Vampyromaniac

OK, I was originally planning on waiting for a loooooooong time after the AIW9700pro is released, and eventually buying that. But now I'm considering getting the 128MB AIW8500 in a month or so instead. I'd like to have an upgrade now instead of 2 years from now, and I don't think I'd need all the power the 9700 has anyway.

So, does anyone have this card, and can you tell me about how well it performs? I'm definitely not looking at the 8500DV, though. It's just too weak. Hey even owners of regular Radeon 8500's, fill me in.

I mostly play Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Serious Sam, Black & White . . . . But I wanna look at some "newer" games, too. Like Medal of Honor, Soldier of Fortune, RtCW. Not stuff like UT2003.

My AIW Radeon is just not quite doing it for me in the 3D field, even though I LOVE the TV/VIVO features. My last card was a TNT2-Ultra, and the Radeon wasn't too much of a boost above that.

So clue me in, guys. How does the 8500 run?
Thanks


[SIZE=x-small]yes, dig' even tho you're peeved at ATi, I'd like your response, too (btw what games do you play?)[/SIZE]


EDIT: EMAILS!!!!?!?!!@#%&$@

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digitalwanderer

'Cause I gotta really strong couple of arguments for getting yourself a nice GF4 over an 8500....the big one being I like me GF3 a whole lot better than my 8500 for gaming no matter what the benchmarks say. It just games better.

That aside, the 8500 is a pretty nice card for the money. The 2D can't be beat, and it really does a bang-up job on any Q3 engine based game. (REALLY nice, better than my GF3 in most of 'em.) I generally benchmark RTCW, UT, SOF, NOLF2, SOF2, UT2k3, GTA3, AquaNox, and Crimson Skies whenever I'm checking out new drivers and such...so I guess they're my staple games. (Although I'm big into the Mafia Demo too lately, cool looking. )

The 8500 could hold its own in any Q3 game and usually UT & UT2k3 too. It bit BIG TIME in GTA3 no matter what I tried, and it still gave me a few glitches here and there no matter what game I seemed to play. There were no real "rock-solid" feeling games to me. (Although a well tweaked Q3 game certainly came close.)

Look into a good used nVidia card after Comdex, you should be able to nab yourself a real deal.

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WTF is up with the sigs?

JavaFox

To say that the difference between a TNT2-ULTRA and a Radeon is minute --- I just don't know what to say. Anyway, the R8.5K is a magnificent card, although I think it would definitely be to your advantage to wait it out a little. The 8500 is indeed a very good card for the money, and it won't let you down when it comes to modern games.

As far as visual glitches, the only one I have experienced as of late on my R8.5K was in UT2K3. Everything else I've played (mostly Mafia and GTA3 recently) looks just fine.

Now, it seems to me that you're interested in keeping the video editing capabilities of your present AIW. I don't think it gets much better than the AIW line as far as that goes.

Vampyromaniac

Thanks guys. Some of the stuff below is replying directly to you guys, some of it is clarifying for possible future replies.

Well, nvidia is basically out of the question since . . . Ati don't make an All-In-Wonder nvidia card I definitely want an AIW card, the TV-tuner alone is a must. And of course nobody does TV+VIVO+3D like ATi. The only thing I'm debating is whether to get an AIW9700 when it drops to around $200 (which of course won't be for a loooong time) or, to opt for an AIW8500 much sooner. I was just wondering if the 3D muscle of the 8500 chip would be ample for the games I play, plus a couple of possible additional games (which I listed above). If so, I can get an upgrade much sooner (maybe a month or 2 or 3, when it's ~$200)

And yes, yes, the games are what I'm asking about not benchmarks. Yes, I can appreciate that the gf3 games better (in fact I didn't know that, thanks ), but I'm more concerned with whether or not the 8500 is enough for me.

Cool, thanks for all your experience with yer games! Heh, I even expected 8500 to be out of the question for UT2003. Btw, what is NOLF2 ?

Well, I didn't feel much difference in CS, and I was really expecting CarmageddonII to fly, since it's pretty old, but not really it doesn't. The only benchmark I have of the TNT2-Ultra is 3DMark2000. At the time I upgraded, the TNT2-Ultra got 3120, the Radeon got 4218. I was expecting like 5 or 6 thousand. Don't get me wrong, my Radeon runs most of my current games fine. I was just expecting more. And I'm asking about the 8500 mainly for Black&White, and the other aforementioned games I may get in the future.

