Official Radeon 8500 Thread - Share your experience!
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2001 10:36 pm
I'd love to do a full review of this card, but have neither the time nor the real expertise, so here's a dedicated thread with my experience so far
other 8500 users please jump in and let us know what your esperience has been
i found the forums at http://www.rage3d.com very useful
shuttle ak31 rev 2 (kt266)
512 micron pc2100
10x133fsb voltage 1.8 (1.2 axia)
toshiba dvd, creative 48 x, iomega 12x cdrw
intel 10/100 nic
enermax 350w
onboard sound
18 mb wd ata 33
12 mb wd ata33
both on a promise ata66 pci controller
radeon 8500
ms kb, logitech mouse
win2k/win me dual boot
2t memory setting
1) price. I got this from the dell deal for $215 shipped. I had to wait 5 weeks to get it, but what the heck. this was a retail box, came with truform enabled counterstrike and related games cables, including a dvi>regular adapter which allows use of two monitors.
2) installation - it was ridiculous and I still don't know what the problem was. I think there was somehting left in the registry from some other vid card or radeon tweaker or powerstrip or something - i have both hard drives partitioned in half, one partition for each os, and there's a lot of junk in there - original installs are ~ a year old. I've just never had a need to really clean it up. also on this system i switched from a p3 800/bx system to a ddr/amd system by simply installing the new mainboard and drivers - it's worked pretty well since day 1 so i haven't worried about it
i was running an aiw and a 64 meg vivo previously in this system. the card before the 8500 was an aiw. i uninstaled the aiw, standard vga, etc. I ended up with a system that would only run in 256 colors, anything more that that on the 8500 i would get the image, say of the curson, spread horizontally across the display maybe 6 or seven times. ditto with other items inthe display and the screen would not refresh the old images ---- took me a while to blind click into the settings so i could get it to 256. i would be able to swap the aiw back in and everythin would be fine. irelaoded everything i could think of - 4 n 1, directx, etc and the latest radeon drivers. i would sometimes get an error message from the ati desktop utility that some ati service was not running.
I really didn't have a lot of time to fool with it on any given day so this went on for a couple of days.
i finally uninstalled every utility program that might be affecting the vid card (powerstrip, radeon tweaker, etc.), used regedit to remove every reference to ati that i could find, and reloaded the lastest drivers from the ati site
bingo - works fine since then. I honestly have no idea what the problem was, precisely.
ati should include an uninstaller utility like matrox used to do
visual quality - seems equivalent to the radeon aiw/vivo although the frame rate is noticeably faster
i haven't had time to play with the dvd - since i resolved the install issues, i have not noticed any visual artifacts such as tearing etc. this is a pretty limited sample since all i have looked at is 3d mark 2000, 2001, diablo II, counterstrike, empire earth demo.
dual monitor setup - this card comes with the hydravision setup which is supposedly an excellent dual monitor setup - i have not had time to play with
speed - obviously this is a lot faster than the aiw/vivo
i am running the card a stock, which i assume is 275 ( i checked and it did have the -36 ram), but until i can figure out what caused the prior problems, i am not going to install any kind of tweaking utility - i didn't get to use the card the first 3 days i had it and we're not going there again
3d mark 2000 1.1 72xx 3d marks
3d mark 2001 73xx 3d marks
with system as stated above
i had a lockup in 3d mark 2001 when i was running the system at 1.4, but no issues at 1.33
overall impression - so far i like this card a lot and find it to be good value at the dell price of $215 . heck i paid more than this for a geforce 1 ddr no to long ago
the visual quality is good and the card feels very smooth and there doen't appear to be much accelleration/decelleration
i have honestly not even fooled with all the truform/anti aliasing, etc. this is all plain vanilla, factory default stuff
the reviews that i have read show this card pretty close to the ti 500 and this is obvisouly with immature drivers, since this card has more theoretical ponys under the hood. I saw some modest improvements with my other radeon cards as the drivers matured, and i wouldn't be surpised if that is the case here - i'm really not all that concerned- this has plenty of horsepower for me and i am getting tot he point where i want to spend what little time i have for puter on the baords or actualy gaming, not trying to recover from some overclock attempt. this goes plenty fast . ... on the other hand, i wonder if i could set up a cs server on my home lan, figure out the hydravision, and play against myself........
