Why is it that the vast majority of computer hardware review websites seem to downplay driver quality issues, yet obsess over overclocking modifications, driver tweaks and other hacks, aiming to squeeze a little extra performance out of their hardware? Browsing some of the most popular hardware review sites, one gets the impression that these reviewers simply aren't in touch with the fact that spending as little as $10 (Cdn) will buy me an extra hundred megahertz or so worth of CPU performance; I no longer care much about any performance increase or decrease that can't detected without a stopwatch or benchmarking program. I mean, really, sites like Extremetech having taken benchmark madness right over the top, with observations like this one: "...New driver versus old driver performance delta: 0.8% slower at 1024x768x32, 2% slower at 1600x1200x32." Who cares? It's the quality that matters!!
Believe it or not, I run a lot of benchmarks while reviewing graphics cards, CPUs and the like. I just don't often find results noteworthy enough to mention. If it's a truly significant boost, as the GeForce 3 is over earlier GeForce or TNT series cards (or the first-generation Radeon, for that matter), well that's news. But when Tweaknews, HardOCP and others start obsessing over 1% slowdown in this-or-that driver, well, it's time to get a life. If the reliability goes up more than 1% with that kind of a penalty, I'm all for it.
And if the Radeon 7500 has horrible bugs in its anti-aliasing function (which, upon its release, it certainly did), well, that's news too. For better or worse, I try to write the sort of articles I'd like to read. And I dig into the details that matter to me. Do the features work as advertised? In games in which the display misbehaves, are there any known fixes?
Truly, I find it astonishing that there were so few early reviews of the ATI Radeon 7500 that mentioned its shockingly buggy drivers, or the fact that, after literally dozens of driver revisions of the original Radeon graphics card, it still has refresh rate problems that cause it to misbehave for many owners. (This issue finally caused us to pull a Radeon out of our Windows XP machine and drop a GeForce3 in instead. Bingo - no more refresh rate problems. (Of course, NVIDIA drivers have had more than a few revisions addressing numerous problems, as well. The latest Detonator drivers for the Geforce3 caused us some grief, too, producing bizarre display anomalies in Test Drive 5 and a few other older titles.) So, here we are with the Radeon 8500. It's been on the market and in reviewers' hands for enough time that one might (might!) assume its drivers have stabilized. (The earliest reviews appeared back in Oct. and Nov. of 2001.) It was, for most of Q4 of 2001 and Q1 of 2002, the fastest graphics card on the market -- at least until NVIDIA's GeForce4 showed up.
"ATI has gotten into the very bad habit of releasing what amounts to unfinished products."
- Dave Salvator, Extremetech.com
The most common problem we've seen in ATI's Radeon 8500 drivers so far have been related to Smoothvision and/or FSAA full-scene anti-aliasing. In many games, it just doesn't work right. The most bizarre manifestation of FSAA-related problems is the infamous "melting 2-D graphics" effect seen in programs such as Microsoft Motocross Madness and Jane's USAF flight sim. This is an effect that has to be seen to be believed. If you've ever seen the screen saver where everything on the screen appears to melt and slide toward the bottom of the screen, that's basically what happens here. Interestingly, it only seems to affect 2-D graphics; the 3-D part of Motocross Madness looks fine, as does the 3-D landscape in Janes USAF.
And -- surprise, surprise -- the Radeon 8500 shipped with drivers exhibiting refresh rate problems, too. An ATI infobase article describes under what conditions they occur, and how to fix them. In short, you need updated drivers.
The ATI Multimedia Center software, as we've noted in previous reviews, provides good quality AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and DVD video playback. It also includes players for Video CD, audio CD and various tweaking options.
On the back of the card, there are three video connectors: one each for VGA, DVI video connector (with dongle adapter, allowing it to be used with a second standard VGA monitor) and a composite/S-Video connector, to which an included adapter cable may be connected for output to a TV.
