all of which uses much more memory than a basic 3d card. If you think they are just throwing ram our for sales then you don't know much about graphics cards.
I agree. I was once an ATI hater too. I used to despise trying to get drivers to work correctly, but unlike many others who are basing their opinions on cards 2 or 3 generations ago, I gave them another chance.
And guess what.
Best hardware purchase I have ever made. The drivers are a TON better than before. They still aren't perfect but they work, and quite well. Updates are now atleast monthly with quite a few "leaks" in between.
Compared to my geforce owning friends, I have no more issues than they have with their drivers, and in some cases less, which is suprising because my card (8500DV) does so much more than play games.
As I sit here, the TV is paused in an overlay window on top of this text area just waiting nicely for me to continue when I am finished.
Sure it takes a leap of faith to "change", especially when a company has wronged you in the past. So how many of you are running AMD?
You never know...your old issues may be holding you back from a truely amazing experience.
by DEFAULT, it records in ATI's.VCR format (hacked mpeg2), but recording in other formats is not hard at all and just a simple config in the setup area.
The ATI File Library lets you convert the proprietary format to mpeg2 in minutes (just strips out the ati stuff). No one I have sent files to has had any problems with my captures.
Some people with better machines are encoding straight to divx now.
I've replaced my VCR with my 8500DV and the last few driver releases have been very good.
It is a nVidia world right now. Games are being developed for the geforce cards and the rest of the competition have to adjust to the market.
ATI is finesse, nVidia is brute force. The ATI hardware is far above anything nvidia has. nVidia makes cards to go fast. ATI makes cards that look good.
the GF4s will sacrafice texture quality (anisotropy) for anti-aliasing (jaggies) whereas ATI does the opposite.
Personally, I will put up with a few bugs here and there for the image quality and extra features that come with the card. And I'm comfortable knowing my 6 month ATI card supports more future standards than the newest geforce, so I am happy with that.
ATI isn't going anywhere. Over 30 companies have joined up to sell the 8500 and beyond. Many of which dropped support of the nVidia line.
nVidia may be king of the gamer market right now, but ATI was, and still is, the graphics chipset champion by far.
Not all new drivers are released drivers. Check out Rage3d.com. And yes, many people are using MMC 7.5 and 7.6 with their old cards. Might have to do a bit of INF tweaking, but it works.
FWIW, quicker driver releases, stability, and performance has greatly imporved since the 8500 series has been released.
Tech support, however, is still as sucky as before. I've only had 1 encounter with them since buying the 8500DV, which was resolved with a new driver before I got a response. Since then every driver has increased stability and performance.
I too despised ati's driver support back in the 128 days, even the Radeon 64mb VIVO was iffy at best, but that was yesterday.
My guess is that you are being limited by your CPU in games. 3D boards are nice, but the newer games also require some heafty cpu to get the good fps.
For a 600mhz celery, I'm thinking you are getting pretty good FPS in RTCW. A better cpu would help the those 15fps high action drops and bring the average up a bit. I would bet a 1-1.2 ghz processor would push the 7500 to its max performance, but that also depends on the games themselves.
ATI has generally been known to have faster/clearer 2D over NVidia. Matrox is still the king of 2D, NVidia of 3D, but I find ATI to be the best balance between.
And the drivers arent as bad as they once were. Frequent updates and the most recent few versions have proven to be quite stable and give the GF3Ti500 a run for the money.
I had the 8500DV (which is very similar to the AIW8500) running just fine on Win98SE. I don't know if I would go less than 98 though.
ME is very closely related to 98se. Companies just say they dont support 98se and such to lower their support costs even though it works fine in those OSes. Support from Rage3d.com is much better than any ATI support anyway.
ATI doesnt call it TiVO capabilities. They call it Time-shifting. Us users and the reviewers give the TiVO reference so we don't have to explain what Time-Shifting is for a half hour.
The recording can be MPEG1/2, AVI, WMV, or ATI's VCR format. Resolutions up to 720x480 and a bitrate up to 15mb/sec. Some people have even been able to record straight to DiVX.
Pausing TV is optional...you don't have to use it, it is not on all the time. You can use TitanTV to schedule programs without having to put in day/time, but there is no repeating ability unless you do punch in day/time.
No, its not fully featured as a TiVO, but the big features are there (pause, recording) and for $399 (i bought the 8500dv it right when it came out) I got all that plus many other extras and a fast 3d card too.
