Wow that was some pretty comprehensive and informative testing! And after all that i decided to go with the Radeon 7500.
Oh well. Can't go wrong for $55

Hi as this test is only a 3D Test you should also think of the other features you get, a very big Problem of Nvidia Cards is the bad Image Quality (because of bad design). An ATI has a very clear Output instead.

Then when you like watching Movies (DVD, DivX) on your TV the Nvidia Solution is shit. Got myself a Radeon 8500 everything works Great, dual screen, the DVI Output. And in my opinion the difference between is 150 an 120 Frames is completly useless (except to be proud of)

Originally Posted by wumpie
What a great review. A good driver set for the cards and a very sweet benchmarkset. my compliments.

Perhaps it can dither it, and perhaps that explains the often disparate opinions on the quality of displays?

Assuming your flat panel is not a POS, it should be able to handle a 32 bit color signal and dither it down to 24 bit or whatever it is capable of displaying.

All I know is that my Sony SDMM51D looks much better on my G450 than my Radeon 7500.

I don't know if its generally on a gamers consideration list, but from what I can tell, the Radeon is the better card for driving a flat panel, if you happen to have or may possibly get one.

It appears that the Nvidia solution only drives a panel in 16 bit mode since panels can either run 16 or 24 bit color and only the Radeon has a 24bit color mode.

I'm thinking come the latter half of this year their may be a lot more people considering them, if for nothing more than a nice second monitor, and its a shame that the Nvidia solution would force them to run 16bit color. Talk about a step back into history.

I just ordered my Visiontek Ti4600...

I may just kiss the FedEx guy..

;)

EP

who cares the english blow!

[quote]
Or could it be that you have another culprit in your fathers machine in regards to fps in q3. Like you said the drivers could be a problem...
[/quote]

Exactly! Iīve checked everything else (BIOS, OS, driver settings, intel inf update, ...) and found nothing! A driver update brought some frames, but it is still slower than my GeForce256. And a Radeon 7500 must not be slower!

So I would name this a crappy product regarding 3D performance. I donīt care why it is so. I only see problems nobody I know with a nvidia Card has. If it would be my computer, I would start to spend whole days to fix the problem, and I donīt like this.

Forge,

I know that after enabling that enhanced client sampling in OSP, I dislike the idea of playing with it off. The mock feel of playing with a machine that can crank out > 100fps is just amazing. :)

66,

That's just getting used to a certain standard, and not wanting to go below again. I'm certain if I had a leet setup, I wouldn't want to go back to my shitty one. Just as I don't ever want to boot up my P133 again! :)

by the time it finally does come out it will be obsolete.

- danny e.

will software ever catch back up to hardware?
by the time DOOM comes out.... the R300 will be out... and maybe the GeForce 5. .. video cards double in speed about every year.... 3d shooters seem to take nearly 2 years in development...

hmmm me tired.

*poof*

- danny e.

by the time Duke Nukem Forever is out.... the R5000 will be out... and i will be old an gray or grey even. Seriously... does anyone give a cr*p about that game anymore??? i was really anxious for it to come out about 4 years ago.

Yes Forge-- as you've maintained time and time again that your level of acceptability for sound, video, and various other things is much higher than everyone else, it's clear to me that you have extrasensory superpowers. I'm glad my sense are dulled just enough to not be irked by 60FPS and 192kbps (hq) MP3s.

=)

AG64, What? I don't get it. Are you trying to simulate Half-life/Quake3 on a PC but with Xbox-style controls?

63,

Or play with the fps_max command in Half-life or com_maxfps in Quake 3. Bind keys to change the values.

Hell, double blind it. Give one person the keyboard, one the mouse.

Originally Posted by Transman88
I agree with Forge. You want to see the difference between 30-60-100fps? Fire up Serious Sam SE and activate the real time fps counter. Watch a perfectly fluid 120fps go to 60 when the baddies show up. The screen NOTICEABLY slows down...very annoying.

Droopy - It's a very subjective thing. Comparing 'acceptable' fps between people is an exercise in futility.

