ti 500 - or - 8500

[aircooled]

It's really a toss-up. They are both great cards. If your computer is nothing more than a gaming rig then either card will be fantastic. As stated before, the ATi card does DVD and any other 2D a bit better (some will argue otherwise, and I hear the Ti does 2D quite well).

My advice would be to find the best price on either card and get the one that suites your budget better.

 

[vash]

Bump^ from an Nvidia Ti500 user here. I game heavily and I want 99.9% chance that any title I buy today will be working right out of the box. I'm also into play the latest and greatest games that tax the system like crazy -- Quake3 and Operation Flashpoint just love my Ti500.

vash

 

[BenAfk]

I purchased a Radeon DDR 64 mb card several months ago, primarily due to the hardware DVD support. Upon upgrading to Windows XP 2 months ago, I have had nothing but grief with ATI drivers. ATI has not offered much in the way of support. I am having 2 primary problems:

1 After installing ATI's newest XP drivers (Oct 16) I was unable to set the refresh rate of my monitor above 60 hz. I have a Mag innovision 21" (MX 21F) and have installed the most recent drivers. The stupid thing is that the Windows XP refernce drivers work just fine. After 3 calls to ATI technical support, I finally got through to someone who knew what they were talking about and discovered that this is a "known issue" with non DDC monitors and there is no fix.

2. I decided to put up with the display running at 60hz, long enough to try a few games. Open GL support for this card is very poor. I have had a lot of difficulty running Open GL games based on the Quake 3 engine (Q3, RTCW, and MOHAA). The games usually crash after a few minutes, if I can even get them started.

3. DVD playback in windows XP. ATI finally released a DVD player that is supposed to work with XP. I downloaded and try to install this player. The install program requires that you put in a code from the original ATI cd that comes with your card. Because my card was an OEM version, the ATI cd key (it is an ATI provided CD) I had was not supported. ATI's solution was that I had to pay $10 to buy a new cd that had a supported CD key. Talk about Bullshit.

After my ATI problems, I would not recommend an ATI card to Anyone. Nvida releases drivers more frequently and has better 3d performance. Ati does have better DVD support but it is not enough without anything in the way of decent Customer Support.

Todd Ashton:|

 

[nitrousninja]

Ben I think you have an install problem not an ATI one. I've never had an issue with my Radeon 64,8500, or VT Geforce3. The refresh rate is inherent to all cards in the NT kernel and the are fixes for it. Check rage3d.com for those.

 

[BentValve]

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



275/550? Is 275 DDR the equivalent to 550 SDR, because my Radeon 8500 is 275/275....are Geforce 3s measured by the SDR equivalant or are they actually in the 500 range DDR?
I did notice that at Visiontek's website that under the memory speeds it says SDR equivalent so if you took one of their Ti500 and looked at the memory speed with Powerstrip it would be far less than 500 or whatever the rating is?

 

[Dimitri]

I concur with those that say you can't tell the difference looking at the screen. Go with the features you want and/or the money you want to spend and you should be happy.

 

[ErikaeanLogic]

Well, I have 'em both and I think that the 8500 is nicer in all-around feature set (the above posts already list them, I won't bother repeating 'em). If you have a 21" monitor, you'll notice the 2D at 1600x1200, otherwise the diff is pretty negligible. If you play back alot of vids the 8500 is clearly superior. If your sole purpose is to gave a great gaming card, then I'd save even more cash and get a VisionTek GF3 Ti200, which will probably overclock to within spitting distance of the performance of either the Ti500 or the 8500.



Just the usual $0.02.