Got the RADEON 8500 Blues??

[Tumor]

Posted this under Hardware and Software also.  There's bound to be some "other" ripped-off and riled-up folks head in here, so I figured I'd post here to help.

 

OK
At first I was REAL pissed about this. On the 25th, news hit the streets that Radeon OEM (whitebox) cards marked and sold as RADEON 8500's are something other than they seem. These cards, generally priced just over $210 come without some kinda DVD interface thingimajob, no software (except drivers) an no pretty ATI box...they are also clocked at 250mgz as opposed to the retail version's (as advertised) 275mgz.
Some of you may have seen my previoius posts trying to figure out why the card was not performing anywhere near what I expected, well, now we know why lol.

The bad news, I bought one of these things well before this "news" hit the streets. I don't really feel jipped money wise as I kinda sorta get the feeling I got what I paid for, but I did without doubt get lied to, as have what I would imagine are a LOT of other people.

The good news. I grabbed a proggie called "Power Strip" with allowed me to overclock the card up to 275mgz. From what I can tell, everything seems to be "much" better now, and I have seen no ill-effects on the card or video quality after about an hour of Aces High. I ran the game at 1600x1200x32, no mipmapping, the overlay texture thing unchecked, and FPS unlimited. (had the smoothshader thing turned all the way up in Display Settings too). The card managed to maintian 20fps even with lots of planes buzzing around 4 or 5 smokeing hangars. In comparison, before the overclock, 1 smoking hangar and 2 planes were dropping the fps to 5.

So, with that said, I'm happy with what I have, HOWEVER...I have permanently and forever removed myself from the ATI line of product user's. It's the principle of the matter. Damn Canadian's!!  I feel like I just bought a six pack of Moosehead only to find the bottles filled with Pabst Blue Ribbon..it's still beer, and it's still good...but it's just not the same.

Tumor
 

By the way..The card does come with an ATI stamped fan on the chip AND I also have one of those PCI slot-fans sitting directly under the card so it is cooled well.

Tumor

[Raubvogel]

Yep, newegg.com was actually giving people $21 rebates because of that crap.

[mrsid2]

The smoothshader, antialiasing, trueform etc. qualities of the Radeon8500 are not working properly due to unfinished drivers. If you use them, you suffer a big fps loss, crashes etc. fun features.

Now I understand why people have reported such low fps ratings. It's been reported all over that it's not possible to use the special features of the radeon untill the drivers are made over. It's clear ATI released this product way before it was finished. I'm glad I didn't join the betatesters.. =)

[Tumor]

I'll check the Framerates with this stuff off, but I think it all works ok with the drivers I have.

...7199 leaked drivers
Directx 8.1 (710)

Tumor

[Beegerite]

I'm presently running an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 32MB and plan to upgrade to the 8500.  I have no problems with ATI and as a matter of fact know that I owe them one.  Listen to this, many moons ago in the time of XTs with 10MB hard drives and amber monitors I ordered an ATI EGA Wonder card.  They sent it to me for evaluation without asking for payment.  I, being a slimy sort loved the card because it allowed me to play King's Quest and somehow forgot to pay them for it.  I'm glad that they're still around turning out good products so I don't have to feel so much guilt.
Beeg
 

Originally posted by Tumor:
Posted this under Hardware and Software also.  There's bound to be some "other" ripped-off and riled-up folks head in here, so I figured I'd post here to help.

 

By the way..The card does come with an ATI stamped fan on the chip AND I also have one of those PCI slot-fans sitting directly under the card so it is cooled well.

Tumor