Radeon 8500 vs. Geforce3 Ti500 Rant...Maybe a little PC stuff thrown in =)

[thrEEpaGe]

Alright people. Let's set some things straight. First of all, to all you peeps out there who are worried about whether or not your computer can handle JK0, please, please, post your video card. One, if you don't have one, there's no way in hell that JKO will run on your computer. Two, if you have anything less than a Geforce2 (even a MX), JK0 will run less than optimally (dropping below the critical 30fps barrier).

 

Another thing you will have to upgrade (you would be foolish not to) is your RAM &/or motherboard. Now, if you are running a Pentium 2 or lower, I would just go out and buy a whole new system; it would be cheaper than upgrading everything on your computer. However, if you are running something in the 500MHz - 750MHz range (probably a Duron, Celeron, Pentium 3, or a older generation Athlon), you will probably need to upgrade your RAM. If you have 64MB (you either have that or 96MB or 128MB; either way you need to upgrade), go out and buy 128MB of PC133 SDRAM (256MB PC133 SDRAM if your motherboard supports it) (I'm more than positive that your computer supports it- if you want to ask me, just send me a private message on here or reply to this thread). This RAM is very very cheap ($11 for Micron 128MB PC133, $22 for 1 stick of Micron 256MB PC133 SDRAM) for what it can do for your system. This will greatly improve your gaming 'experience!' Now, you ask; why do my games slow down when im in large open areas of land? Well, it's probably due to hard drive swapping. Hard drive swapping occurs when a program is trying to load data onto RAM, and the RAM runs out of space. When this happens, the data in RAM is swapped onto the hard drive, leaving room for new data on RAM. What is the problem with this, you ask? Well, RAM access times and bandwidth speeds (the rate at which it can transfer data) are much faster than that of a hard drive. Hard drives must be physically be written on; RAM is a solid state chip. When you have 64MB of RAM, in a high polygon game or a large open area, you will experience very frequent hard drive swapping. This detracts from the gaming experience greatly! Now, if you upgrade your RAM, say you add 256MB, hard drive swapps will be virtually nonexistant during most gameplay (think about it; game CDs hold probably 650MB or less; not all of that data is being used all at once - most of that room on the CD is being used for levels and textures and such. 192MB, 256MB, or greater will have no problems in the hard drive swapping problem. (Don't get mad if it happens once or twice =])

 

Anyway, if you get your RAM upgraded, you would think that you are set; that's what I want you to think! The party has just begun.

 

The Video Card

 

*ominous drums play in the distance*

 

This is the most crucial piece of equipment in any gamer's PC (unless you are some kind of weird minesweeper addict). This handles most of the computations in games. Let me put it this way; a AMD Duron 750MHz with 256MB of RAM with a Radeon 8500, in addition to other more less-crucial stuff, would beat an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (or 2000+ overclocked) with 256MB of RAM and a TNT2 card. Obviously, not all graphics cards are created equal.

 

There are several "viable" options available, but don't kid yourself. Processor MHz are useless if you don't have a awesome video card. Go for the best you can buy when looking at video cards.

 

ATI

Radeon 8500

ATI is the only real contender to nVidia in the video card business. Even though nVidia has been smoking ATI until the advent of new Radeon 8500 drivers, ATI is starting to present a real problem for the graphics king.

In recent benchmarks, the 8500 trounced the GeForce3 Ti500 in almost ALL benchmarks. In addition to being the better card (at least at the time of this writing), the Radeon 8500 is priced very aggressively. It can be had for under $200 [$179] (a bargain for its performance).

 

nVidia

 

Before the 8500 came along and popped out with new drivers, the GeForce3 and GF3 Ti500 had been stomping ATI into the ground. However, in my opinion, the GeForce3 Ti500 offers little gain in performance over the 'old' GF3 (due to nVidia not increasing memory bandwidth enough). The old GF3 is priced at $199, while the Ti500 is priced at $285. The bargain GF3, the Ti200, is not a good idea for an investment. It offers little improved performance over the GeForce2 Ultra. It does, however, cost $157.

 

Now, personally, I would go with the Radeon 8500. It wins in the benchmarks, and is cheaper than its competition (GF3 and GF3 Ti500).

