blix9

I am RMAing my Radeon 8500LE. With this Radeon 8500LE 64MB(bulk from Newegg), I am having annoying problems that I just can't fix. I tried other different drivers. Currently, I have new Catalyst but no luck.
Texts in some games(Flanker2.5, Freespace 2, X-wing alliance, Giant -Citizen Kabuto Demo are fuzzy and out of alignment. Some are illegible. Never had this problem with my old onboard graphic Celeron junk. My current PC also stutters in Sacrifice with all the settings at max(not supposted to). Can't run in OpenGl mode in Homeworld. In Counter Strike(only in D3D mode), you know the problem with Radeon I guess.

I am looking at Radeon 8500 128MB-retail- last shot with the ATI ($170) and Gainward GeForce 4 4200 128MB($205, little much for me...)....all including shipping. I read all the Review from customers and tech sites but I can't make decision. Could sombody shed some light in my numb head?

Thanks guys.

here is my rig:

-AMD XP 1800 with Arkua 7228 HSF
-Abit NV7-133R(latest 84 BIOS)
-512 meg, 2 x 256 Xtreme DDR(single-sided)
-ATI radeon 8500LE (bulk) (Catalyst 2.0 driver)
-Maxtor 60gig ATA133
-Pioneer DVD 16x S106(slot loadong)
-Win XP pro
-counter-strike (Mod version)
-nothing overclocked
-Antec 1035B case (with Antec350W PSU)

digitalwanderer

From personal experience I'd highly recomend you give the GF4 a try. If you've never tried nVidia you're going to be highly impressed, even if you have before the GF4 is the technically superior card with much better out-of-the-box compatibility.

In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if you see at least a 25% performance increase in the whole GF4 line within the next month or so with the release of the Detonator 5 series....I think the Dets are a bit more mature than the ATI catalyst set that was released for the very first time a week ago.

[SIZE=x-large]Seek, locate, nVidiate![/SIZE]

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Doomtrooper

Your decision should be based on what you feel is important to you, the Radeon 8500 does come with more features and the Geforce 4 is a Full Scene Antialiasing Card.

Overall speed should be about the same between the two cards unless FSAA is used then the 4200 will win due to its multisampling implementation.
The Radeon 8500 will outperform the 4200 with Anistropic filtering enabled, so the 8500's fortay is Anistropic filtering and the 4200's fortay is FSAA.
Some other nice features the 8500 brings is good tv-out, Truform which is being used more and more and Pixel Shader 1.4 effects with the 1st game New World Order supporting that version coming out this year (like counterstrike).
Both are good cards it depends on what you want FSAA, Anistropic etc...

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peroni

I'll have to agree with DW once again.
Mostly because you already had a bad experience with a 8500 so it's going to be the same with a 128 megger.

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Crash Override

not necessarily true. OEM cards are just that. They are not as reliable as retail cards.

I hear about all the problems that people are having and I find out most are on either OEM cards or cheap version 3rd part cards.

Im on my 8500 64MB retail that I bought back in January and I have yet to run into any problems (well other than buying it a week before the big price drop and that it doesnt O/C well heh)

Necrosis

I never had any problems with my retail 8500 either. Yet I would had to tell him to get another Radeon, and him still have the same problems. We forgot to mention another feature of the 8500 is a DV-I connector. I've never seen one on a 4200. Besides for the cost, and the new Nvidia cards coming out before too long (September or October??). Why would anyone really buy a Geforce 4 right now anyway? I'm waiting on the Matrox card myself.

Besides anyone notice he's use an ATI with a Nvidia chipset? Isn't there something about these two together that causes problems??? I'm sorry I can't remember but I'm sure I remember something from somewhere.

UberLord

Something along the lines of Windows95 not booting if a non MS-DOS is detected

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highpingdrifter

just moved from my rad vivo to msi gf4 ti 4200 and couldnt be happier with the perf and IQ,now i can play all my games with fsaa and they look good and still run well.the aniso problem is only an issue in d3d and the msi has got the dv-i connector.
this card was what i feel was a very good price of £139 ,it comes with 3.6ns hynix mem chips and the board clocks to 300/600 without any lockups or artifacts but the ram does get a little too hot so ram sinks would be recommended

blix9

Is picture with R8500 card noticeably prettier than GeForce4 4200 card? I heard that a lot. Higher quality and prettier picture with ATI cards than nVidia's .... Is it so apparent?
Never used an nVidia card before....

