ATI8500 or NV46000

[Guest]

I was fortunate that I sold my Geforce 3 Ti200 a week ago for the price I paid for it and now I'm looking for its replacement.
The games I play generally use OpenGL ie. Q3a, RTCW(Wolfenstein), Unreal Tournament and a bit of Tribes 2. Only Crmson Skies requires Directx.
With all these games I can get 60 to xxx fps without any fuss even on a Geforce GTS2 at 1024x768 32bit. I purchased the Gorce 3 TI200 hoping that it would have enough extra power that I could run FSAA - problem with that is you need to turn on 8 tap Anisotropic to remove the blurriness and obviously that ate into the Geforce 3's power so much as to be useless (even with it set at 240/500).

Reading Tom's review on the Geforce 4 all looks quite impressive untill you get to the Anisotropic filtering where at 8tap the fps drops from, (Quake3), 243.5 to 112.7 (ouch) whereas the ATI8500 only drops from 200.7 to 188.7
Now I appreciate that the ATI8500 only samples what necessary - but thats all I want.

With x4 FSAA on the Geforce 4600 fps drops from 243.5 to 110.9 while the ATI8500 drops from 200.7 to 47.1
So if I want x4 FSAA then add 8 tap Anisotropic to get the sharpness back I roughly equate that the ATI8500 would give me something close to 41fps whereas the Geforce 4600 would give me 51fps

And to get this extra 10fps will cost me an extra $170 - 200

I think I need more convincing - maybe other reviews will show other features of the 4600 but at the moment I'm more swayed towards the ATI8500.

Maybe I'm not calculating things correctly - your opinions would be appreciated!
(recap - I'm looking for a card that offers the best picture quality so x4 FSAA on to remove jaggies and 8Tap Anistropic on to sharpen picture)

 

[AMD_Man]

First of all, I'd like to remind you that the Ti4600 beats the R8500 overall. Secondly, ATI is continuing to push anistropic filtering in driver releases. I wouldn't be too surprised if R8500 performance improves even further in the future with Anisotropic filtering performance. Also, I'd like to point out tht you won't have the blurring problem with SmoothVision that you will have with Quincunx because of the way ATI does it. ATI bases their FSAA technology on supersampling while Quincunx is multisampling. So for what you want 2X Quality SmoothVision or 4X Performance Smoothvision is enough with 4-8X Anisotropic filtering. I guarantee you won't notice a difference in image quality and get twice the frame rates under the Radeon 8500. I can't tell you much about the GF4 but there are a lot of ways with the R8500 to improve frame rates without sacrificing quality in the latest drivers. In fact, that's what ATI is pushing, better quality without sacrificing FPS.

EDIT: nVidia's new Acuview apparently also removes the blur somehow better than it's older Quincunx. I'm not sure how effective this technology is though.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

hi'yer AMD_MAN.. Intel guy here .. hehe

I wasn't aware of the difference with the ATI Smoothvision - this just sways me towards the 8500 even more.
I just read something about the new FSAA mode for the NV4600 - x4s. I suppose s = supersampling (I'm guessing). It only works with Directx not openGL and takes a further fps hit. As most of my games use openGL its a useless feature to me.

I've noticed in the NV25 reviews there's no mention of anything like Truform. I've recently seen it being used in RTCW and its amazing. Does anybody know if there's something like that with the Geforce 4 series?

I'm guessing you have an 8500 AMD_Man.. if so, can you tell me if there's a performance hit using the Truform feature?

cheers Kel

 

[bront]

From what I have read about the truform feature, there is very little performance hit, and very big quality gains. I have an 8500 myself, but I haven't played anything that uses truform yet.


RAM Disk is not an instalation step.

 

[Jehdin]

The Radeon 8500 is around $175 whereas the Geforce 4 TI 4600 is $400! If you aren't worried about the money then get the G4TI4600, if you don't wanna pay that much, and I doubt most people do, for a video card then get the Radeon 8500, you won't be dissappointed.