 

However, if you want nVidia, go with a GF3 or GF3 Ti500; they are expensive, but nVidia updates their drivers religiously and offers improvements to their cards.

 

Either way, you will have upgraded your games significantly.

 

Well, I am getting sleepy, and I still havent covered all that I would have liked, but until next time....

[Guest JediKnight_114[b]]

Great job man. That covered just about everything and all the questions I (and others) have had 'bout JKII. Thanks alot. And again, good job.

[acdcfanbill]

i really want the Radeon 8500 but without some new cashflow, it will be a ways off, hopefully before JKii comes out though...

[UberChild]

Yeah dude, good points. i just got myself a gf3 ti 500, and damm, it doubled my 3d mark score, without changin anythin else in my comp. ATM i have a p3 650, tihw 256meg ram, but im planning on upgrading to an AMD 1600 XP, and new motherboard, and also gonna upgrade my screen from a 15 inch to a 19 inch.. all on the 13th of DEc.. damm i cant wait.. this is in anticipation of games like unreal 2, doom3 and othre new ones.. oh well till then, i wont really be able to try out the full potential of my video card, ill let ya know what crazy **** it does, when all is set up..

[thrEEpaGe]

I haven't been to this message board in a couple months, and on all the message boards, there's always stuff asked over and over. Hopefully I cleared a few things up ...

[thrEEpaGe]

sorry, but i gotta go this...

 

BUMP!

[Guest digl]

Great post thrEEpaGe

I wanted to ask you a few things

I have an Athlon Thunderbird 800mhz, Geforce256 DDR 32mb ram and 128mb ram pc-133 (plan upgrading soon)

Do you really think Itll be under 30fps if I play it in 16 bit and 1024x768? I dont think so (I certainly hope not because I doubt Ill change my video card anytime soon)

 

Iv not been reading much hardware news lately

What do you think about next gen cards?

Radeon 2 vs next Nvidia chip?(is it anonuced yet?, if not there are probably some rumors

 

Video cards are really expensive here, and If I order them through the net I end up paying so much in taxes Its almost the same

The first accelerator I had was a vodoo2 -I remember when I installed it, after that gaming changed forever for me - and then I changed to the Geforce I have now (what a change! )

And I dont know what Ill get next, maybe a Geforce3Ti 500 when they get cheaper, or a Radeon 2 some time after Its released, If Its launched relatively cheap as the current 8500

[thrEEpaGe]

first of all, the quake3a engine is not entirely too demanding, but a geforce i isnt very good =/ for your processor, im not quite sure how well it will run q3....since no one does geforce i benchmarks anymore heh its very hard to tell how it handles opengl.

 

as for the 30fps, its hard to tell. running at 16bit will make it look ugly (IMO), and 10x7 resolution is somewhat demanding for a geforce i gpu....personally, if i had a computer w/ your specs, i would upgrade ram, and run it 32@800x600....im used to low resolutions (back in the day when they didnt have 3d accelerators and it was all low quality), but its your choice. you'll have to experiment to find out what works best with your system!

 

if i were you, i would at least upgrade your ram, and if that's not enough, i would consider buying a less expensive gfx card (maybe the gf2 ti?) anyway, again, my personal preference would be the radeon, and if you can want to wait until the next gen cards come out, that's even better!

[Agen]

Just to drop a quick question (my friend has it and i can't really tell too much diff form my gf 2 and this) What All-in-Wonder 128 Pro AGP like?

It works quite good on my freinds duron 800 and he's got 256mb ram and he can run max payne almost top graphics

[thrEEpaGe]

the radeons themselves are awesome cards. really they are..

 

however, ati has had a nasty reputation of not supporting new drivers (heck when the 8500 came out half the features werent supported - now they are). im not quite sure as to how frequent ati is going to be coming out with new drivers, but there are several things good about radeons...im not sure how ill be able to explain this, but

 

 

the way that radeon gets so good of fps is (one of the reasons) is its filtering algorithms...if you set your filtering to trilinear, most other cards will render trilinearly throughout the game. however, the radeon, figuring that you cant tell the difference (you cant), switches to a lower filtering rate (probably bilinear) to cut down on bandwidth. this cuts down greatly on wasted grafix that you cannot even see. the difference is nominal in the visual display, but in fps it adds greatly to the experience.

