Looking at the VGA charts on this site, i have noticed that the Radeon 8500 64MB card is always only a couple of places behind the top three cards (usually the GeForce 4's). i noticed the date when this chart was made, and i also found that since the chart was made a new set of drivers have been released for the Radeon, do these drivers have much of an effect on the cards performance?
 
My system now has the new Windows XP 'Double Glazing' Edition.

They do help a bit but it's still not enough to get it past Ti4200 speeds without overclocking.
 
My firewall tastes like burning.

No, not necessarily, you see within 2 days of this, some ati fan will come and say they magically make a R8500 excel a Ti4600. Obviously that's untrue, but whatever.
 
My frog asked me for a straw...dunno what happened he's all over the place

ATi drivers have basically gone as far as they can go. I don't know about XP drivers but for Win98 that seems to be the case. An ATi overclocked can reach Ti4400 levels but never 4600, so yeah, don't believe anyone who claims they can do that. If they can they got lucky with the RAM.
 
Censorship makes us so much more creative.

ATI's take wonderfully to overclocking though, overclock by 10%, get a 10% gain in performance.  Plus Trueform is being supported by more and more games.  And some people like the other available features.  Add to that, the cards are fairly inexpensive.
 
What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Obviously. There's only one way to get an R8500 to win against the Ti4600 constantly. Turn max Aniso in all your games on both cards and compare.  
 
   <b><i>"A penny saved is a penny earned!"</i></b>  

Thing is, w/ OGL, I don't need that shiz.
 
My frog asked me for a straw...dunno what happened he's all over the place