<A HREF="http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?2600992" target="_new"> 3DMark 2001 Score </A>

 

[AMD_Man]

Well, in my opinion, the GeForce4 is a disappointment, feature-wise, but a good leap forward, performanc-wise. The 1.4 Shaders in DX8.1 are STILL not suppport! Neither is Truform! I currently play 3 games that use Truform: Half Life, Serious Sam, and RTCW. All of these games look fabulous and the performance hit of Truform is always 0-2% max. Even if you are considering an R8500, I'd wait for the 128MB version in March. ATI is promising significantly faster performance, especially in SmoothVision. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I still suggest you wait.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[ben8128]

AMD_Man I am building a new system when the .13 micron Tbreds are out, what will ATI have around that time. I like ATIs products and prices, but I don't want to buy an 8500 when a week later the release a GF4 killer. After looking at 64mb vs. 128mb it just doesn't seem worth it, will Ati make any other significant changes besides the amount of memory when they releas a 128mb version? Will the gpu be faster or anything like that?

Thanks.

Ben

 

[AMD_Man]

Now, I can't say for certain but ATI is hinting that their GeForce4-killer is already out. The Radeon 8500 has always been designed to compete with the GeForce4. I'd assume that the Radeon 8500 will reach at least Ti4400 performance after a driver update. I'm guesstimating that the new GeForce4-killer drivers will be out by March. While the R8500 will generally reach Ti4400 performance, the RV250 seems to be like the GeForce4 Ti4600/GeForce5 MX killer. The R300 should match the best GeForce5 card. I expect the GeForce5 to be out Fall 2002 and the R300 by late fall 2002.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Guest]

Anandtech stated in his review that direct competition for the Geforce 4 is far off...As to ATI coming out with Geforce 4 "killer" drivers, I wouldn't count on it. Don't forget that Geforce 4 just came out, and will have it's own driver tweaks coming in the future.

Regarding the anisotropic filtering, nVidia has said there is a bug in the drivers which is impacting the performance. Plus, I'd like to see some numbers for 4x aniso..It looks the same to me, and performs much better than 8x.

 

[AMD_Man]

Hehe, the R8500 can do 16X Anisotropic filtering faster than a GF4 can at 4X.

Also, if you've been monitor the rate at which ATI releases leaked drivers, you'd know that ATI definitely has something up their sleeves.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by AMD_Man on 02/06/02 06:37 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[flamethrower205]

Hmm, I really can't wait for the Quadro 4. Hope it has hardware lines!

Only if you let me see the Umpa Lumpa- Homer Simpson.

 

[Guest]

From what I've read so far the Geforce Ti4600 is just slightly faster and has a few things like S3tc fixed (which is about time). In the past you needed more speed to compensate for more advanced features being applied but this doesnt seem to be the case with the Geforce 4. I dont really need anymore speed, I think anything between 70 - 200 is more than enough.
After looking through all the specs of the Geforce and the ATI 8500 the only thing that really stands out that I could visually see is the Truform mode. I tested this on RTCW and Myth 3 and it makes a hell of a difference as the model skins n faces are fully rounded and look far more realistic.

The only other observation is that with my previous Geforce cards , 2GTS and 3Ti200, although they offer very high fps they also drop very low when under load. Now that I've had a chance to play my with my freinds ATI 8500 in my own PC for an hour I noticed that these fps swings when under load are not nearly as bad.
This to me is a fact that seems to be overlooked, after all what does it matter if you get 100fps or 200fps - nothing, but what is important is if under load it might drop to 20 or only drop to 45fps.
I ran a UT map DM-Timecrash, its an evil map as even with my Geforce 3TI200 set at 240/500 I still could only get 26-30fps whereas with most UT maps my fps is around the 100 mark. With the ATI8500 it was averaging 55+ fps.

I'm tempted to buy the ATI8500 now but I'm going to hold out till the 128mb version.