In opengl mode playing Counter Strike, I get ridiculously rounded renderings in weapons. Also in Half-Life, a wooden box looks like a ball(supposed to be square every side...) Is this what people call prettier picture?

Crash Override

heh higher IQ (Image Quality) is what people are talking about.

ATi uses higher quality image filters compared to any other company in the world at this point.

The rounding off that you are seeing is Truform not being used correctly. you can turn off truform in the console (I dont play HL much so I dont remember the command) and the boxes and weapons will go to their normal shape.

as for the AA being faster on the Ti4200 that is true but only due to a different type of AA that only handles edges and such instead of making the whole thing AA'ed. Also whats not said is if you run AA and Aniso on both a Ti4200 and an R8500 the 8500 will win the FPS counters more often as Aniso kills the GF4 cards for speed (And to be honest the AA on the GF4s needs aniso on to clean up the mess it makes).

Im not pro ATi all the way I mean there are some issues that it has as well. But I will say Ive owned nVidia based cards and Ive owned ATi cards and ATi has always treated me good.

digitalwanderer

...of tweaking your box & card to get games to run well, if you're tired of drivers that you're not sure if they'll improve your performance or crash your system, if you want the card that regardless of what fanATIcs say about it IS the industry standard that developers build their games around; then I'd try nVidia this time and see what a difference it can make.

(This is coming from a 4 generation ATI owner!)

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blix9

What's the command for turning off 'TruForm' in Counterstrike?
The ridiculous rounded rendering happens in OpenGl mode not in D3D mode. Does TruForm work only in OpenGl mode for CS?

Thanks.

UberLord

Yes. The command to switch it off is

ati_npatch 0

Either run that in the console or put it in your autoexec.cfg file

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Ryoko

damn dw, you need to star in an nvidia commercial

if you buy any card right now, it will be obsolete in the fall. if you do neither fsaa or aniso, the gf4 wins(n1), if you do fsaa the gf4 wins(n2), if you do aniso the 8500 wins(a1), if you do fsaa and aniso, the 8500 wins by a slight margin(a2). it sounds like you aren't impressed by truform, and pixel shader 1.4 is not the end all of pixel shaders(n3). generally, the gf4 is more compatible out of the box(n4). the nforce mobo has no reasonable compatibility issues with the 8500. and last but not least, the issues you reported don't sound like they are limited to oem cards(n5).

score:

nvidia: 5
ati: 2

blix9

Thanks guys
This forum is just great. Haven't decided yet which card to go with though....

Autoexec.cfg? At where? the system file? Waht will it do? Disable all the TruForm rendering in all applaications?

UberLord

Autoexec.cfg is found in the Half-Life/config or CounterStrike/config folder - depending which version of CS you're using. It only affects the game and not any other applications/games.

If the file is not there, then you don't have one. So create a new text file, put that command in and rename it to autoexec.cfg and off you go.

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blix9

I don't have the folder named 'config' in Half-Life or CStrike directory. I don't have the file 'autoexec.cfg' either. So I created the file with the command. Does not work. The box in the HL still looks like a ridiculous ball.

Typing the command in console in CStrike works. I got rid of the wrong rounded rendering in CS by just typing in the command in the console.

I still get the stupid looking round box in Half-Life... How do I get in the console in HL?

highpingdrifter

if you are still not decided go to http://www.hexus.net and read there review of the msi ti4200 and i think that will make your mind up.As a user of this card i can confirm everything they say especially the overclocking potential

Crash Override

usually in most games you use the tilde key (~) or shift-~

Impulse

[SIZE=x-small]TruFrom > Nvidia... RAR RAR! [/SIZE]

Zardon

well I own a 8500 and I have a Ti4600 in another rig (in development still ) and I have to make the point that the Ti4200 is VERY overclockable. a bargain card. but I really do still prefer the IQ of the 8500 ..... depends really on what you need.

blix9

Zardon,
Does it really look prettier with ATI(8500) card compared to with nVidia's(4200, 4400, 4600), like many other ATI owner say?

