Radeon 8500/GeForce3 Ti500 comparison

RainDog writes: "The Tech Report has put together a pretty detailed comparison of ATI's Radeon 8500 and NVIDIA's GeForce3 Titanium 500 graphics parts. Despite being incredibly thorough, the review is also a pretty entertaining read. Definitely the best comparison of these cards I've seen to date."

Comments

Open Drivers

[riggwelter]

For any Linux users looking at these cards, remember you can get 3D hardware acceleration on the Radeon with the Open Source drivers, you need to download the closed drivers for the NVidia card...

Re:Open Drivers

[shepd]

And also don't forget that because the drivers are closed Nvidia can:

- Stop making updates when linux isn't so "hot"
- Stop you from adding features
- Stop you from making modifications to make the binaries work with your system
- Stop supporting newer kernel revisions
- Stop supporting newer X releases
- Stop support for older cards
- Stop support for "clone" cards (should they be made)
- Make you pay for updates

And many, many, many other uncontrollable thinigs.

Fortunately, with open source, most all of those problems can be avoided.

I'd take slow and reliable over fast and loose any day. But that's just me.

Re:Open Drivers

[aussersterne]

You're wrong about this.

a) There is an open-source component which hooks the driver core into your kernel. As long as you have XFree86 4, you'll should be able to use the latest NVidia driver by issuing "make install" in the source directory. I have not had any problems with NVidia drivers yet, on any version of the kernel, and I'm now in the 2.5.x-prex series.

b) Which brings me to support of older cards... You haven't bothered to look at the list of hardware supported by the NVidia driver, have you? You might be surprised... driver support goes all the way back to the NVidia RivaTNT... which predates Linux DRI 3D support!

This anti-NVidia-Linux stuff is just a lot of GPL-fanatic FUD.

I've personally owned and tried a Voodoo5 5500, a Radeon (original) and my current hardware, a Geforce2Pro, under Linux. There is no comparison in driver support/how well the cards work... The NVidia card "just works" with Linux and is as fast or faster than under Windows. By comparison, the others feel half-supported by Linux at best.

Biased comparison

[Marcus Brody]

Yes, I am utterly biased & asking for flamage:

Linux ATI Radeon Drivers:
Open Source, reliable, fully featured.

Linux NVIDIA GeForce Drivers:
Binary only, unreliable, cause frequent hangs on many systems, not fully featured.

'Nuff said.

Re:Biased comparison

[cs668]

I have to say that I have had really good luck with the last 3 realeases of the nvidia drivers for Linux - X.

I would prefer they were open sourced. But, I am not going to slam drivers that have worked well for me just because they are not.

Re:Biased comparison

[aussersterne]

You got it wrong. I've owned both. Truth:

Linux ATI Radeon Drivers:
Open Source, incomplete (no HW T&L), slower than Windows drivers, difficult to compile, unstable (prone to X hangs).

Linux NVIDIA GeForce Drivers:
Open-source kernel module, binary core identical to Windows drivers (Detonator UDM), complete hardware support (incl. HW T&L and FSAA), as fast as Windows drivers, available as RPM download, complete OpenGL support, and I have never once had an X hang.

I sold my Radeon because I just couldn't get it to work right with Linux even after months of trying. I bought a GeForce2 Pro card for cheap, downloaded the NVidia drivers, and have been sailing ever since without problems or crashes.

GPL fanatic FUDder, you are.

What's nice about these cards

[wiredog]

All sorts of high-end 3-d capability in these cards means that the very good 2-d capability (which used to only be in high-end cards) is much less expensive. A card that's Good Enough(TM) for non-gamers (like me) is now incredibly inexpensive. One more step in the commoditization of the PC.

Why do I care? Well, my father (age 72) is looking for a new PC and has budgeted $2,000 for it. He uses it for editing (of Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing), web surfing, Quicken, and e-mail. He needs the best LCD monitor/card combo because his eyes are 72 years old, but any CPU that's on the market will do. Plus 256 Mb ram, any current hard drive capacity, and cd-rw.

Remember when you couldn't get much more than the basics for 2 grand? I like Moore's Law.

Re:Why do they do this?

[ergo98]

Uh, because that's what they do? I don't go to sites like that (and they don't get linked) because the guy says "I tried them both and the Radeon just feels quicker". They get linked because while there's some subjective analysis, most of it is object analysis that they can get called on if they distort, hence it allows you to draw your own conclusions.

Decent review, but

[A_Non_Moose]

there were a few glaring issues:

It was pointed out that synthetic/"looking to the future" benchmarks favored the Radeon, but "real world" seemed to lean toward the GF.

Hummm.

Also a concern (well, maybe just for me) is that the mac version seems non-existant. You can buy or flash the GF Mx line, and older Radeons...what about the current line?
What really tweaks my nipples is that Nvidia stated point blank that "adding bi-endian support was trivial"...sooo, why don't they make all their cards like that?

And put a little pressure on ATI (or v/v)?

Which begs the question, again, why is/was the mac version more expensive than the pc version when you could flash the darn thing?

I thought about submitting this link yesterday, but alas, I can no longer handle the "rejection".

And did anyone else notice that the 8500 is a perfect GF2 Ultra killer? Only problem is that pesky GF3 Titanium...

Now if only we could get Win95 and DOS drivers for these new cards.

Moose.

.

I can't even find a 2d card

[yomahz]

All sorts of high-end 3-d capability in these cards means that the very good 2-d capability (which used to only be in high-end cards) is much less expensive.


2 weeks ago I built a new server that wasn't going to run x-windows, much less any sort of games. I'd gone to 2 different Fry's, a Best Buy, and CompUSA to find a low end, PCI video card (the 2u case riser card didn't support AGP). The lowest end card I could find was a 3D TNT2 for $55.

Just a few years ago you could easily find a cheap ~4 meg card for around $10-20. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Of course, I probably coulda found one on-line but I like being able to actually walk into the store for a refund/exchange if something goes wrong.