Help with ATI Selection

[itgl72]

Hi all, hope to get some help from the more experienced.
I am assembling a P4 2.53 machine for a friend of mine. I have nearly everything done except for his video card. Because of what's available to me, and his budget, I would like to see suggestions as to which of the following video cards you feel would give the best performance:

ATI Radeon 8500 AGP w/64MB DDR DH/w/VIVO
ATI Radeon 9000 AGP w/128MB DDR
ATI Radeon 9000 AGP w/64MB DDR

The price difference on these are no more then $20 or so apart from each other so from these 3, I have to make a choice. This is going to be a gaming machine. Its loaded with RAM and CPU, but he just can't swing for a $200+ video card after all is said and done.

Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[phial]

personally I have read alot about the various Radeons and the performance differences.

the 8500 64meg is the fastest of the 3. if you search THG youll find from the benchmarks that the 8500 is usually about 5-20% faster than the 9000pro. the reason for this is because the 9000pro is actually a modified 8500, which has had things stripped down to make it cheaper to produce.

the 8500 was NOT a budget card when it came out and this is why its more expensive to manufacture, and faster. It is faster than the GF3 TI500 most of the time. ATI made the 9000pro as a budget replacement, and hence the budget performance.

the difference between the 64meg and 128meg versions is negligible nowadays, and by the time you actually NEED 128megs of video ram youll probably need a faster video card altogether. (64meg cards usually come with faster ram as well, so you can overclock them higher)

another consideration for you could be the Radeon 8500 LE. its alot cheaper than the 8500, because it has slower ram and a slower core.
Radeon 8500 - 275 core, 275 memory clock
Radeon 8500 LE - 225 core, 225 memory clock

the good thing about the 8500LE is that usually you can overclock it to PAST the standard 8500 speeds. if you get the 128meg version of the LE, it comes with 3.3ns BGA ram 95% of the time, and this allows it to be overclocked to aobut 600mhz. and most cores can be overclocked to about 280-310.

 

[itgl72]

Thanks for the reply, you pointed me in the right direction.

 

[phsstpok]

I just want to point out that the 8500 is faster than the 9000 PRO. If you are talking about ordinary 9000s (not Pros) then it is no comparison at all. The 8500 is much faster than these. The 8500 has two texture mapping units per pipe where both the 9000 series have only one.

That out of the way, The nVidia Ti4200s can be had for about $110 and the Ti4400s about $150 these days. These are faster than the 8500, especially on a P4 2.53 but they are also more money but definitely worth considering.

I've got an 8500OEM, myself, but if I had a faster machine like yours I might want a faster card.

I used to use Geforce cards and I liked the driver quality better than these quirky ATI drivers. On the other hand, I like the visuals on the 8500 better. (My last video card was a Geforce 2). The visuals have been improved with the Geforce 4 line so this proabably is not an issue. TV-Out is excellent with the 8500 (but I don't need this any longer now that my TV and monitor are effectively one in the same). All in all, owning an 8500 has been a mixed bag for me.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>