GF3 Ti200 or Radeon8500LE??

Scruff

Right, thats it, i'm going to bite the bullet and upgrade from my voodoo 3 2000, but i need some advice.

I'm between 2 minds as to what card to get. i don't want to break the bank and seeing as how i've only a p3 700 going overboard on the graphics card would be pointless.

Komplett have the following on offer:
Creative 3d blaster GF3 Ti 200: €103
Hercules 3D Prophet FDX8500LE 64MB DDR bulk: €135

which is the best card for price and performance? i've heard the new Catalyst drivers really improve the ati cards but haven't seen any benchmarks.
any learned opinion to help?
Cheers.

netman

ATi are just notorious with the quality of their drivers, I simply wouldn't bother with them. It's a poorer performing card anyway, and combine that with ATi's tradition to release buggy drivers and you'll just end up banging your head wishing you've bought something else.

Nvidia on the other hand makes stable and fast drivers, hell, a lot of users even download beta leaked drivers and use them happily, getting more performance and stability than any of ATi's achievements.

That's just my view of things, heard so many bad things about ATi I wouldn't consider buying their card even if it was faster and cheaper.

The only bad thing about Nvidia cards are the bells and whistles. If you're looking for a good tv-out, or want to encode films and need a good tv-in, or any of that stuff, you're better off with an ATi. The TV-out quality of Nvidia cards (even the best brands) is atrocious, good only for melting your eyes or running military experiments.

_sheep

ATi are just notorious with the quality of their drivers, I simply wouldn't bother with them. It's a poorer performing card anyway, and combine that with ATi's tradition to release buggy drivers and you'll just end up banging your head wishing you've bought something else.

Hmmm pfft etc at above... all this is histroy (rage 128 days)

I'll admit that i had to be forced over to the ati side but now that im here im v. happy. With the inital cd drivers i was happy enough then i heard all the rambleing's about catalyist etc etc dl'ed and was blown away.

fps went up in q3 from 140(intial drivers) to hitting 200 with the newest cataylist (dont know how long there out but got them last night) - xp1800 ddr etc.. is the system

on my system the card outperforms a ti4400 in 3dmark and q3/rtcw/moh etc take from that what you will

btw as you can guess - i recommed you get the ati

Zaphod B

Crappy drivers on an ATI = history? rofl

I personally know 4 people who bought an ATI card, of those, 3 managed to get it working in the end but curse the day they bought it (they've all since had problems and generally not been impressed by performance), and the other guy managed to get it exchanged for a Geforce 3 after a Kilimanjaro-sized mountain of hassle. I on the other hand got meself a Geforce 3 Ti200 and have never had a single problem with it. Not once. Given you can probably get a Ti500 for the price now, I'd very very strongly advise you go for a GeForce over a ATI. In fact I'd follow you down the shops in an Apache with missiles primed and force you to. For your own good, believe me.

_sheep

I personally know 4 people who bought an ATI card, of those, 3 managed to get it working in the end but curse the day they bought it

and they bought one of the new cards (8500le +)
i doubt it tbh, unless their problems installing were there own fault which i believe is the case (leaving other old drivers installed, not disabling onboard video etc etc)

Anyway Wh00t ATI !!!! /me heads off the run 3dmark again

BKtje

i'd personally get the Radeon.
The next card im getting is a Radeon.

As people have pointed out, ATI used to have a problem with drivers but that really is in the past. Both cards are quite good.

ATi generally go for a balance of fps and image quality while nvidia put most of their effort into FPS as thats what a lot of gamers look for. That said the Radeons is now slouch when it comes to fps. Far from it.

astrofool

their driver problem is very much in the present.

Those new catalyst drivers they waxed on about which were meant to be unified like the nvidia's were, are not in fact used for their new graphics cards.

Things like that don't just get fixed overnight.

For all around compatability it still has to be the nvidia's, and the gef3 is still a very good chip. ATI still have to improve alot in the driver department, nice chipsets, shame about the buggy drivers.

netman

Another aspect you might want to consider is overclockability.
The ti200 can be easily pushed to ti500 speeds, and you can't say the same thing about radeon.

CodeMonkey

Originally posted by netman
Another aspect you might want to consider is overclockability.
The ti200 can be easily pushed to ti500 speeds, and you can't say the same thing about radeon.

That and the stuff from you on the above post are very nvidia biased and anti-ati for no real reason. Drivers updates have been very frequent in the past year and are generally very stable. The 8500LE will perform just as well, if not better, than the ti500 and can be easily overclocked to the retail radeon8500 speeds. The only problem I have with my 8500LE is the tv-out image is washed out if you are using resolution 800x600. Using a custom resolution like 720x576 or standard 640x480 solves this and you have great tv-out quality for playing dvd/divx/mpg on the tv. My 8500LE is one of the earlier models so this might not even happen anymore.

