December 2002 3Digest - ATI RADEON 8500 (275/550 MHz)

This chip is presented by Gigabyte MAYA AP64SP-H Deluxe RADEON 8500 64MB, AGP card.

Features:

ATI RADEON 8500 chip, 275MHz clock rate;
64MB DDR SDRAM in 8 Hynix 3.6 ns chips, 275 (550) MHz clock rate, 128-bit bus;
Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode is 1100 megapixels/sec and 2200 megatexels/sec.

Overclocks to 300/300MHz (GPU/memory).

By the end of December the product belongs to the $105-125 range; supports DirectX 8.1; closest rivals: GeForce3 Ti 500, GeForce4 MX440-8x.

For more details about RADEON 8500 read our reviews:

Theoretical and analytical videocard reviews, containing functional analysis of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti GPU: ATI RADEON 8500

Basic review of ATI RADEON 8500
Review of PowerMagic RADEON 7500/8500 - the perfomance of the new 7.206 drivers, including SmoothVision function; 3D graphic quality of RADEON 8500
Review of Manli and Sunrich RADEON 7500/8500 - the quality of SmoothVision perfomance; 3D graphic quality of RADEON 8500 (continued)
Review of SuperGrace RADEON 7500/8500 - TRUFORM perfomance; 3D graphic quality of RADEON 8500 (continued)
Review of Gigabyte MAYA AP64D-H RADEON 8500 Deluxe - Pixel Shaders perfomance on the example of Advanced Pixel Shader Test of 3DMark2001 SE
Review of Joytech Apollo RADEON 7500 SDR 64MB and 128MB
Review of Joytech Apollo Devil Monster II RADEON 8500LE 128MB and Hercules 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE 64MB - RADEON 8500 128MB cards perfomance
Review of Palit XpertVision RADEON 8500 on ATI RADEON 8500LE - RADEON 8500LE performance in RtCW, Comanche4 DEMO, 3DMark2001 SE
Review of Gigabyte MAYA AP128DG-H RADEON 8500 Deluxe 128MB and Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128MB - anisotropy-related questions (quality-accented) on the example of 3DMark2001 SE, RtCW, Serious Sam:TSE, Comanche4 DEMO, Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO
Review of Jetway RADEON 8500 275/550 MHz 64MB and 7500 265/390 MHz 64MB
Review of Gigabyte MAYA AP128DG-H3 RADEON 8500 Deluxe 128MB 300/600 MHz

On the 10th of December 2002 the latest drivers version from ATI is 6.218 for Windows XP.

I shall note there's Radeon2.ru, web-site that tracks all software novelties from ATI and offers improved drivers versions with preset registry settings for increasing RADEON cards perfomance.

Windows XP

want to attract you to versions 6.025 and higher. All of them have the feature of anisotropy forcing in Direct3D, described in the corresponding feature. As Radeon does (though ambiguously) support anisotropic filtering, I recommend you to pay attention to the article concerning this feature.

Some versions demonstrate problems with refresh rate setting. Known treatments are described at Radeon2.ru. In the forum you can also read about problems users of various ATI cards face with various drivers.

As there are no real application using Pixel Shaders 1.4. So, below are some demonstrations of one of water realization methods based on Pixel Shaders 1.4. you may compare these shots with X-Isle's water in the GeForce3 section, for example.

Pity again, but it's still impossible to demonstrate this technology at work on examples of games or demos. The same X-Isle uses NVIDIA cards specificial OpenGL extensions disabling this demo on non-GeForce cards. Certainly, the above demo was made with PS 1.4, so it works with RADEON 8500 only. You can also pay attention to the new 3DMark2001 SE with pixel shaders v1.4 test. Read more about it in the Gigabyte MAYA RADEON 8500 review.

Nevertheless, these technics allow to create masterpieces of 3D-graphics:

As you know, RADEON 8500 supports the very interesting feature and advantage - N-Patches (TruForm). All details are in our R200 analysis and in mentioned RADEON 8500 review. Screenshots below demonstrate TruForm capabilities for creating a detailed human face.

I want to recommend to read the review of Review of SuperGrace RADEON 7500/8500, describing TRUEFORM technology in detail on the example of Serious Sam.

Below are some screenshots taken on RADEON and reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.