Tom's 8500 Review!

[Pocatello]

Wow, this is the card to get if 3dmark2001 is your favorite game .

 

[NFS4]

<< Wow, this is the card to get if 3dmark2001 is your favorite game . >>


LOL, I hear that chimps like watching the lobby scene over and over again

 

[GL]

<<

<< <<Sure he's arrogant sometimes>>

Ask Harvey how arrogant he is.

Exactly. I stopped going to Tom's site when I heard about the comments Tom made to Harvey. :disgust: >>


Umm, must have missed that one. What did Tom say? >>



I think it was when Tom made a bunch of Anti-American comments after a trip to the U.S....must have been around '98 or '99 when this happened.

Anyways, shame on ATI. Looks like I may be going back to Nvidia in due time. Their drivers are clearly holding the card back yet again.

 

[NFS4]

<<

<<

<< <<Sure he's arrogant sometimes>>

Ask Harvey how arrogant he is.

Exactly. I stopped going to Tom's site when I heard about the comments Tom made to Harvey. :disgust: >>


Umm, must have missed that one. What did Tom say? >>



I think it was when Tom made a bunch of Anti-American comments after a trip to the U.S....must have been around '98 or '99 when this happened.

Anyways, shame on ATI. Looks like I may be going back to Nvidia in due time. Their drivers are clearly holding the card back yet again. >>


Well, to tell you the truth, I could care less about his American bashing. I go there for the commentary and benches on hardware.

 

[SnowPunk98]

looks kinda like garbage

 

[Pocatello]

Exactly, who cares if he doesn't like America. Although the majority of his readers, I'm sure, are Americans.

 

[MoobyTheGoldenCalf]

<<

<< Wow, this is the card to get if 3dmark2001 is your favorite game . >>


LOL, I hear that chimps like watching the lobby scene over and over again >>



When I get my 8500, I'm gonna start a 3DMark2001 CLAN! Wanna join???

 

[Snoop]

Will ATI EVER change?

 

[Chumster]

Exactly, who cares if he doesn't like America. Although the majority of his readers, I'm sure, are Americans.

Yup. To be fair - Americans poke fun at Europeans all the time. And anyone who expresses their sorrow on their webpage for what happened on Sept 11 is ok in my book. Moving on...

The card looks like it has potential - whether or not ATI will show us what it can do remains to be seen. All joking aside, I find it odd (in a conspiracy sort of way) that the card does so well in 3DMark2001 yet under performs in real games. One could almost think that they were writing the drivers for the benchmark.

Chum

 

[AGodspeed]

1. The current driver set 4.13.7191 for Radeon 8500 does not support SmoothVision, ATi's multi sampling FSAA solution, but only the old super sampling FSAA instead, which allows only inferior FSAA performance. In fact, SmoothVision has not yet been enabled in any driver, but it is supposed to be added by the end of this month.
2. The current driver is known to have issues with Athlon systems, but is supposed to run fine with Pentium 4 systems.
3. Tests showed that the new WindowsXP-driver does not perform stable. It is also showing inferior 3D-performance compared to Win9x or Win2000.

Those are the 3 reasons why I won't be getting an 8500 anytime in the near future. I don't see ATi fixing all these issues anytime soon. They've messed up in the past, and it's been over two months and ATi still hasn't been able to get it right with their drivers. I swear to god, if ATi would just come out with "decent" drivers for this series of cards (ones that work under every OS and all AMD + Intel CPUs) then the 8500 would be the no brainer of the century. But again, ATi seems to be faltering in an area they're not known for performing well in. ATi should start investing in software, because without it, you just have a fat piece of high clocked silicon sitting around.

why does he think that it is clearly a driver issue...

Uhh, look at the facts listed above. Tom only had a limited amount of time to test the 8500, so he doesn't have the time to prove it. He certainly isn't just making it up, but I'm sure he'll edit it by today and have his usual in depth reasons on the 3 issues listed above.

The sentence: Nvidia makes the best drivers is simply not true.

Where's the proof for that. I feel confident in saying that my GeF3 has much better driver support than my DDR Radeon ever did. What are you comparing Nvidia's driver support to. If it's ATi, I know from experience that Nvidia simply does a better job, and a large majority of people here can vouch for that as well. I know you're pissed about ATi still having driver issues, but that's just how it goes. Maybe ATi will surprise us all and fix each and every one of their issues.

 

[BuddyHolly]

Nice sounding card so far. I will still stick with a Geforce 3 as my next upgrade because they have always given so much more in the are of drivers while ATI has always struggled. Speed is great, but it should have been on the store shelves by now with final drivers that don't show giant potholes in certain games.

