Print
Discuss
Send to friend
ATi is nVidia's biggest rival, so it's no surprise to see the company release a product designed to compete with nVidia's Geforce 3 Ti 500. We looked at a Ti 500 card in issue 100 and it was very impressive. Can ATi match nVidia's pace?
The answer is a resounding yes. The Radeon 8500 contains an entirely new 3D chip. In common with the Ti 500, it supports many new features which are designed to help developers produce games that appear more realistic. These are given different names to the features in the Ti 500 but achieve many of the same goals.
One new feature ATi has been pushing is called Smoothvision. When scenes are drawn in games, they can include jagged lines. Look closely at a racing game, for example, and you'll almost certainly see that the road has jagged edges. Smoothvision removes these jagged edges, making a curved line look curved, rather than a series of short, straight lines joined together to look like a curve.
Rival nVidia has something very similar. Unfortunately, we couldn't compare them, as ATi hadn't got Smoothvision working in the sample it showed us. The promised fix should be available for download from the ATi site by now but be prepared for a fairly lengthy download.
The 64Mb of fast DDR memory helps speed up complex games whether you're using a standard monitor, digital flat panel or a TV, all of which are supported.
Image quality is very impressive in games but ATi has also put a lot of work into improving DVD playback on the PC and it paid off. With the combination of the Radeon card and ATi's own DVD playback software, the latest Hollywood blockbuster looks as good as from a set-top DVD player.
So how does the Radeon 8500 rate against the Ti 500 in terms of performance? Very well as it happens. Our tests put it slightly ahead of nVidia's flagship chipset. At £250, it's not a pocket money product but it's £30 cheaper than the Leadtek GeForce 3 we looked at in issue 100.
Considering that it has many of the same features, decent software and good performance, our instinct is to recommend the Radeon 8500 over the Leadtek Ti 500.
Contact: ATi 01628 533115 www.ati.com
Also consider: Leadtek GeForce 3 TI 500.
Great if you're prepared to pay for the fastest kit.
£280 - Worth it. Computeractive Issue 100.
See also:
A mainstream graphics card using nVidia's GeForce4 MX440 chipset. 29 May 2002
Outstanding in more ways than one, the Ti4600 will attract the enthusiast. 15 May 2002
The All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV covers all multimedia bases from TV to sound. 15 Mar 2002
The most ludicrously, unbelievably speedy graphics processing unit in all creation. 07 Feb 2002
Picture quality problems hinder this TV card from revolutionising home cinema. 22 Jan 2002All Graphics Cards
del.icio.us
Digg this
reddit!
