Prophet II GTS vs Radeon 8500

Shaith · Sep 18, 2002, 08:05 PM

Let me start this review by admitting freely that I've been a long-time Nvidia user, having made that switch back in the days of the TNT2. And these are in-use cards, not brand-new off the shelf components from a pretty box.

Prophet II GTS - Initial Impressions
The Hercules Prophet II GTS is a 64 MB video card that comes with a trio of outputs. In addition to the traditional monitor output, there's an output for flat-panel displays, and a TV-out. Unlike the normal video boards, this board isn't the usual boring green PCB we're used to but a nice blue. Memory occupies only the front surface of the board, and the pairs are adorned with shiny blue heatsinks. The GPU, Nvidia's Graphics Processing Unit, also sports one of these shiny blue heatsinks, and has a fan embedded in the surface. Overall, a nice looking card.

Prophet II GTS - Installation
Installation was fairly simple and straight-forward. The card was recognized by Windows XP without any significant difficulties. Installing the latest release Nvidia drivers required nothing more than a reboot afterwards, and then I was off to set up my desktop and make the screen something usable instead of the 640x480 I was looking at.

Prophet II GTS - Performance
These are older cards, and they're in an older machine. Specs are:

P3/550
Abit BH6
324 Megs PC133
Seagate 10K Cheetah LVD/Adaptec 2940U2W
Windows XP Professional

The Prophet II GTS is a fair performer, sporting marked increases over its predecessor. However, performance can hardly be called astonishing. It's apparent that this card suffers greatly from the lack of AGP bandwidth, as the mainboard is limited to 1x and 2x support while the card itself allows up to 4x. Video quality is acceptable, with frame rates in most pre-2002 games being quite playable at resolutions to 1024x768 depending on detail settings. Even some current games are fine - for example, Warcraft III plays very well. Games such as Unreal Tournament 2003 are a different story, with frame rates at 640x480 dropping to a wretched 8-10 FPS range during CTF matches, even with all settings bottomed out.

Overall 3dmarks score for this card, 1024x768, standard settings, was 2158 (average of several runs). One major weakness was the fact that the Nature test could not be run at all due to lack of hardware support.

Prophet II GTS to ATI Radeon 8500 Switch

Forget the mysteries, the hype, and the supposition out there that you have to reformat your drive, send sacrifices to the computer gods, or any of that foolishness. I'd heard horror stories about computers not working at all, video problems, etc and was told by more than one person to reformat to switch.

Bah. Ever the adventurer, I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and toys from the Add/Remove panel, then shut down and removed the card. That's all the prep work I did. No manual removals, no seek-and-destroy missions in the file system or registry. Just Average-Joe "uninstall".

Radeon 8500 - Initial Impressions
ATI produced a cleanly-designed card in the Radeon 8500, but also left it free of imagination. It's on a standard green PCB, and supports three connectors like its competitor, with the same three functions. No heatsinks on the memory are observed, strange for a performance video card. Video RAM is on both sides of the card, unlike the Nvidia. Heatsink and fan are prominent on the 8500 for the main graphics processor. Like the Nvidia, the 8500 is also a 64 MB card.

Radeon 8500 - Installation
Bearing in mind the "unclean" state of the machine, I installed the Radeon, closed the cover, and turned on the machine. Immediately I noticed a difference - the slightly different frequency used by the Radeon meant resetting all of my monitor settings for each resolution. Not a problem, my G773 has handy pushbuttons just for such an occasion. Once the machine finished booting, it recognized the Radeon without difficulty. A reboot and a driver update and control panel install later, followed by a second reboot, and I was up and running on the Radeon. Note that the control panel and the drivers are two separate downloads, where everything on Nvidia is in a single download.

Radeon 8500 - Performance
2D performance was similar to the naked eye to that afforded by the Nvidia card. Colors are crisp, clear, no visible tearing or video abnormalities were observed with either card. If all you need is 2D performance though, you probably don't need either of these cards - settle for a cheap AGP knock-off card.

3D performance was an entirely different story. Visually, the Radeon soundly trounced the Nvidia, even with FSAA disabled. With FSAA enabled, the beatings became quite ugly. Framerates WITH FSAA on the Radeon were comparable to the Nvidia WITHOUT FSAA, indicating that not only is the 8500 a more powerful card, but utilizes better design than the Nvidia card.