 

[MasterHoss]

Wow, ATI wasn't kidding about their 8500. Who thinks ATI will get their act together and start releasing drivers more frequently and also FIX bugs? I honestly don't think they'll suddenly start. Too bad--great card, bad drivers.

 

[NFS4]

Now this is some funny stuff. All the ATi fanboys are crying foul!

http://rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=75e9abbb697f8d9c03caf0ddcf13acf0&threadid=33585392

 

[Leon]

<< Ya! He took that "Nvidia approved review site" logo that nvidia was paying for off his front page! >>



Funny, everybody accused him of being ATI biased after R8500 preview. Also, did you notice huge ATI banners here, at Anandtech? Does this mean Anandtech is paid by ATI???

Use some logic dude

ATI fans should be thankful that Tom used Me instead of XP. It puts R8500 in favorable position. Otherwise, it would be something like this:

GeForce-Aquamark-50fps
R8500-Aquamark-would not run

Leon

 

[HappyPuppy]

The current driver is known to have issues with Athlon systems

Soooooo, I'm sitting here looking at a small fortune in parts I've just bought to build my 1.4GHZ Tbird system and Tom says there are issues with Athlon Systems? Tell me it ain't so, Babe.

Should I cancel my order with Dell or just tough it out and wait for (hopefullly) a driver update that WON'T have issues with Athlon systems?

I've put 3 months research into this new rig and this is the first doubt I've encountered.

 

[Mem]

<< Too bad--great card, bad drivers. >>



Sadly this has always been ATI`s problem ,only time will tell if they will ever get it right.

 

[Jagercola]

If I wanted hardcore 3d gaming only, it would be a tought call between the 8500 and Ti-500, but I want so much more. After seeing everything the 8500DV All-In-Wonder has, I'm sold on it even if it's not the end all be all of gaming cards. I just wonder how long it's going to take before we see an 8500DV AIW surface and if it's going to have the same 3d abilities as the standard 8500 card (Heard a rumor the 8500DV AIW has a lower memory and clock speed) ANyone shed some light on the 8500 DV AIW? Thanks -Will

 

[AGodspeed]

Funny, everybody accused him of being ATI biased after R8500 preview. Also, did you notice huge ATI banners here, at Anandtech? Does this mean Anandtech is paid by ATI???

I agree with Leon on that statement. If anyone believes Tom to be biased based on the ads up on his site, then by that same token Anand is biased too for having Radeon 8500 ads up.

Anyone who calls Anand or Tom biased based on the ads on their sites should be taken out and shot. Well no, not really. But your logic will definitely be questioned anytime you start mouthing off.

 

[FuManStan]

I think Tom did an alright job with his quick review. He gave what people wanted to see, which was if the shipping version of the 8500 could beat the Ti500. The fact that the performance is below NVidia's is an issue because the card on paper is capable of so much more. While the features of the card are well enough to attract people, it seems like the same situation with the Geforce 2 cards and the Radeon.

 

[Zarich]

This reminds me of what the ps2 could do based on paper.. reality is a tad differnt though huh.

 

[whitelight]

from the 3dmark2k1 scores, the radeon8500 has enormous potential to kick butt... for those who got on the $200 dell deal, i think it's well worth it. hopefully ati can break it's poor driver history.

 

[JellyBaby]

Shakka, when the walls fell.

ATi = poor video drivers. Seems to be their achillese (sp?) heel. Has been for years. One would think by now they would have realized it, kidnapped a few nvidian driver programmers, and made amends.

 

[Sugadaddy]

Let's wait for other reviews to surface. I'm not saying Tom's isn't good, but it's tough to make a judgment based on a single review with not that much benchmarks...


It might perform better in ME than any other OS, BUT HOW DO WE KNOW THAT? I know it would be very unlikely to perform better in 2K/XP, but personally, I don't give a crap about WinME. Tom says he had a very small amount of time to test it, but he is still able to say it has problems in XP, works OK in 2K, etc... So he benchmarked with these OSes, yes or no??


ATI might not have a good rep as far as drivers go, but give them a little chance here. Tom also doesn't mention where he got the drivers, so they're probably just an interim build and not a future final version. Anand is waiting for true final drivers with all the features enabled to review the card, and it's the right decision IMO.

 

[NFS4]

<< Shakka, when the walls fell. >>


*(!@&%_#%!#@*^%^&_*#^&#*^#^_*

HAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

Darmak @ tinagra!!

 

[nippyjun]

I find it funny that some people still think that if something "looks good on paper" that it will actually perform up to the expectations. On paper a V8 engine should always beat a V4 or V6, but looking at real world performance there are a lot of other factors beside the engine size that count for performance.