We can see a single frame flashed at 1/200 of a second. But > 75fps (in a scan line crt) we lose the ability to differentiate 1 frame to the next..thus your brain perceives the frames as full motion.
X10 (hate the ads love the products) has a wireless audio/video + rf remote combo package for $70 USD that has worked perfectly for me for the last 2 years. Plug it in to my receiver and I use it for recorded tv shows and for mp3s.
At first my wife complained about "another toy purchase" but has come to love cleaning the house and walking around with an RF remote in her pocket able to FF/RW songs to her hearts content.
You can also pick up this same system at radio shack, though I do not believe they have the RF remote portion.
Kind of funny that everyone quotes that article everytime a ATI vs nVidia debate comes up, yet no one mentions the miracle Detonator drivers nvidia released when the 8500 was released...some people getting 30% better framerates?
Not the first time nvidia has had a timely miracle driver.
odd. I have the 8500DV running in Windows 2000 just fine. Through many driver versions and now upgraded from MMC 7.5 to mmc 7.6 I have had no problems at all (as far as the TV/Time shifting is concerned).
You'd never get both companies to agree with this. One company, in this case Intel, would always lose ground in the benchmark vs GHz battle.
Intel already has higher GHz speeds, and they will capitalize on that as long as they can, and so would/did AMD.
You and I know that those speeds don't really mean much across different processor lines, but the majority of computer users don't. Its the old Motorola vs Intel arguement all over again.
Slashdot Mirror
Smoothvision
FSAA
Multi monitors...
all of which uses much more memory than a basic 3d card. If you think they are just throwing ram our for sales then you don't know much about graphics cards.
GPU memory is not just for frame buffers anymore.
something was messed up in your configuration. 8500s can run 2 monitors at different resolutions and refresh rates.
Doesnt work so well in win2k, but some people have had success.
the 8500DV version can encode at 720x480x30fps and has 2 firewire ports built in.
I agree. I was once an ATI hater too. I used to despise trying to get drivers to work correctly, but unlike many others who are basing their opinions on cards 2 or 3 generations ago, I gave them another chance.
And guess what.
Best hardware purchase I have ever made. The drivers are a TON better than before. They still aren't perfect but they work, and quite well. Updates are now atleast monthly with quite a few "leaks" in between.
Compared to my geforce owning friends, I have no more issues than they have with their drivers, and in some cases less, which is suprising because my card (8500DV) does so much more than play games.
As I sit here, the TV is paused in an overlay window on top of this text area just waiting nicely for me to continue when I am finished.
Sure it takes a leap of faith to "change", especially when a company has wronged you in the past. So how many of you are running AMD?
You never know...your old issues may be holding you back from a truely amazing experience.
I hardly call Mpeg1 and Mpeg2 proprietary.
.VCR format (hacked mpeg2), but recording in other formats is not hard at all and just a simple config in the setup area.
by DEFAULT, it records in ATI's
The ATI File Library lets you convert the proprietary format to mpeg2 in minutes (just strips out the ati stuff). No one I have sent files to has had any problems with my captures.
Some people with better machines are encoding straight to divx now.
I have both the aTI remote and the x10 and I can't seem to get the damn x10 to work with the ati software.
there are differences...
the 8500DV 64mb:
Firewire
Silicon based tuner (better quality)
slower clock
AIW 8500
no firewire
faster clock
tv is not as sharp
I've replaced my VCR with my 8500DV and the last few driver releases have been very good.
It is a nVidia world right now. Games are being developed for the geforce cards and the rest of the competition have to adjust to the market.
ATI is finesse, nVidia is brute force. The ATI hardware is far above anything nvidia has. nVidia makes cards to go fast. ATI makes cards that look good.
the GF4s will sacrafice texture quality (anisotropy) for anti-aliasing (jaggies) whereas ATI does the opposite.
Personally, I will put up with a few bugs here and there for the image quality and extra features that come with the card. And I'm comfortable knowing my 6 month ATI card supports more future standards than the newest geforce, so I am happy with that.
ATI isn't going anywhere. Over 30 companies have joined up to sell the 8500 and beyond. Many of which dropped support of the nVidia line.
nVidia may be king of the gamer market right now, but ATI was, and still is, the graphics chipset champion by far.
Not all new drivers are released drivers. Check out Rage3d.com. And yes, many people are using MMC 7.5 and 7.6 with their old cards. Might have to do a bit of INF tweaking, but it works.