The 3Dmarks score with this card with no other changes made was an astonishing 3403 3D marks at 1024x768, FSAA disabled. FSAA enabled and triple-buffering yielded a score on par with the Nvidia without FSAA utilizing double-buffering. Unlike the Nvidia card, the Radeon had no hardware lacking, and was able to display the Nature test without a problem.

Some last thoughts

For those of you on older machines, realize that the life of these old dinosaurs is increasingly limited as games are being produced with minimum specifications that far exceed the power available. However, for those of you with one of these old beasties like me, finding a way to stretch it out just a little longer doesn't hurt - and with the release of the Radeon 9700, the prices on the 8500 have dropped considerably and will drop further as more 9700's reach the marketplace, making it a quick and easy way to upgrade your performance without decimating your wallet. And because the 8500 is a solid performer even on faster machines, it will give you some growing room as well so you can spread your upgrade dollars around.

~~David~~ · Sep 18, 2002, 10:39 PM

Good review sir. gonna have to send ya more hardware.

Shaith · Sep 18, 2002, 11:14 PM

If anyone has something they'd like to see a review on, let us know. We'll check with the staff and see who if any of us has one and get it posted for you.

~~shai~~ · Sep 18, 2002, 11:50 PM

how about kt400 vs kt333

Chaos · Sep 20, 2002, 03:18 AM

Good job dude.... I wish I had a Radeon 8500 to try out... I have been in nVidia land since the TNT

Shaith · Sep 20, 2002, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Chaos
Good job dude.... I wish I had a Radeon 8500 to try out... I have been in nVidia land since the TNT

I can say with all honesty that after an experience with ATI cards years ago (an AIW card in fact) I had sworn them off permanently. I switched to nvidia with the TNT2 cards, a Viper 550 was actually the first of the long line that I had in fact. So when it was suggested that I should try out the Radeon I figured "Yeah, sure, no way it's going to do much better, I'm CPU limited".

I just about passed out when I saw the difference in the 3dmark scores by doing nothing more than installing the video drivers and control panel.

Here's a few more tidbits though:

Games like America's Army, UT2K3, even DeusEx were choppy and sometimes hardly playable with the GTS on my rig, even with many of the options turned down. In UT2K3 I turned everything down that you could turn down and turned every glitz option OFF and it was STILL a slide show. Don't ask for screenies of the framerate counters, I'm not reinstalling that slow card in this box for all the tea in China

I was able to play America's Army for the first time last night - cool game, highly recommended if you haven't played it. DeusEx looks VERY different - and smooth as glass. UT2K3? No problems. I'm not pushing the 200 frame mark like some people out there - but I figure anything in the 30+ range is playable.

Now, to see if I can get used to UT2K3

Shaith · Sep 20, 2002, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by shai
how about kt400 vs kt333

I'll see what I can do, KT400's being around 4 days old marketwise might make that tricky though

Matth · Sep 20, 2002, 02:03 PM

The Geforce 2 would push a bit faster with more CPU horsepower behind it - as would the 8500 - that's a MISERABLE result for an 8500, being starved of CPU power.

I get 2200 (3Dmark2001) from a Geforce 2MX - but with a 1200 Athlon driving it - I was going to try Americas Army - but if that sort of 3DMark means lousy performance, I'll have to replace it or overclock it to hell

digitalwanderer · Sep 20, 2002, 03:54 PM

..it really seems like a bit of an unfair comparison 'tween cards. A 7500 radeon against a GF2 GTS sounds a whole lot more fair, or an 8500 against a ti500 or so. (My GF3(240/530) gets it's ass kicked in 3dm2k1se by my 8500!)

Good review though, nicely done.

Shaith · Sep 20, 2002, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
..it really seems like a bit of an unfair comparison 'tween cards. A 7500 radeon against a GF2 GTS sounds a whole lot more fair, or an 8500 against a ti500 or so. (My GF3(240/530) gets it's ass kicked in 3dm2k1se by my 8500!)

Good review though, nicely done.

I thought so too at first - but according to Nvidia, this card is totally CPU and AGP bandwidth starved.

Now if that's truly the case - there shouldn't have been a 1000+ 3dmarks difference between the two cards. No matter WHAT card, the CPU being maxxed out would have limited performance to the point that very little difference was seen.

Yet the numbers speak for themselves.

However, anyone who'd like to see the 7500 vs the GF2 GTS, send me a 7500 with a return shipping label and I'll be happy to bench it out for you

~~JAV~~ · Oct 15, 2002, 07:56 AM

Nice review & nice to see a 'real world' test. ie; older system newer card.

