New ATI Radeon 8500 (1 Viewer)

[Jose Luis]

I´ve heard about the new Radeon 8500 and told is better for DVD. Is it true?. Anyone has compared it wiht the 7500? Thank you.

 

[Peter-PP]

Yes, ATI videocards are the BEST when it comes to DVD and 2D display.

The faster new Radeons 9000 and 9700 are coming out soon (July 17, I think)and the 9700 will blow away the Nvidia Ti 4600.

Peter

 

[MikeAlletto]

Too bad ATI can never get all the glitches worked out in their drivers when compared to nvidia cards. The ATI cards always have great potential, but keep slipping up.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Yeah-I know enough people who work or have worked there to be able to determine the following:

ATI hardware-great
ATI Software-garbage

 

[Kami]

The Radeon 9700 has a lot of rumors floating around. Some say it is just comparable to the Ti4600 (man would that ever suck) and some say it's gettting 15,000 3dmarks on a decent system. I guess we'll see in a day or so...

 

[Brian E]

All I can say is that DVD's look great on my 8500, both on my computer monitor and on the TV.

And yes, ATI still doesn't have their act together on the drivers side of things. They seem to be trying, but so far have missed a bit. I personally have only had one driver issue (with Neverwinter Nights), but that was solved by going back a version.

 

[Steve_Ch]

Thanks for the 9000 news, I've been looking at the ATI for a while, guess I will wait a little longer.

 

[AaronNWilson]

The ATI 8500 with the fixed gamma table drivers (the current ones on the ati site) simply looks better for DVD than the nvidia cards as is the story with all radeons.

Over at AVSforum the choice seems to have been the 7200, 7500 and now with the drivers with the fixed gamma table the 8500.

 

[Josh Lowe]

The problem with the newer Radeon drivers is that you can't get interlaced output with them. No 1080i resolution on an HTPC.

I just ordered a Radeon 7000 so I can run the old drivers under Win98SE (ugh, ugh, ugh) specifically for the purpose of being able to do 1080i on my TV. I have an 8500 in my current desktop PC which is being cannibalized and converted into an HTPC. I no longer play games on the PC so my laptop at work will just do double duty at home. With VNC installed on my HTPC + 802.11b networking, the laptop will make a great remote control.

 

[Scott L]

ATI videocards are the BEST when it comes to DVD and 2D display.

I think Matrox holds and probably will always hold the 2D crown.

 

[Chris]

Amen on the Matrox comment. Not a super 3-D card (though tri-view is pretty incredible)

I should have a Parhelia in this week, which is really the card with the features I wanted.. (10bit video out is a big plus)

 

[Peter-PP]

Matrox will also be releasing a 256 MB version.