 

that is one of the reasons i like radeons (and the ati guys are cool)

 

theres my 1 bit (money wise)

[Guest digl]

I dont think Itd be a good idea upgrading to a G2Ti, It isnt that much of a difference

Actually with my current geforce I I run everything without problems, max payne, rtcw, etc

I only had some slowdowns with B&W, but most games run great even in 1280x1024 (16 bit)

I prefer hi res and 16 bit

[Agen]

Anything about the All-in-Wonder 128 pro AGP?

[thrEEpaGe]

the all in wonder loses horribly to the gf2ultra/ti as well does the radeon 64mb (not the 8500)....for a q3 engine, the only cards i, personally, would consider would be the gf3 or the 8500, because the older cards (less than current gen) won't have functions supported in other games beyond directx7 (only the new cards support dx8)....so if you want an investment, and not just a quick fix, go with the geforce3 or 8500.

[Tap[RR]]

Im planning on getting a new video card (8500 probally) and i was wondering how big the drivers are in file size, and if its a runable exe that automatically updates the old driver, heh i have a voodoo5 (>_<) and 3dfx never had any drivers for it, so im not used to downloading drivers.

[Master Yoda]

LEAVE MY SWAMP NOW YOU WILL!!! * waves hand around*

 

I have a ATI Radeon 64MB DDR and it smokes, I plan on upgrading my whole computer to like a AMD XP 1900+ and an ATI Radeon 8500 next fall when the prices drop way down(Id upgrade now but Im saving for a new car). IMO ATI Radeon is the best graphics card out since its powerful and sells at a reasonable price.

[Emon1]

1. If you look at benchmarks from a credible source such as PC Magazine as I do, you'll know that the Radeon 8500 got smoked by the GeForce 3 Titanium 500.

 

2. The Radeon 8500 shouldn't even stand up as much as it did. Why? ATI used "cheats" in their drivers. Yes, that is right. In games like Q3A and many others, they had little "tweaks" that supposedly improved speed with no loss to image quality. Well that is total bull ****. I read an article about this, and what they did was reduce texture quality in many games to boost performance, and you CAN notice the difference. I saw screens of the uglyness on the Radeon 8500 running quake3.exe, and it sucked. Then they renamed quake3.exe to quaff3.exe, and with a hex editor, changed all instances of quake to quaff. This way, the cheats in the ATI drivers didn't recognize the game, and put full detail on again. Sure it looked great, but the performance sucked.

 

ATI described it as "and error in texture detail quality" of their drivers. Now that's plain BS. I was even going to get the Radeon 8500 till I found that out. ATI lovers, I hate to break it to you, but it's true.

 

What I would recommend doing: Try to find a GeForce 3 Ti 200 at a store near you for cheap. I can get them for $100 US by me, around $150 online, both for the VisionTek card. Just overclock it a bit and it's way better.

[GUNNER]

I like nVidia better too, they have better driver support the ATI. Just hop on over here and check out all the articles about CPUs ,video cards RAM and what not.. It's a great siteAnandtech

[digl]

Originally posted by Emon1

ATI used "cheats" in their drivers. Yes, that is right. In games like Q3A and many others, they had little "tweaks" that supposedly improved speed with no loss to image quality. Well that is total bull ****. I read an article about this, and what they did was reduce texture quality in many games to boost performance, and you CAN notice the difference. I saw screens of the uglyness on the Radeon 8500 running quake3.exe, and it sucked. Then they renamed quake3.exe to quaff3.exe, and with a hex editor, changed all instances of quake to quaff. This way, the cheats in the ATI drivers didn't recognize the game, and put full detail on again. Sure it looked great, but the performance sucked.

 

I also read about that at tomshardware.com

there was a huge difference in the image quality

[Jedi Howell]

where r u guys gettin' all this money??!!?!?

 

anyways, i already know teh answer to this question(no), but here goes:

 

i have 2 compies:

 

compy 1 is a home-made yr old athlon 750mhz w/ 128mb RAM and a Diamond Viper2(crappiness to teh MAX)

thinkin' 'bout upgrading the ViperII to a GeForce2 MX400

 

my other compy is a senile P233mmx w/ Nitro3D 4mb(no 3d acceleration) w/ 64mb RAM

definitely upgrading to a TNT2 m64 or a Vanta(too late to change; already ordered for my b-day(tomorrow))

 

will my 233mmx run JKII? i dont care about resolutions or anything other than above 20FPS...can't upgrade RAM 'cause f***ing Dell got a mobo that differs from the original model in that it can only hold 64mb RAM as opposed to the default 128...