I have to agree w/DW tho'. A 7500 is in the GTS class & a Ti500 is in the 8500 class.

My P3 650 & MX400 w/the 40.52 driver on regular game settings (no mipmap adj & 1x2 FSAA) runs ~2200 on 3D Mark, just for reference & it is a PCI card. Yes it is overclocked, but ...

I'd like to see a Rad 9000 (non-Pro) review against that GTS w/a ~1gig CPU. If you could throw in a MX420~440, that would be real cool too!

Nice review, not 'knocking' it, but I'm not surprised @ the results. Thanks for laying some of those horror stories to rest too. I have often heard 'reformat' too & no way am I doing that to run a vid card. Plug & play > or forget it.

JAV
GBA!

Sep 18, 2002, 08:05 PM	#1
Shaith HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 916 Rep Power: 0	Prophet II GTS vs Radeon 8500 Let me start this review by admitting freely that I've been a long-time Nvidia user, having made that switch back in the days of the TNT2. And these are in-use cards, not brand-new off the shelf components from a pretty box. Prophet II GTS - Initial Impressions The Hercules Prophet II GTS is a 64 MB video card that comes with a trio of outputs. In addition to the traditional monitor output, there's an output for flat-panel displays, and a TV-out. Unlike the normal video boards, this board isn't the usual boring green PCB we're used to but a nice blue. Memory occupies only the front surface of the board, and the pairs are adorned with shiny blue heatsinks. The GPU, Nvidia's Graphics Processing Unit, also sports one of these shiny blue heatsinks, and has a fan embedded in the surface. Overall, a nice looking card. Prophet II GTS - Installation Installation was fairly simple and straight-forward. The card was recognized by Windows XP without any significant difficulties. Installing the latest release Nvidia drivers required nothing more than a reboot afterwards, and then I was off to set up my desktop and make the screen something usable instead of the 640x480 I was looking at. Prophet II GTS - Performance These are older cards, and they're in an older machine. Specs are: P3/550 Abit BH6 324 Megs PC133 Seagate 10K Cheetah LVD/Adaptec 2940U2W Windows XP Professional The Prophet II GTS is a fair performer, sporting marked increases over its predecessor. However, performance can hardly be called astonishing. It's apparent that this card suffers greatly from the lack of AGP bandwidth, as the mainboard is limited to 1x and 2x support while the card itself allows up to 4x. Video quality is acceptable, with frame rates in most pre-2002 games being quite playable at resolutions to 1024x768 depending on detail settings. Even some current games are fine - for example, Warcraft III plays very well. Games such as Unreal Tournament 2003 are a different story, with frame rates at 640x480 dropping to a wretched 8-10 FPS range during CTF matches, even with all settings bottomed out. Overall 3dmarks score for this card, 1024x768, standard settings, was 2158 (average of several runs). One major weakness was the fact that the Nature test could not be run at all due to lack of hardware support. Prophet II GTS to ATI Radeon 8500 Switch Forget the mysteries, the hype, and the supposition out there that you have to reformat your drive, send sacrifices to the computer gods, or any of that foolishness. I'd heard horror stories about computers not working at all, video problems, etc and was told by more than one person to reformat to switch. Bah. Ever the adventurer, I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and toys from the Add/Remove panel, then shut down and removed the card. That's all the prep work I did. No manual removals, no seek-and-destroy missions in the file system or registry. Just Average-Joe "uninstall". Radeon 8500 - Initial Impressions ATI produced a cleanly-designed card in the Radeon 8500, but also left it free of imagination. It's on a standard green PCB, and supports three connectors like its competitor, with the same three functions. No heatsinks on the memory are observed, strange for a performance video card. Video RAM is on both sides of the card, unlike the Nvidia. Heatsink and fan are prominent on the 8500 for the main graphics processor. Like the Nvidia, the 8500 is also a 64 MB card. Radeon 8500 - Installation Bearing in mind the "unclean" state of the machine, I installed the Radeon, closed the cover, and turned on the machine. Immediately I noticed a difference - the slightly different frequency used by the Radeon meant resetting all of my monitor settings for each resolution. Not a problem, my G773 has handy pushbuttons just for such an occasion. Once the machine finished booting, it recognized the Radeon without difficulty. A reboot and a driver update and control panel install later, followed by a second reboot, and I was up and running on the Radeon. Note that the control panel and the drivers are two separate downloads, where everything on Nvidia is in a single download. Radeon 8500 - Performance 2D performance was similar to the naked eye to that afforded by the Nvidia card. Colors are crisp, clear, no visible tearing or video abnormalities were observed with either card. If all you need is 2D performance though, you probably don't need either of these cards - settle for a cheap AGP knock-off card. 3D performance was an entirely different story. Visually, the Radeon soundly trounced the Nvidia, even with FSAA disabled. With FSAA enabled, the beatings became quite ugly. Framerates WITH FSAA on the Radeon were comparable to the Nvidia WITHOUT FSAA, indicating that not only is the 8500 a more powerful card, but utilizes better design than the Nvidia card. The 3Dmarks score with this card with no other changes made was an astonishing 3403 3D marks at 1024x768, FSAA disabled. FSAA enabled and triple-buffering yielded a score on par with the Nvidia without FSAA utilizing double-buffering. Unlike the Nvidia card, the Radeon had no hardware lacking, and was able to display the Nature test without a problem. Some last thoughts For those of you on older machines, realize that the life of these old dinosaurs is increasingly limited as games are being produced with minimum specifications that far exceed the power available. However, for those of you with one of these old beasties like me, finding a way to stretch it out just a little longer doesn't hurt - and with the release of the Radeon 9700, the prices on the 8500 have dropped considerably and will drop further as more 9700's reach the marketplace, making it a quick and easy way to upgrade your performance without decimating your wallet. And because the 8500 is a solid performer even on faster machines, it will give you some growing room as well so you can spread your upgrade dollars around.

