Date:
Monday , December 24, 2001
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Radeon 8500 Revisited

The first time we did an 8500 review, the Radeon 8500 was simply not ready for prime time, but what about now? And how 'bout we throw in a GF3 Ti500 just for fun?

continued...

Counter Strike:

Counter Strike fans rejoice, I didn't leave you out. I loaded up CS on the Radeon 8500 with the 3286 drivers to check it out. It was very smooth in OpenGL and smoke didn't slow it down much; I know this has been a problem in the past. You would launch a grenade or something that would explode with smoke and it would slow down and become choppy. Well, with the Radeon 8500 I can safely say this was not the case. It played very smoothly. Keep this in mind as we play with this sometimes, as we cap all the lagging bastards while you guys are chopping through the smoke and we are sliding right through.

As for benchmarking, CS stayed maxed at its 100 FPS cap with the Radeon 8500. Certainly enough frames for CS. I did however use it for the TRUFORM tests. This first image is with TRUFORM off.

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This next image is with TRUFORM enabled at its highest level. His head is a little more round, but his arms are still oversized. As we mentioned before, we think TRUFORM will certainly be a type of technology that grows with ATi as they learn to better utilize it.

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Max Payne:

Max Payne is a very widely played game. Although it lacks multiplayer support, its single player is still very fun for replay value. As in the past, we are using the Max Payne full version game with the benchmarking method as explained by 3DCenter. The test demo we used was PCGH's Final Scene No.1 (VGA-Demo). With the 3276 drivers, I got an error in 1600x1200 and it wouldn't run. Apparently that problem is fixed in the 3286 drivers, as it ran just fine. As you can see in the results, the new 3286 drivers help increase performance quite a bit! However, the GF3 takes the lead, but ever so slightly. It is good to see the new ATI drivers increase performance so much, though.

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Unreal Tournament:

Unreal Tournament may not be the best benchmark in the world due to its very CPU dependent nature, but it is still a very highly played multiple player game. Therefore, since a lot of people play it, I felt it was necessary to see how the Radeon 8500 performs on it. Benchmarking is quite easily done in UT. First, I installed the game and installed the latest 4.36 patch, then I went over to Reverend's site and downloaded his Thunder demo for UT. Next, extract the Thunder demo into the UT system directory and fire up UT. From there, select the quality settings and resolution you prefer to benchmark, then go to Tools and select Time Demo Statistics. Start a single player game and bring up the console with '~' and type "demoplay thunder". Hit the enter key and then quickly hit the ~ key so the console menu goes away. The demo will play and it will end. Bring up the console again and look at the score.

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The new 3286 drivers really didn't improve performance in UT over the 3276 drivers. The GeForce3 is kicking butt here in UT over the Radeon 8500. Of course, if you really want smooth UT play, go dig out that Voodoo card!!

NFS5:

I wanted to load up Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed to see how the SMOOTHVISION worked on it, but I was greeted by an error that prevented me from using it. This was with the new 3286 drivers. Note that it did work just fine on the GeForce3.

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Editor's Note: Stan B, a [H]ardOCPer from way back has told us this, but we have yet to try it, as I don't have this game.

The error message you got when you tried to run NFS5 has nothing to do with the drivers. The Z-buffer depths must be set to 16;24;32. Which you haven't done. I have a Radeon 64DDR VIVO, and I got the same error when I tried to run NFS5.

2D and Image Quality:

In order to get some kind of handle on 2D performance I used Winbench 99 Version 2.0. I set the desktop to 1600x1200x32 @ 75Hz for these tests. From the tests we see the GeForce3 surpassing the Radeon 8500 quite a bit. I believe this can be attributed to the NVIDIA drivers being very finely tuned for the XP GUI. However, image quality-wise, the Radeon 8500 is much more clear at the higher resolutions. Again, a subjective observation.

WinBench 99

Cards

Business Graphics

WinMark 99

High End Graphics

WinMark 99

Radeon 8500 3276

509

1270

Radeon 8500 3286

512

1260

MSI GeForce3 Ti 500

759

1450

Conclusion:

All right, lets recap. In the driver control panel there wasn't much change between the 3276 drivers and the 3286 drivers. The only difference was that SMOOTHVISION was moved off into its own window with Quality and Performance options there.