Koopa

dont bother getting an ati if you plan on playing older games like quakeworld, other than that i have no clue about them, other than vague complaints by a coder friend of mine about ati's drivers, and that was only 3 months ago
if youre going to use linux, youre probably better off with the geforce as well as it has much better opengl drivers in linux by far, in fact i dont think ati even have linux opengl drivers out for radeon, could be wrong though.

CodeMonkey

Originally posted by Koopa
dont bother getting an ati if you plan on playing older games like quakeworld, other than that i have no clue about them, other than vague complaints by a coder friend of mine about ati's drivers, and that was only 3 months ago
if youre going to use linux, youre probably better off with the geforce as well as it has much better opengl drivers in linux by far, in fact i dont think ati even have linux opengl drivers out for radeon, could be wrong though.

Sam, nobody plays quakeworld anymore apart from a rare few quakeworld fanatics I have coder friends who complains about nvidia stuff too and one of them in fact bought a radeon8500 recently because linux drivers support for the geforce cards were so bad until recently.

Scruff

i've ready a few reviews of the Hercules 3D Prophet FDX8500LE and it seems the memory is only clocked at 238mhz instead of the normal 250mhz. Also being a "bulk" card does it mean worse than OEM standard graphics cards which tend to be or lower quality than retail cards??

if it is (or maybe just for piece of mind) i'd go for the gf3 but while the site has the gf3 ti 200 title and picture on the page, it goes on about the gf2 mx in the overview!

netman

Originally posted by Scruff
i've ready a few reviews of the Hercules 3D Prophet FDX8500LE and it seems the memory is only clocked at 238mhz instead of the normal 250mhz. Also being a "bulk" card does it mean worse than OEM standard graphics cards which tend to be or lower quality than retail cards??

ATI OEM cards are just clocked at lower speeds than their retail counterparts, but it's not a big deal, you can overclock them that little bit to get to retail speeds.

Bulk means it comes in an anti-static bag with a CD in it, no fancy box, no gadgets, no games, demos, etc. Most of that stuff is completely useless anyways.

if it is (or maybe just for piece of mind) i'd go for the gf3 but while the site has the gf3 ti 200 title and picture on the page, it goes on about the gf2 mx in the overview!

I wouldn't mind about that too much, not with komplett anyway. You can give them a ring if you want to be sure.

netman

Originally posted by CodeMonkey
That and the stuff from you on the above post are very nvidia biased and anti-ati for no real reason.

well i might be trashing ATI more than they deserve, and i have no first-hand experience with their products. i do have plenty of friends who got their cards expecting a good quality product and got nothing but an endless stream of troubles.

at the end of the day, it's a personal choice. talks on the hardware forums, numerous reviews etc still suggest that ati has a long way to go before they reach the quality of drivers that nvidia has been pushing out for years.

i'm not an nvidia religious fanatic, i simply know they make a good product, and if you get a good deal it's the best value for money.

on the overclocking side, problem with the radeons is the fact that they clock memory and chipset synchronously, so if either can't go over a certain speed, you're stuck.

i found this pretty good review of radeon 8500le that compares it to 8500, ti200 and ti500, which should give a person a pretty good idea of how the cards stack up to each other and what to expect from them if they're overclocked:

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/videocards/article.php/3211_989321__1

_sheep

Re-name the thread "Ati bashing" or possibly "non-informed Ati bashing"

I agree that for 'peace of mind fo for the geforce' but only if you dont trust an awful lot of good reviews and 99% of people that bought an actual 8500le+

Now Ati in the past were CRAP but all id say is give ati a chance they seem to have gotten their act together (well not seem, have infact)

GOE ATI !

G

I got stung in the past by the ATi Rage 128 so it's a case of once bitten twice shy for me. It has to be said that there are still loads of people bashing ATi about shady drivers etc... whether that's strictly true or not I dunno - but as I say, for me, at the end of the day, I won't be going near ATi again.

And while we're on the subject new Detonator drivers were released yesterday, added support for the Ti400's... which is nice.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=det_xp_winxp-2k_30.82

netman

Well, if you're getting an ATI Radeon at least check the support forum, newsgroups and discussion boards on some of the major hardware sites for any known issues with ATI graphics cards and any other piece of software/hardware you might be running... such as Windows 2000, VIA chipset etc etc. It's better to err on the site of caution.

I still don't trust ATI but that's me

phreak

i dont like ATi (bad experiences in the past with them)

i now own a GF3 Ti200 and its great. perfect for playing games on high res with high fps