right now i'd give it 8.5 out to 10, mostly because of the install problems - but they may have been inherent in my system - check ferengitech to see if the dell deal is still on - at $215 it's a good value, i think.
other 8500 users please jump in and let us know what your esperience has been
i found the forums at http://www.rage3d.com very useful
shuttle ak31 rev 2 (kt266)
512 micron pc2100
10x133fsb voltage 1.8 (1.2 axia)
toshiba dvd, creative 48 x, iomega 12x cdrw
intel 10/100 nic
enermax 350w
onboard sound
18 mb wd ata 33
12 mb wd ata33
both on a promise ata66 pci controller
radeon 8500
ms kb, logitech mouse
win2k/win me dual boot
2t memory setting
1) price. I got this from the dell deal for $215 shipped. I had to wait 5 weeks to get it, but what the heck. this was a retail box, came with truform enabled counterstrike and related games cables, including a dvi>regular adapter which allows use of two monitors.
2) installation - it was ridiculous and I still don't know what the problem was. I think there was somehting left in the registry from some other vid card or radeon tweaker or powerstrip or something - i have both hard drives partitioned in half, one partition for each os, and there's a lot of junk in there - original installs are ~ a year old. I've just never had a need to really clean it up. also on this system i switched from a p3 800/bx system to a ddr/amd system by simply installing the new mainboard and drivers - it's worked pretty well since day 1 so i haven't worried about it
i was running an aiw and a 64 meg vivo previously in this system. the card before the 8500 was an aiw. i uninstaled the aiw, standard vga, etc. I ended up with a system that would only run in 256 colors, anything more that that on the 8500 i would get the image, say of the curson, spread horizontally across the display maybe 6 or seven times. ditto with other items inthe display and the screen would not refresh the old images ---- took me a while to blind click into the settings so i could get it to 256. i would be able to swap the aiw back in and everythin would be fine. irelaoded everything i could think of - 4 n 1, directx, etc and the latest radeon drivers. i would sometimes get an error message from the ati desktop utility that some ati service was not running.
I really didn't have a lot of time to fool with it on any given day so this went on for a couple of days.
i finally uninstalled every utility program that might be affecting the vid card (powerstrip, radeon tweaker, etc.), used regedit to remove every reference to ati that i could find, and reloaded the lastest drivers from the ati site
bingo - works fine since then. I honestly have no idea what the problem was, precisely.
ati should include an uninstaller utility like matrox used to do
visual quality - seems equivalent to the radeon aiw/vivo although the frame rate is noticeably faster
i haven't had time to play with the dvd - since i resolved the install issues, i have not noticed any visual artifacts such as tearing etc. this is a pretty limited sample since all i have looked at is 3d mark 2000, 2001, diablo II, counterstrike, empire earth demo.
dual monitor setup - this card comes with the hydravision setup which is supposedly an excellent dual monitor setup - i have not had time to play with
speed - obviously this is a lot faster than the aiw/vivo
i am running the card a stock, which i assume is 275 ( i checked and it did have the -36 ram), but until i can figure out what caused the prior problems, i am not going to install any kind of tweaking utility - i didn't get to use the card the first 3 days i had it and we're not going there again
3d mark 2000 1.1 72xx 3d marks
3d mark 2001 73xx 3d marks
with system as stated above
i had a lockup in 3d mark 2001 when i was running the system at 1.4, but no issues at 1.33
overall impression - so far i like this card a lot and find it to be good value at the dell price of $215 . heck i paid more than this for a geforce 1 ddr no to long ago
the visual quality is good and the card feels very smooth and there doen't appear to be much accelleration/decelleration
i have honestly not even fooled with all the truform/anti aliasing, etc. this is all plain vanilla, factory default stuff
the reviews that i have read show this card pretty close to the ti 500 and this is obvisouly with immature drivers, since this card has more theoretical ponys under the hood. I saw some modest improvements with my other radeon cards as the drivers matured, and i wouldn't be surpised if that is the case here - i'm really not all that concerned- this has plenty of horsepower for me and i am getting tot he point where i want to spend what little time i have for puter on the baords or actualy gaming, not trying to recover from some overclock attempt. this goes plenty fast . ... on the other hand, i wonder if i could set up a cs server on my home lan, figure out the hydravision, and play against myself........
right now i'd give it 8.5 out to 10, mostly because of the install problems - but they may have been inherent in my system - check ferengitech to see if the dell deal is still on - at $215 it's a good value, i think.