 

[taylanator]

good idea, the 128 mb version will be released along side of new drivers from what i've heard, and heep in mind that tom said it was usless to have 128mb on lower end cards that don't do well FSAA no matter how much ram they have, such as the GTS, GF2 TI, or even the GF3 TI200, none of these cards can fully take advantage of the extra memory, but the 8500 is a very powerfull card and will for certain take advantage of this extra memory, especialy in FSAA. Have you guys every used FSAA in games? I find it kinda annoying, ofcourse i only have a GTS but still, it makes things too blurry. But one of the other computers I built with a 8500 makes games look amazing. And somtimes it sure seems like their benchmarks are wrong about the 8500, it allways seems like my other computer with the same CPU does better in complex scenarios. But thats just me.

taylor

 

[TheAntipop]

Quick question: how do you get UT to run under D3D? The only options I get on my Radeon are software and D3D.

Hard work often pays off in time, but laziness always pays off now.

 

[PCHardstuff]

It will take ATI a lot more than improved drivers to push the 8500 over the ti4600. I just built a new machine with an 8500 and really like it, but I don't expect it surpass the ti4600 with any forthcoming driver releases.

 

[Guest]

heh.. I get asked this alot (assuming you mean UT with opengl for Nvidia cards).

OK.. 1st when you're at the choose driver section click ALL and then openGL and others will be displayed. click on OPENGL.
Now, unfortunately, the original openGL drivers included with UT aren't that hot but there is an update from Epic.

GOTO: http://unreal.epicgames.com/
grab the May 11th opengl driver and place it in your ut system directory.

Next, copy the driver render settings below and paste in the unrealtournament.ini file (located in UT system directory) - use notepad.

Make sure you delete the existing settings!!!!

[OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]
RefreshRate=85
DetailTextures=1
UseTrilinear=1
UseS3TC=1
UseTNT=0
LODBias=0
UseMultiTexture=1
UsePalette=1
UseAlphaPalette=0
Translucency=1
VolumetricLighting=0
ShinySurfaces=1
Coronas=0
HighDetailActors=1
MaxAnisotropy=0
AlwaysMipmap=0
UsePrecache=0
SupportsLazyTextures=0

hope that helps!

 

[Matisaro]

The games I play generally use OpenGL ie. Q3a, RTCW(Wolfenstein), Unreal Tournament and a bit of Tribes 2. Only Crmson Skies requires Directx.
With all these games I can get 60 to xxx fps without any fuss even on a Geforce GTS2 at 1024x768 32bit. I purchased the Gorce 3 TI200 hoping that it would have enough extra power that I could run FSAA - problem with that is you need to turn on 8 tap Anisotropic to remove the blurriness and obviously that ate into the Geforce 3's power so much as to be useless (even with it set at 240/500).

What cpu do you have, my gf3@230/530 can do 10x7 quncunx and 8 tap AA, and still nail 50+ fps on tribes 2....strange.

(!.33ghz tbird 256 megs ram, windowx xp on kg7 raid)

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!

 

[TheAntipop]

UT with opengl for Nvidia cards

So, only for Nvidia cards? I have an ATi Radeon 32DDR. Do you think it's even worth it for more speed and image quality (I do prefer OpenGL normally)?

Hard work often pays off in time, but laziness always pays off now.

 

[Guest]

Hi'yer, In Tribes 2 I also get 50+fps except when there's alot of action outdoors ie. 6 - 10 players all firing and flying about etc, then it can drop to as low as mid 20's. Typically, its when the action is most active that you need the high fps for smoothness.
That UT map I mentioned earlier is a real fps killer though, they tried to recreate a U2 type map(fun though).
RTCW is also similar - on the default supplied maps fps is generally fine but the official map Trenchtoast fps can drop below 20fps in some parts.

My system is an Intel P3-1Ghz with 256mb on an Asus CUSL2 mobo. I have all my games running at 1024x768 32bit - with most options set at max.
With Tribes 2 I turn off shadow.
RTCW I've tried with and without detail textures with little difference.
UT - everything is maxed inc detail textures.

 

[Guest]

Goto http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/ut/ut-tweak-7.shtml for openGL settings for the Radeon card.
(still install the latest openGl driver from Epic)

info:
http://mwill.xoasis.com/ - For UT openGL driver for 8500 (turns on Truform)