 

jh

[digl]

do you really need two PCs?

Why instead of having one crappy and one good (note only good) dont you get a really good one?

[acdcfanbill]

well, i dunno if the GeForc3 ti 500 smoked the 8500 that much... my buddy just put his new 8500 in his computer (t-bird 1100) and he benchmarked it with 3dmark2k1 and it did better than the geforce 3 ti 500... i dunno about faster cpus but at that speed, ati won it out... if i recall, many tests put the ati card above...

[GUNNER]

Everyone should have a few back up PCs. We have 3 and a laptop. Just in case.

 

I will probably just stay with my Geforce 2 GTS until the next cards come out then look at getting a new geforce 3 when the prices go down. So far nVidia has come out with a new card every 6 months, why try and keep up.

 

I can get 100fps on CS with the res maxed out so that's good enough for me.

[thrEEpaGe]

Originally posted by Emon1

1. If you look at benchmarks from a credible source such as PC Magazine as I do, you'll know that the Radeon 8500 got smoked by the GeForce 3 Titanium 500.

 

2. The Radeon 8500 shouldn't even stand up as much as it did. Why? ATI used "cheats" in their drivers. Yes, that is right. In games like Q3A and many others, they had little "tweaks" that supposedly improved speed with no loss to image quality. Well that is total bull ****. I read an article about this, and what they did was reduce texture quality in many games to boost performance, and you CAN notice the difference. I saw screens of the uglyness on the Radeon 8500 running quake3.exe, and it sucked. Then they renamed quake3.exe to quaff3.exe, and with a hex editor, changed all instances of quake to quaff. This way, the cheats in the ATI drivers didn't recognize the game, and put full detail on again. Sure it looked great, but the performance sucked.

 

ATI described it as "and error in texture detail quality" of their drivers. Now that's plain BS. I was even going to get the Radeon 8500 till I found that out. ATI lovers, I hate to break it to you, but it's true.

 

What I would recommend doing: Try to find a GeForce 3 Ti 200 at a store near you for cheap. I can get them for $100 US by me, around $150 online, both for the VisionTek card. Just overclock it a bit and it's way better.

 

 

 

just to clear some things up for you =)

 

first of all, your claim that the gf3 is better than the 8500 is false.

 

if you had read the article in pc magazine, you would notice that the drivers that they were benching the 8500 with were old. the performance gained from upgrading the new drivers is phenomenal. and, once it gets upgraded, it ties the gf3 in about all games, and in mark 2k and 2k+1 it ownz the gf3.

 

had you actually used recent sources, you would know this.

 

2. the quack/quake driver optimization you spoke of did, in fact happen, but again, had you used recent sources, you would notice that the quake3 optimization is now in fact gone. the performance was lost (a few fps), but with the new drivers the 8500 ownz.

 

and as for your claim for the ti200, i would like to take this time to laugh in your face. the ti200 is a pathetic excuse for a geforce3. not only is it worse than the radeon and old geforce3, the performance losses it suffers are not made up for in price. the ti500, gf3, and the 8500 are the ONLY cards to consider if you want actual performance, and if you want good price, the radeon is the only choice for you. nvidia is a struggle on their hands. i'd say its time to come out with new drivers (or drop the price)

 

and finally, if your only reason NOT to get a 8500 is because of the quake problem, go out and get one, because the problem is solved.

[kubamadon]

what about a TNT2 64mb?

and a Gforce3?

 

me and flux ain't good with all the 'puter stuff

[thrEEpaGe]

imo (and logic, really, tnt2 anything isnt worth the money.)

 

lets look at it...

 

directx

 

 

new standards arent supported by the card.

it may get some good fps (probably not that great), but it wouldnt have all the bells n whistles =)

 

it wont last long; dont get it. go with the gf3 straight (non ti) or the 8500

 

the reason i say non ti is that its (the ti) more expensive for a minimal performance gain over the old gf3 (for the price, its not worth it).

 

=)