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September 2002 3Digest -
ATI RADEON 7500 (230/333 MHz)





This chip is presented by ATI RADEON 7500 64MB (230/333 MHz), AGP videocard.




Features:

Wasn't overclocked.

As I wrote in the review of this card, ATI has at last released not only the fastest card to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce3 leader, but has also released a middle level card for competing with its NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro and GeForce2 Ti analogues - RADEON 7500. Per se it's the same RADEON but produced according to thinner 0.15 micron technical process and thus capable of working at phenomenal clock rate of 290 MHz (and even higher). ATI provided this chip with fast 4ns memory and really succeeded in making a competitor for middle level accelerators.

But there are some disappointments. First, only ATI's cards, have chips clocked at 290 MHz, but they cost high and almost can't compete with prices for GeForce2 Ti. Second, ATI has lowered clock rate "on the sly" again without notifying users. So we've made a separate section for RADEON 7500 cards, manufactured by ATI partners. In particular, one of these cards has 230 MHz GPU and even worse 166 (333) MHz memory. But prices dropped, resulting in some demand. And the release of RADEON 9000 may press RADEON 7500 prices deeper, including more powerful models, or even push them out of the market.

On the 10th of September 2002 the latest drivers from ATI are 6.143, 6.159, 6.166 for Windows XP. Performance results are in the summary diagrams.

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.

And now I want to attract your attention to another important 3D feature - filtering. As many of you know, all chipsets support bilinear filtering that is an important instrument in MIP-mapping, some chipsets support trilinear filtering (true, not the approximation) and only few support anisotropic filtering.

Due to the fact that Radeon does support anisotropic filtering, I recommend you to pay attention to the article concerning this feature.

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

Games / Cards 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
ATI RADEON 7500




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NVIDIA GeForce3


































































Games / Cards 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
ATI RADEON 7500
























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NVIDIA GeForce3





















































Games / Cards 25 26 27 28 29 30
ATI RADEON 7500





























NVIDIA GeForce3































Game list:

  • 1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  • 2. Unreal2 (alpha version)
  • 3. Comanche4
  • 4. Jedi Knight II Outcast
  • 5. Morrowind
  • 6. Colin McRAE Rally2 (Windows XP)
  • 7. Red Faction
  • 8. Rally Trophy
  • 9. Sacrifice
  • 10. Venom
  • 11. Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO
  • 12. Real MYST
  • 13. Blade of Darkness (Windows XP)
  • 14. Neverwinter Nights
  • 15. 3DMark2001: Game1
  • 16. 3DMark2001: Game2
  • 17. 3DMark2001: Game3
  • 18. 3DMark2001: Game4
  • 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
  • 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
  • 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
  • 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
  • 23. Warcraft III
  • 24. Soldier of Fortune II
  • 25. Command and Conquer: Renegade
  • 26. No One Lives Forever Demo
  • 27. AquaNox
  • 28. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  • 29. IL2: Shturmovik
  • 30. MoHAA



Andrew Worobyew (Anvakams@ixbt.com)
Alexander Kondakov (kondalex@ixbt.com)
Evgeniy Zaycev (eightn@ixbt.com)
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