For example:

I am not happy with anything less than ~75, and I prefer >100.
My buddy Walt is happy with anything ~ or over 60.
My buddy Keith is happy with anything over roughly 30 fps steady.

It's all in your opinion.

Indeego, not to be an asshole, but how many FPS do you want? I thought 60 was enough for GP, and 85 for high paced action. i agree 40 is kinda low, but what's acceptable?

Nah, his dad's puter only has 64MB of RAM and running XP. That's enough to slow you down.

So what you are saying is that either that your Geforce256 DDR get more then double the framrate of mine. Or that the Damage's benches of the 7500 is wrong.

Or could it be that you have another culprit in your fathers machine in regards to fps in q3. Like you said the drivers could be a problem...

What i want to say is that you shouldnt say that the card is crap unless it is. What i have seen it seems to be quite good cards if you just find a driver that works.

cheers

Good Review!

However, I cannot recommend the radeon 7500 for gamers. My fatherīs relatively new PC/w P4 Willy 1.5@2.0, ABIT BD7-RAID and Radeon 7500 has a lower frame-rate in QIIIA than my good old (soon to be replaced) PIII700@980/w ABIT BE6-II BX-board and GeForce256DDR!

All non-graphics related benches are OK, but the 7500 sucks regarding 3D performance. It is a good card for watching movies via TV-out with a great visual quality and fewer problems compared with nvidia, but not for gaming.

The P4 systems I built with nvidia cards donīt have fps-problems at all, so I guess the ATI drivers are still BS.

#55,
ummm, your joking, right?

AG #51 - Not a stripped R200, but a built up R100. It's a Radeon1 on .15 micron with Hydravision built in. That's all.

Very good article.

Is it just me but are these cards well ahead of any software(games) that can actually give them a work out.

I play Serious Sam SE @1600x1200 on my Radeon 8500 with all the setting set to high just so that I can keep up with the game. Its way to fast @1280 x 1024 or lower. Give me a sustained 40fps with all the eye candy @ 1280 x 1024 and I am happy.

Or maybe I am getting to old and my feeble hands cannot keep up to my nimble eyes?

Hot damn, you shot my forums' activity through the roof. Nice article, and nice linkage :)

"Currently Active Users: 68
There are currently 15 members and 53 guests on the boards. | Most users ever online was 227 on 04-04-2002 at 05:44 PM."

-Rodzilla
-http://www.seriouscommunity.com

Excellent review.

Speaking as an owner of both the Radeon 7500 and a nicely-overclocking "classic" GeForce3 (and a small meangerie of other 3D cards), I found the results for those two board groups roughly comparable to my own experiences.

This was refreshing, because I had been expecting the 7500 to perform faster than a GF3 and was a bit surprised when the GF3 turned out to be a lot faster -- especially in HalfLife, which is getting pretty old now. And I had that 7500 clocked pretty high, too.

-av

Originally Posted by Starfox
AG46:

1. There ARE a few VIVO cards, yeah... For AG39, however, I\'d suggest getting a TV card... just not an ATI one if you\'re running XP... there are far too many problems.
2. I have heard the same thing. There are a lot of games that don\'t detect the 8500 series problem. In fact, the first Serious Sam supports Truform, but you have to force it. Most of the time it won\'t detect it in the card.
3. I agree, especially since the 6043 and 6052 fix the \'high poly count bug\' that\'s been stomped around for several months. However, those are the latest release drivers... blame ATI for making their worst driver the release ones, not Damage. :)
4. I agree wholeheartedly, I really hate the fact that reviews are done with AA, and no difference between how the AA is done is given. It\'s just shown that nVidia\'s version is faster than ATIs. In all reality, though, if people are buying a card based off of one review, they\'re going to be screwed no matter what.

On a personal note, I think Damage did an excellent job on this review. I\'ve been waiting for someone to finally give a review on what an 8500 128mb is like, even if it was an LE OC\'d, it\'s still going to be pretty close.

wait a minute, I thought the 7000 and 7200 were based on the original version of the Radeon, and the 7500 was a stripped-down version of the 8500 core?

50th Post. wOOt!