Crash Override

blix Ive owned nVidia based cards and ATi based cards (although I will say mostly ATi)

ATi is just flat amazing in how beautiful they look. Im not saying nVidias solutions are ugly...far from but man lol. I just get more into the game with my 8500. At this point though I hate to say it but I would really save up for a r300 when it comes out. I keep hearing before years end so if you can hold out that long id say go for it, but if you cant id say 8500 Retail 64MB edition or even 128 if its cheap enough.

Hard OCP which is famous for nVidia lovin/ATi Hatin did a review on the 8500 vs. the Gainward Ti4200

Heres a link for ya

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzEy

HsuGotaQ

Here's how I would compare anything made by ATI or NVIDIA (when comparing their best current hardware available). ATI is a Porche and NVIDIA is a Ferrari. They both offer great cars. What differentiates both are the following. A Ferrari is freaking fast, has pretty much the best motors around and is generally considered THE cars of all cars. A Porche is extremely fast, but not like a Ferrari. However, a Porche has better road handling and maneuvrability (road models, not F1s). They cost a lot, but still much less than a Ferrari.

Hehehe... thats what I think

*** /me runs outsides, busts a window and drives away with a newly stolen Porche

reno

Crash Override, you are dumb.

ATI using the highest quality image filters? Ever heard of Canopus? Ever heard of Silicon Graphics? Ever heard of Visiontek's nVidia cards? ARGH! Stop all this nonsense, non-thinking word spouting offing!

Nvidia AA not doing the entire picture, only the edges? EDGE ANTIALIASING? THAT's ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE ANTIALIASED! Anyway, Ge4 cards use multisampling and supersampling, supersampling ratchets the resolution extremely high, then downsamples the picture to your resolution. Multisampling shifts the image and projects the aggregate.

Anio filtering doesn't "kill" nvidia cards, it performs slightly slower on a 4200 than a radeon 8500. And by the way, an 8500 on a pentium 4 2.0 ghz machine will spit out about 8900 3dmarks, while a 4200 will belch out around 9400 at default. The radeon is an older part, it is comparable to a geforce3 ti500 in image quality and speed.

Anyway, wait until the new generation of cards come out, if all the hype both ATI and Nvidia spout is true, then it'll be worth it.

Doomtrooper

EDGE ANTIALIASING does nothing for textures (multisampling), really 1st you need to understand what Aliasing is then break down the word anti-aliasing.
For a good example seeing what aliasing is I refer to this link,

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/gf4...ias/index1.php

Supersampling does filter textures therefore reduces Aliasing more than multisampling the drawback being super sampling is slower (nothing is free in 3D), texture aliasing is more evident on a Radeon due to the higher default lod.
Until Parhelia came along the Voodoo 5 was still the champ in FSAA and the Voodoo 5 used Supersampling
So your statement about edge aliasing is not correct as is 'the dumb' comment

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reno

argh...I tire of explanations. Super Sampling AA SHOULD make textures look better, but in most vid cards it does not.

Multisampling does not edge anti-alias. Multisampling shifts the entire image, then displays the aggregate, thus blurrier textures but better AA at higher speeds.

You are now dumb too.

-p.s. Filtering techniques were created to get rid of jaggies, while trying not to be too blurry. Texture aliasing happens when you don't find the optimum setting for image quality. Lowering the LOD bias to -3.0 will be almost like unfiltered textures. The same with 8x (64tap) aniostropic filtering. Texture filtering is done on the picture after it is antialiased in all forms of supersampling and multisampling. So the only way to eliminated texture aliasing when using aniostropic filtering is to lower it. If you filter too much it will alias like texture filtering strives to prevent.

Doomtrooper

I see you didn't read the link, oh well the internet is full of genious's, too bad you are not one of them.

Posting your opinion is fine, posting BS and calling people dumb is not ok.

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"It's time to kick A$$ and chew bubble gum....and I'm all out of gum."

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November 1996

Doomtrooper

Huh..what kind of drivel is that ??

Anistropic filtering reduces texture aliasing by pushing the mip map borders way out, texture aliasing is a result of excessive lod bias which AA and AF will reduce...

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"It's time to kick A$$ and chew bubble gum....and I'm all out of gum."

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November 1996