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Zed · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 6:29 pm Post subject: Video Card

Is this card a good one?

ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB DDR W/TV BULK

http://www.knowledgemicro.com/detail.php?p=AT-8500LE&c=pw

puntloos · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 7:35 pm Post subject:

Its not half bad but you're buying below my curve..

that is: I cant afford the most recent hardware, but I try to buy a bit below that but above mainstream.

I think 8500's really are 'mainstream quality' right now so they will start to lack in newer games pretty quickly.

Anyway if I remember correctly when the 8500's came out, nvidia's offering were superior to them. Right now 9700's evidently are a bit better than their nvidia counterparts but we're not talking about those are we Wink

-but Im not an expert right now-

LeeBe · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 8:11 pm Post subject:

Depends on the rest of your system. If you have a VIA chipset I wouldnt bother Sad

Ive had loads of bother with my 9700pro and its still not working right Sad

There seems to be a lot of people in the same boat as me and via chipsets seem the worst.

http://www.hwextreme.com/reviews/videocards/ati_radeon8500le/index.shtml

This review puts it in the same league as a GF3ti500

http://www.rage3d.com/board/

And the Rage3D forum has a lot of people trying to help or trying to find a fix.

Also I dont know what that dealer is like but Crucial has them for $87.
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.asp?imodule=CTV8500LE128A6

Seems a good card for the price Smile

roba · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2003 8:24 pm Post subject:

Radeon 8500 isn't IMO bestbuy, its slower than old GeForce3, speed is +- qual to GeForce3 Ti200. For example GeForce3 Ti500 is about ~20% faster, GeForce4 Ti4200 is nearly 2x faster (but in higher values it depends on CPU, with fast Athlon its 2x faster, but with Ath1000 its "only" about 35% faster).

Look here:

grey bars are Ath1000, red/green bars are Ath2700+.

BTW Radeon 9700/9800 is already beaten by new GeForce FX 5800 Ultra Smile

.

Grim · Post more Noob Joined: 05 Sep 2002 Posts: 13

Hi all,

Do u ppl really find you need all this graphics power? Like someone else said, I mostly buy below the curve - I rarely buy the latest kit because it is very expensive for the additional performance you get. It's the same with disk drives - 80/120GB seem the best £/GB at the moment and I think the same priciple applies to graphics cards.

I have a GFIIIti200 - I have all effects turned on in UT and run at 1024*768 with no problems (win XP pro). The processor is an overclocked Athlon 1700 palamino with 512MB DDR RAM (paging is striped over a couple of disks). Would I really notice that much difference with the cards mentioned above? I can't see that there would be that much difference! What games are you guys playing that needs so much more graphics processing power?

Catch u l8r,

]GRIM[

roba · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:06 am Post subject:

Grim · Post more Noob Joined: 05 Sep 2002 Posts: 13

Thx 4 reply. I guess GF4 has been out a while now? Maybe I could afford one! Like most people I really *would* like the latest gadgets but mostly cant justify the expense! Laughing

I always got the impression that UT sniper clan types didn't play much UT2003 etc because of the sniper rifle support and perceived poor character movement Question

I heard that there were some motherboard developments that are going to change the way graphics processors are used. Is this the next move on from the 8x AGP slot?

I see that nvidia have directX 9 support:

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20030305_5651

Didn't know that was out from MS...

So, how much is a GeForce FX 5800 ultra.... Twisted Evil

roba · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2003 2:45 pm Post subject:

puntloos · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2003 2:58 pm Post subject:

Well as you said, the marketing behind video cards is really quite clear. To get the very best you need to pay LOTS of $$$. This is usually reserved for people with no girlfriend (so no having to buy dinner and flowers Smile

) or ppl with good jobs (and they dont play computer games as much)

But if you dont have money and buy average or even sub-average you will only really enjoy current games, and new games will start to suck more and more.

So I personally save up for something like a vidcard and then pay above what I could normally afford, just to be able to keep going for a while. I did this with my Ge3 ti500 - I bought it a year ago (at $500, yes) (I got a very very good discount though) and right now it is still a -little- above average for gaming machines. If I would've bought what I really could afford - say a Ge2Ultra or so I would now be acheing. Plus a year worth of game enjoyment is worth $300 wouldn't you say?

Anyway pretty much from -this moment on- I will have to start turning off detail and lowering resolution to keep playing new games comfortably. Doom 3 will suuuuck.

Btw. UT2003 now has a sniper rifle mod. (but I dont have the money to set up a second server, and a possible deal to get a second machine has been postponed) If someone has an athlon 1800 or equivalent machine to spare, gimme a call, I'll put it online with 2k3 on it Smile