And yes, I am certainly looking at AIW-only options.

Thanks again guys very much I am leaning closer to the AIW8500.


sorry i . . Im sleepy

Malus

What are your system specifications? If you have a really nice system, then it may be worth it to shell out the cash for a 9700. You'll probably do fine with an 8500 though.

Vampyromaniac

Heh, my specs don't change the fact that I am "non-rich" I won't spend more than about $200

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peterosesbookie

In my experience with the all in wonder cards out of the 8500 series. I would pick the 8500dv due to compatibility issues with AMD motherborads. Since I do not own a pentium 4 system to test on I can not speak for that. I know that the 8500dv is clocked lower, but I pick stability in the 2 cards.


Here are my system specs

Antec 1040B case
Antec 510d powersupply
Tyan Thunder K7 S2482 non $¢$!
Dual Amd 1900+ MP's
1 Gig of Corsair and Crucial 256 ECC 2100 DDR Ram
ATi All-in-wonder Radeon 8500dv
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
Promise TX2000 ATA-133 Raid 0/1/0+1 card
2 40 GB Maxtor diamond max plus 7200 RPM (boot and backup)
2 60 GB Maxtor diamond max plus 7200 RPM (Raid 0 on Promise Raid TX 2000)
Toshiba DVD 1612 (16x DVD, 48x cd)
Plextor Plexwriter 2410 black
Liteon 40125S (backup burner)
Windows XP Professional with service pack1
Ambient v.90 modem
Vantec Round cables
Sony G520P (who needs the F520, I see no difference)

With Catalyst 2.3, I see no reason to upgrade to the new 2.4 drivers because it does not fix the opengl games going back to 60HZ, 640X480.

If 2.5 or 2.6 fix the opengl games problem. I will upgrage then because I only play Quake 3 arena which is opengl, but because of headaches and nausea I can no longer play it until it is fixed in the drivers. I know that there are refresh fix programs out there but I do not use them because of instability issues with the tv software with the videocard.

I recommend waiting the 9700 AIW because of performance of it. But it took ATI about 11 months to make a excellent driver for it to where I can run everything in 2d with having lockups, freezing, and restarts of the system.

So I recommend waiting on directx 9.0 and the next release of windows which looks promising at this time

later

pete

Vampyromaniac

OK, I never thought about stability/compatibility issues. Is the AIW8500 known to be less stable/compatible than the AIW8500DV (or any other ATI card) ?

I definitely don't want the 8500DV, due to the clock speed and the inclusion of FireWire which I have no use for.

Again my 2 options are these:
a) wait for 1.5 or 2 years until the AIW9700 is ~$200
b) wait a couple months until the AIW8500 is ~$200

I will go for option B if the AIW8500 can handle games like B&W RtCW SoF MoH SeriousSam2, in at least 1024x768x32 (preferrably 1280xWhateverx32), and handle them with 60+ fps. Otherwise, I'm stuck with my AIW Radeon for a long time

If it really makes a difference, I have:
AthlonXP 1800 on K7S5A mobo (SiS 735 chipset)
256 MB DDR266
Win98 2nd ed.

If the card ain't stable though, I dunno . . . Well, hey I can always buy it and return it

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Jeff

I've got an 8500DV, and it can hold up in most games i throw at it, I play UT @ 1600x1200 with over 55fps average in OGL, i can't play UT2003 that high, but its still respectable. I would definitly recommend you getting the AIW8500, especially if you dont need firewire, it should do what you want it to. (Although i dont know if the AIW8500 supports Win98)

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Vampyromaniac

*GASP* noooooooooooo!
Omg, hopefully the ME drivers work

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peterosesbookie

Okay let me clear things up abit. Here is my system to be exact again.

Antec sx-1030B
Antec PP-510D Power Supply
Tyan Thunder K7 S2462 -NG
2 AMD Athlon MP 1900+ (1.6 ghz)
ATI ALL IN WONDER RADEON 8500 DV
2 sticks of Crucial REG ECC 2100 256MB Memory (512 total)
2 sticks of Corsair REG ECC 2100 256MB Memory (512 total)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Promise Raid TX2000 ATA 133
2 40 GB Hard drives Maxtor diamond max plus 7200RPM (boot and backup)
2 60 GB Hard drives Maxtor diamond max plus 7200RPM (120-112GB Running raid 0)
Toshiba 16x dvd 1612
Plextor 24/12/40 black
Sony 3.5 Black floppy
All Vantec Cables to fit 3 18 2 24 (Floppy and dvd/cd drives)
2 Thermaltake 6CU+ 7000RPM
Ambient (Intel) V.90 hardware modem

When the all-in-wonder 8500 128 came out, the Magizine Maximum PC rated it the best do everything card for one month. Since then, it re-rated the 8500dv for the best do everything card.