In 3DMark2001, the Radeon 8500 with the 3286 drivers is the clear winner here. In the previous set of drivers, the GeForce3 was able to take the lead, but ATI has shown that with driver improvements they can indeed surpass the Geforce3 in performance. If 3DMark2001 is a taste of things to come, it looks like the Radeon 8500 is leading the pack.

In Quake3, it seems that with the new 3286 drivers the image quality problems we had with the 3276 drivers are finally solved, and it didn't hurt performance at all. In fact it's a little bit faster. However, Trilinear filtering is a bit lax with the Radeon 8500. The mip-map levels are more noticeable unless you enable Anisotropic filtering, which then makes it all look better. The GeForce3 is a little bit faster, but only by a small margin, and we don't think it's noticeable at such high frame rates.

With RTCW, the new 3286 drivers greatly increased performance over the 3276 drivers, even edging out the GeForce3 in the highest resolution. Image quality is great, except for that Trilinear thing. Again, Anisotropic filtering helps here.

Serious Sam the Second encounter is a very good game to test features out on a video card. With its TRUFORM support we saw that it has a hefty decrease in performance when on Maximum, and is visually not much better. There are also some glitches with max TRUFORM on. Anisotropic filtering just makes the whole thing look better, and so does SMOOTHVISION, although at a performance hit.

Counter Strike also supports TRUFORM now, but again not much of a visual difference. Perhaps in future games TRUFORM will help out a lot for, but in First Person Shooters it's just a novelty that most people won't notice in such a fast paced game.

In Max Payne, the new 3286 drivers helped a great deal, although the GeForce3 is still leading.

In UT, the new drivers didn't do anything for performance, which is still lagging way behind the GeForce3.

NFS5 wouldn't run at all, which was kind of disappointing. I was hoping to see how SMOOTHVISION could make it look even better.

In 2D Image quality, the Radeon 8500 takes the crown, no doubt. Performance wise in 2D, however, goes to the GeForce3 in XP. If XP is your OS, then there is no denying NVIDIA has the better drivers for the GUI speed. Still, for the hardcore, many menu animations and such can be tweaked inside the OS for different response times and such. We are a bit suspect of the 2D scores, but benchmarks never lie...right?

Overall, the Radeon 8500's new 3286 drivers are a great step in the right direction. It's good to see the performance increase and the image quality fixes in these drivers. ATI has come a long way in terms of drivers. With the 3286 drivers, the Radeon 8500 is competition for the GeForce3 Ti 500. If not for NVIDIA's great driver team and the recent Detonator4 series of driver, the Radeon 8500 would be surpassing the GeForce3. However, I believe ATI can squeeze more out of their drivers, as I think they still are not utilizing the hardware efficiently. On paper the Radeon 8500 should be blowing the GeForce3 away, but this isn't happening most likely because of the drivers.

ATI has always had excellent hardware, but has been plagued by driver problems. Yes, they are much better then they were, but I think there is still more performance in the Radeon 8500. ATI has said they are going to be on a regular driver release schedule now and hopefully get us beta drivers. If they do continue to stay on the track promised, I feel the Radeon 8500 could be the best card out there, until the next one that is. Still, it is only a short time till NVIDIA kicks off their next product line-up if they stay to their promised 6 to 9 month time frame of evolution.

For the features and performance you get for the price, I would actually put the Radeon 8500 into its own class. In our eyes, it sits right between the Ti200 and Ti500. Of course, as prices fluctuate with sales and rebates galore this time of year, you might be able to pick an 8500 up at a very consumer friendly price. There are still a few driver and performance problems, but ATi has certainly flushed out most of the issue, and there is not doubt that the 8500 has become a solid product since our first review. We feel if ATI can keep releasing improved drivers, the Radeon 8500 will only get better.

Comments/Suggestions/Flames - brent@hardocp.com