Actually...new drivers just released for the Rage 128/Pro chipsets, and you can always use MMC 7.6 :).
it doesnt work FOR YOU under windows 2000
FWIW, quicker driver releases, stability, and performance has greatly imporved since the 8500 series has been released.
Tech support, however, is still as sucky as before. I've only had 1 encounter with them since buying the 8500DV, which was resolved with a new driver before I got a response. Since then every driver has increased stability and performance.
I too despised ati's driver support back in the 128 days, even the Radeon 64mb VIVO was iffy at best, but that was yesterday.
My guess is that you are being limited by your CPU in games. 3D boards are nice, but the newer games also require some heafty cpu to get the good fps.
For a 600mhz celery, I'm thinking you are getting pretty good FPS in RTCW. A better cpu would help the those 15fps high action drops and bring the average up a bit. I would bet a 1-1.2 ghz processor would push the 7500 to its max performance, but that also depends on the games themselves.
ATI has generally been known to have faster/clearer 2D over NVidia. Matrox is still the king of 2D, NVidia of 3D, but I find ATI to be the best balance between.
And the drivers arent as bad as they once were. Frequent updates and the most recent few versions have proven to be quite stable and give the GF3Ti500 a run for the money.
I had the 8500DV (which is very similar to the AIW8500) running just fine on Win98SE. I don't know if I would go less than 98 though.
ME is very closely related to 98se. Companies just say they dont support 98se and such to lower their support costs even though it works fine in those OSes. Support from Rage3d.com is much better than any ATI support anyway.
8500DV-
solidstate silicon tuner (better picture)
2 firewire ports
64mb ddr
230mhz cpu
190mhz ddr ram
AIW8500-
analog tuner (lesser picture)
no firewire
128mb ddr ram
275mhz cpu
275mhz ddr
AIW7500-
same as 8500 except slower cpu and mem and less memory i think.
All have the same capabilities as far as TV and recording AFAIK.
ATI doesnt call it TiVO capabilities. They call it Time-shifting. Us users and the reviewers give the TiVO reference so we don't have to explain what Time-Shifting is for a half hour.
The recording can be MPEG1/2, AVI, WMV, or ATI's VCR format. Resolutions up to 720x480 and a bitrate up to 15mb/sec. Some people have even been able to record straight to DiVX.
Pausing TV is optional...you don't have to use it, it is not on all the time. You can use TitanTV to schedule programs without having to put in day/time, but there is no repeating ability unless you do punch in day/time.
No, its not fully featured as a TiVO, but the big features are there (pause, recording) and for $399 (i bought the 8500dv it right when it came out) I got all that plus many other extras and a fast 3d card too.
Not too shabby if you ask me.
We can see a single frame flashed at 1/200 of a second. But > 75fps (in a scan line crt) we lose the ability to differentiate 1 frame to the next..thus your brain perceives the frames as full motion.
X10 (hate the ads love the products) has a wireless audio/video + rf remote combo package for $70 USD that has worked perfectly for me for the last 2 years. Plug it in to my receiver and I use it for recorded tv shows and for mp3s.
At first my wife complained about "another toy purchase" but has come to love cleaning the house and walking around with an RF remote in her pocket able to FF/RW songs to her hearts content.
You can also pick up this same system at radio shack, though I do not believe they have the RF remote portion.
Visit Rage 3D where they show many of the newer drivers can be used on older cards...
Kind of funny that everyone quotes that article everytime a ATI vs nVidia debate comes up, yet no one mentions the miracle Detonator drivers nvidia released when the 8500 was released...some people getting 30% better framerates?
Not the first time nvidia has had a timely miracle driver.
MMC 7.6 is available on ATI's site, which is the latest version, and many people are using it with thier older ATI cards.
odd. I have the 8500DV running in Windows 2000 just fine. Through many driver versions and now upgraded from MMC 7.5 to mmc 7.6 I have had no problems at all (as far as the TV/Time shifting is concerned).
You'd never get both companies to agree with this. One company, in this case Intel, would always lose ground in the benchmark vs GHz battle.
Intel already has higher GHz speeds, and they will capitalize on that as long as they can, and so would/did AMD.
You and I know that those speeds don't really mean much across different processor lines, but the majority of computer users don't. Its the old Motorola vs Intel arguement all over again.
Nothing will change.