AND it still stands as of November of 2002. I do not know why. I have had this card in several systems and have not had very many problems.

My brother bought the All-in-Wonder 8500 128. He still has problems with it. He has a similar system to mine except he has the Tyan Tiger 760mpx and creative soundblaster live 5.1.

He can only run his system with bios in default mode, cannot run the Plus Screensavers (system restart). Until the last driver Catalsyt 2.3, it was impossible to run it in Windows XP.

As I said before, I cannot vouch how the two cards will do under a Pentium 4 system. I only have a OEM Pentium 3 550 from compaq which did not do a bad job with the 8500dv, but I wanted to be able to video edit and burn a cd at the same time. So I put together the system above with the idea that stability was key.

But with Dual systems with AMD, Stability is a big issue for me. If a system is not Stable to where you can throw everything at with out a gliche or restart and the culprit was the videocard, I would buy the more stable card or wait for something better.

I may not have all the option in the world with it, so I built another system with a MSI KT3 Ultra ARU for my multimedia center with an 8500 128MB non wonder. So far it give me the same issues as my brother has. My the drivers are to blame I do not know. Maybe the drivers are to blame, but hey the ATI site states to pretty much only update if you are having issues with the card.

So until they update the driver to fix the opengl problem with 60hx refresh. I will consider to update to that driver.

later

pete

Here is a pic of the new all-in-wonder 9700

Rayder

My brother is also looking to get an 8500 AIW 128, and on the box for the card, it says that it WILL work for Win98.

Personally, I have an 8500 128 (not AIW) running on Win98se and I haven't really had any problems with it, it's a considerable improvement over the old 7200 VIVO I was running (from 3XXX on the 7200VIVO to 7XXX on the 8500 128 in 3DMark).

We also have an 8500DV running in WinXP (notice a trend? ), but when we bought that one, it said that Win98 was not supported. Now, when you go to ati.com and look for drivers for 98 and the 8500dv it actually lists some drivers instead of saying "not supported". ATI has since re-arranged their site. I'm wondering if the 8500dv DOES run in Win98se now, or if the site is in error on that point. I DO know that there is a jumper on the board to kill the firewire port on the card, though. But I never tried that.

So the issue of AIW 8500(DV or not) working with Win98 is questionable at best. Maybe you should ask ATI directly. But I think that the AIW 8500 128 WILL work in 98 if it SAYS that it will on the box, wouldn't you think?

Hope that makes some kind of sense and is helpful to the original post's question.

I scored a job , swapped a motherboard, reformatted a system, updated some stuff and resolved some PC issues today, sold a PC yesterday and tomorrow I'll be formating up yet ANOTHER system. So I've got "PC's on the brain" right now.....heh.....starting to see those zero's and one's like on the MATRIX movie...hehe....j/k

Vampyromaniac

cool, thanks

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reno

My suggestion is buy a normal 8500 and a Leadtek Winfast 2000xp TV-tuner/TiVo card...will be cheaper, and be better quality.

brc64

A friend of mine with a first generation AIW Radeon is able to play most games at 1024 resolution just fine, and all he has is a 1.2 Tbird. Many games these days are more CPU intensive than anything else. An 8500 will get you through the next generation or two of computer games, assuming your CPU is up to par.

If you want to be able to run Doom 3 at high resolutions and a good framerate, it might be worth your wait for the AIW 9700 Pro. If you're mainly worried about today's games and most of tomorrow's, the 8500 will be fine.

- Me

Vampyromaniac

Well, thanks for the suggestion, but that card is not right for me.

The software doesn't seem as nice as ATi's MMC; ATi integrates Guide Plus with their MMC (LeadTek doesn't include any TV-guide program); the remote is infra-red with a pretty short cable on the receiver; and the remote itself sucks compared to ATi's, especially with all the extra things you can use ATi's for, besides TV.

True, the card is relatively inexpensive. As for quality . . . well the quality I get with my AIW Radeon is already superb, so even if the Leadtek's is better I don't really need it, considering the short-comings in the previous paragraph.

Like I said, not for me

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