Just got my Radeon 8500....GULP

[Guest]

Just got my Radeon 8500....GULP

Well, I just received my Radeon 8500 retail at work. I ordered it from newegg.com and got a good price on it with a few other items. I debated for about a week between the Radeon 8500 and the Geforce 3 Ti 200. I decided on the Radeon because it appears to be a better card for the money.

I won't have a chance to install until about 830 PM EST. Which, at that time I'll pull out the Geforce 2 MX card currently in there.

After reading various posts here and at tech-report.com it seems most of the problems with the Radeon 8500 are:

A) Old drivers
B) Lingering drivers from an old video card (Nvidia) that conflict with the ATI stuff.

I think I've gathered how to remove all of the old Nvidia stuff. Hopefully, it will go flawlessly. If it gives me too many problems then I'll send it back and get a Geforce card.

Any additional pointers or tips would be greatly appreciated!

J

 

[bdaley]

I just got the same card from NewEgg. I went into Safe Mode, removed the GeForce2 MX 400, shut down the system, installed the Radeon, booted-up, canceled-out of the Windows Found New Hardware Wizard and then installed the latest ATI Drivers (6052). Rebooted, everything works great!

I notice that text seems sharper, and colors are more vivid with the Radeon. The DVD playback also blows-away the Geforce2.

So far, I'm very happy with the R8500.

Good luck with yours.

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks"

 

[williamc]

If you have a problem due to lingering drivers, and you then switch BACK to GeForce your gonna be doing a reformat more than likely. ATI drivers are alot harder to get out of the registry than nVidia's. There should be instructions around somewhere for completely getting nVidia's drivers out. Good rule of thumb is, make damn sure your installing the one you really want or plan on doing a reinstall of windows...

"OOOOO Shiny things. I can make powerful equipment with shiny things!" - The imp Butler from BGII

 

[williamc]

grats on yer new card-) That is the biggest reason alot of people moved to radeon instead of or from the Geforce 1 and 2 serious was the prettier graphics...nVidia finally caught up with the GeForce 4 but if you cant afford it Radeon is pretty for money-)

"OOOOO Shiny things. I can make powerful equipment with shiny things!" - The imp Butler from BGII

 

[bront]

My experiences with getting an 8500 to work after removing my GF2 MX card:

I uninstalled the drivers for the old MX, and then shut down the system and removed it.

I installed the 8500.

I booted up and installed the standard VGA adapter driver, and then rebooted.

I then installed the 8500 drivers from the CD.

I then downloaded and installed the newest drivers available.

I've had no problem of any kind with my 8500 once I turned off AGP Fast Writes.

So, idealy, it will work well for you. Hope this helps.

Trollin' trollin' trollin', keep them doggies postin', my fingers are swollen, Rawhide!

 

[bdaley]

Why did you need to disable fast writes? I just got an R8500 and I haven't had any problems so far. Should fast writes always be disabled for a R8500?

Thanks.

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks"

 

[Guest]

There is some debate and a lot of agreement of Fast Writes. There is a post or two over at Rage3d.com in regard to this. In general, the 8500 does support Fast Writes (wite directly to the AGP interface skipping the a few steps along the way). However, no one has been able to find (as far as I know) any benefit to using them witht eh 8500. On the other hand, if you have a particular setup that is sensitive to them, Fast Writes can be a problem and cause system instability. In short, no real use or benefit in using them, so many just choose to leave them off.

OF course, your mileage may vary ;-)



<i>..from the comfort of my aunt Faye's Couch..</i>