Sep 20, 2002, 03:18 AM	#5
Chaos Number Nine Join Date: May 2002 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 5,269 Rep Power: 165 System Specs	Good job dude.... I wish I had a Radeon 8500 to try out... I have been in nVidia land since the TNT __________________

Sep 20, 2002, 02:03 PM	#8
Matth Flash Banner Hater Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: UK Posts: 3,411 Rep Power: 91 System Specs	The Geforce 2 would push a bit faster with more CPU horsepower behind it - as would the 8500 - that's a MISERABLE result for an 8500, being starved of CPU power. I get 2200 (3Dmark2001) from a Geforce 2MX - but with a 1200 Athlon driving it - I was going to try Americas Army - but if that sort of 3DMark means lousy performance, I'll have to replace it or overclock it to hell __________________ Mary had a little lamb, Her father shot it dead Now Mary takes her lamb to school, Between two crusts of bread

Sep 20, 2002, 03:54 PM	#9
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,620 Rep Power: 0	I dunno... ..it really seems like a bit of an unfair comparison 'tween cards. A 7500 radeon against a GF2 GTS sounds a whole lot more fair, or an 8500 against a ti500 or so. (My GF3(240/530) gets it's ass kicked in 3dm2k1se by my 8500!) Good review though, nicely done. __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

Sep 18, 2002, 10:39 PM	#2
~~David~~ Banned Join Date: May 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 959 Rep Power: 0	Good review sir. gonna have to send ya more hardware.

Sep 18, 2002, 11:14 PM	Thread Starter #3
Shaith HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 916 Rep Power: 0	If anyone has something they'd like to see a review on, let us know. We'll check with the staff and see who if any of us has one and get it posted for you.

Sep 18, 2002, 11:50 PM	#4
~~shai~~ Banned Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 613 Rep Power: 0	how about kt400 vs kt333

Oct 15, 2002, 07:56 AM	#11
~~JAV~~ Banned Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: California, USA Posts: 283 Rep Power: 0	Nice review & nice to see a 'real world' test. ie; older system newer card. I have to agree w/DW tho'. A 7500 is in the GTS class & a Ti500 is in the 8500 class. My P3 650 & MX400 w/the 40.52 driver on regular game settings (no mipmap adj & 1x2 FSAA) runs ~2200 on 3D Mark, just for reference & it is a PCI card. Yes it is overclocked, but ... I'd like to see a Rad 9000 (non-Pro) review against that GTS w/a ~1gig CPU. If you could throw in a MX420~440, that would be real cool too! Nice review, not 'knocking' it, but I'm not surprised @ the results. Thanks for laying some of those horror stories to rest too. I have often heard 'reformat' too & no way am I doing that to run a vid card. Plug & play > or forget it. JAV GBA!