

[epod]

You can get the retail radeon 8500 (275/550) at Dell.com for $217 with free shipping.

 

[DARRIN]

I would get the Ti 500. But I mostly game on my puter.

 

[BFG10K]

I'd pick the Ti500 because I primarily use it for 3D gaming.

 

[Mem]

I also think Nvidia drivers are better then ATI drivers so Ti500 gets my vote.

 

[Mustanggt]

I am not sure what the Ti 500 are going for but It was more money than the 8500, I have the 8500 retail and am very happy with it. I get 8650 3d mark scores with 8500 and if I had a Ti 500 I might get 9000 thats not worth paying $70 to $100 more to me. And there nothing wrong with the new ATI DRIVERS!!!

 

[epod]

I was just saying there's a significant price difference, but if you got all the money to shell, then go for the Ti-500. It's overall faster, and if you're only using it for gaming, then it's the perfect card.

But if you want to pay a worthwhile price ($220), compared to whatever the Ti-500 is... $300?.. and care about 2D, DVD, Dual Monitor.. go for the Radeon 8500 (275/550)..

 

[Spike]

Actually, from what I read, the Radeon 8500 is slighty faster in 3DMark2001 over the Ti500, but slightly behind it in *most* but not all games. In higher resolutions, the 8500 is a fair bit better then the Ti500, though neither is signifigantly better then the other. I must admit, I am a ATI fan, but if you want a garunteed preformer with garunteed drivers, then go with nVidia. If you want a 98% chance at getting a good card and decent drivers for cheaper, then go for the 8500. Neither preforms better then the other in any noticable way (outside of benchmarks and exact fps measurements) and both are good cards overall. I chose the 8500 due to money issue ($185) and the fact that I used an ATI product before and loved it. It is really a personal choice, though if you are a smart consumer you might consider the Radeon 7500/GeForce3 Ti200 cards. They prefrom wonderfully and are WAY cheaper then the "top-of-the-line" models. just my $.02

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

<< you want a garunteed preformer with garunteed drivers, then go with nVidia. >>



Hehehe.. he said Guaranteed Drivers and nVidia in the same line. Some of those "guaranteed" drivers for nVidia cards were even more unstable than the ATI ones! Endless Loops BSOD's and the like. But then again, ATI has some shoddy problems with some games and really slow driver updates..

If you are all cashed up - Ti500!
If you are poor (i.e. spent all your money on your system b4 remembering you needed a video card like me ) - Radeon 8500 all the way!!!

 

[AzraelDemitri]

How can I get the retail ATI Radeon 8500 from Dell.com? I've tried going to the site and I can't find where the heck they put that!

 

[nitrousninja]

I had a regular Geforce3 from Visiontek and tried out the 8500. It's still in my system. the desktop looks cleaner at high resolutions, I like the DVD playback, and thier drivers have improved exponentially. Most likely if you put either card in a system I bet no one could tell you which card was installed unless they knew what scores they would get in a benchmark IMHO.

 

[SithSolo1]

I too have an 8500 and it kicks major ass. It gets my vote.

 

[tapir]

I have an 8500 and even though its still in my crappy PIII 500 system (other stuff gets here monday ) I recommend it. I did a lot of research and then basically forced my parents to get me one for Christmas . Honestly, the R8500 has a lot of power behind it, plus it has some room to grow as its hardware specs are actually better than the GF3s.. anyway, the only time you will notice a difference is in a few years when the GF3 Ti 500 runs games at 60 fps and the Radeon runs em at 55.. but honestly, I think by then the driver for the R8500 will put it on par with the GF3 Ti500.

Another thing to consider is that GF3 Ti500s are easily overclocked, whereas my retail R8500 doesnt even have ramsinks but you can always get some if you feel the urge to O/C..

 

[Asghar]

If you want better 3D quality with no blurry textures, then it has to be ATI. I have been VERY dissapointed with the quality of the Geforce3. Yes it is fast, but at the expense of image quality, and enabling Anisotropic Filtering produces a dramatic hit in performance, same as FSAA (still). The ATI Radeon has a much smaller hit in performance.

 

[millsy]

I am using the 8500LE version which came clocked at 250/250 in the UK and it runs quite happily at 275/275.
For the price I paid it does an excellant job and runs everything I have so far chucked at it.
If there is anything that these cards have trouble with then please let me know.

 

[Link]

I've had both GF3 and Radeon 8500. I like both, but since I'm a casual gamer I'm selling my GF3 and keeping 8500.
So far I've had zero problem with both cards.

 

[BFG10K]

If you want better 3D quality with no blurry textures, then it has to be ATI.

ATi sharpens their LOD bias too much which makes screenshots look good but it causes problems with texture flashing and flickering.

Also I assume you tried to adjust nVidia's LOD too?

The ATI Radeon has a much smaller hit in performance.

That's because the Radeon can't do trilinear and anisotropic filtering together. Also ATi's anisotropic quality varies while nVidia's stays the same.

 

[GoatHerderEd]

( I am not sonyboy851, just using his account

Any way, how can you people say that the ati card doesnt have blurry textures? they rigged there driver to get good q3 scores by making the textrues blurry.

And ati drivers are good? HA! If the card iteself is technicly better, why would it not beat the GF3 in benchmarks?

nVidia drivers are updated all the time, and if you still have the GF3 card in a few years, new drivers wil STILL be improving the performance of your card because of the unified driver architechture. If you still have your ATI card in a few years, there will not be any new drivers because they wont care about your card any more.

If your using a GF3 card in your computer, chances are you have a fast CPU (>600MHZ). Software decoding should be great for DVDs.

 

[LuDaCriS66]

<< they rigged there driver to get good q3 scores by making the textrues blurry. >>



So what? Even with drivers that didn't have that "defect", the 8500 still beat any card that was out at the time of those drivers.



<< And ati drivers are good? HA! If the card iteself is technicly better, why would it not beat the GF3 in benchmarks? >>



ATI's drivers are not great but they're good. Nvidia drivers aren't perfect either. Wow, the GF3 beats the 8500 by 5-10 fps. I've love to pay $50-100 more for that.



I personally have a Gainward GF3 Ti200 so I am not biased. I do however think the 8500 looks better visually. Heck, even my old Radeon 64 Vivo looks better than my Ti200... until games come out with pixel shaders.

 

[rickn]

Get a GF3.

 

[SCSIfreek]

wait til they annouce the Geforce 4 and R300 then buy either one cos chances are their price will be coming down shortly


--SCSI

 

[BFG10K]

So what?

So they were blatantly cheating and deceiving the masses, that's what.

Even with drivers that didn't have that "defect", the 8500 still beat any card that was out at the time of those drivers.

No, the Ti500 was out before the Radeon 8500 was.

Nvidia drivers aren't perfect either.

Nobody said they were. But they're pretty close to perfection.

 

[Insidious]

One more trigger finger pointing to NVidia here

 

[nitrousninja]

Anyone who thinks that companies don't fudge things to make them appear better is on some bad crack. The difference is that ATI got caught and NVIDIA didn't. How many times has either company had drivers that ONLY increased 3DMark2001 scores? HMMM could that be because many people are using it to judge which card is better!? DEFINATELY. None of us know what they are doing to get the scores up. They could be bypassing features and we would never be able to tell unless we took apart the drivers line-by-line and knew what to look for. I still say if people wouldn't know which was in their system just by looking at a game or demo.