The Radeon 8500 supports a feature ATI calls HydraVision. With it, you can use two separate screens, displaying different content on each. For example, you might connect the external S-video or composite output to a big-screen TV and watch DVDs or a video, while the computer's monitor is displaying the editing program, or any other third-party software. The Radeon 8500, unlike its cousin the All-in-Wonder (AIW) 8500DV, supports dual displays on either any combination of the three connectors. You can set it up with one display, one CRT monitor and one flatscreen panel, or either one of these choices and a TV as your secondary display. The AIW 8500 DV, in contrast, has only one monitor jack: a DVI port that converts to a VGA connector, with the supplied adapter. Thus, it is limited in that one of the displays must be an S-video or composite type monitor such as a TV.
The software that controls this HydraVision feature adds an interesting feature to all windows in your operating system: two new windows controls appear in the upper-right corner, next to the minimize, maximize and close controls. One is a "full-size window" gadget that causes windows to spring open as large as possible without actually taking over the window corners, as Microsoft's maximize control does. The other is a tiny arrow that reveals various HydraVision options such as whether to reposition dialogs on the application's monitor or the TV display, etc.
As noted in our review of the AIW 8500DV, elsewhere in this section, the Radeon 8500, with a core/memory clock speed of 275MHz, is clocked slightly faster than the AIW...and the lower-cost 8500LE (detailed below) running at 250MHz. It's not an issue that most people would notice, but if this matters to you, there it is.
Half Life: Counter Strike | Team Fortress Classic | Half Life Uplink. Half Life is still one of the scariest games we've ever played, and one of our favorite first-person action titles. All three of these Half-Life adventures are TruForm enabled. As we noted in our review of the AIW 8500DV, we feely that TruForm is one of the most exciting advances in graphics card technology to come along in years; it's a feature that requires special game programming, but with the right software, it really shines. (And, for those games which misinterpret the smoothing information, you can always turn it off.)
ATI drivers. Our review unit came bundled with driver disc version 1.00. As always, there will be updates. Lots of them. We've tested several revisions since then, including the first one we'd care to recommend: build 7.66 for Windows: It solved all of the problems we encountered during our 3D gaming tests with the driver in the retail box. ATI in June 2002 introduced the first major driver revision for its cards, dubbed CATALYST. See ATI's new drivers- Catalyst for change? at Tech-Report.com for details.
This product, particularly with the newest drivers, fares well against in feature and performance comparisons to any card based on NVIDIA's GeForce3 chipset. If you are looking for the best possible gaming performance, you should also consider a GeForce4Ti series product. If DVD playback and dual-monitor support is a priority, then ATI comes out (slightly ahead). For many of us, however, a major factor in such decisions is price. With an OEM price of about C$260 and a retail box price about $275, the Radeon 8500 compares favorably to NVIDIA's best -- a top-of-the-line GeForce3-or-better card typically costs a couple of hundred more. Overall, we find ATI's driver quality at this point "good to very good"; considering ATI's track record over the past four years, this is a major achievement.
Another alternative is the 8500LE, announced in Feb. by ATI and expected to ship in March at the same price as the existing retail edition of the Radeon 8500. This card, as noted above, is clocked at 250MHz. It also lacks the DVI connector found on the standard 8500. It will appear in a 128MB configuration, along with a revised 128MB version of the 8500. The 64MB edition, ATI confirms, will be phased out. (Read more...)
As ATI ramps up production of its high-end RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9000 Pro line of graphics cards, look for third parties, including memory manufacturer Crucial, to pick up the slack with cards based on the ATI Radeon 8500LE. Crucial's first foray into video cards, for example, is US$134.99 and it outperforms ATI's RADEON 9000 Pro, which is similarly priced.
Those looking for a less expensive product should be aware of the fact that, unlike the 8500, lesser ATI and NVIDIA cards (including the recently announced GeForce4MX series of products), lack support for some advanced DirectX 8.1 features, such as pixel shaders. The number of games taking advantage of these features is is slowly increasing, but choosing a card that supports these features is clearly your best hedge against early obsolescence.
And, if price is no object or if support for Microsoft's forthcoming DirectX 9 (still in beta, at this writing) is important, avid gamers should look toward ATI's flagship RADEON 9700 or the upcoming NV30 line of cards from NVIDIA.
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