Author Topic: Radeon 8500 BULL-PUCKY!! (Read 581 times)

Tumor · « **on:** October 27, 2001, 02:24:00 AM »

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

[ 10-27-2001: Message edited by: Tumor ]

Pongo · « **Reply #1 on:** October 27, 2001, 03:23:00 AM »

That was a pretty weird thing to do. Give 275mhz cards to all the sites to review and then ship predominantnly 250s...weird.

humble · « **Reply #2 on:** October 27, 2001, 10:38:00 AM »

I'm not trying to defend ATI ( I've never used their stuff) but usually a "white box" product is/was manufactured for a specific vendor to install in their product. They never have all the features you'll find in the retail version. certain things are ommitted for cost sake....others are tweaked back to decrease warranty issues. Since they are not designed to be sold seperately you dont get the "extra software" since it's supposed to be preloaded and configured.

Pongo · « **Reply #3 on:** October 27, 2001, 11:26:00 AM »

I dont know humble. With the same model number? ASUS has lots of model numbers but every one is the same by model number. Were there no numbers available betwen 7500 and 8500? Things are confusing enough buying a video card with out me having to guess what I will get and not know till I plug it in.

Fatty · « **Reply #4 on:** October 27, 2001, 11:40:00 AM »

There's more on the oem mixup at tech-report.com ....

Quote

3) When introducing its new 7500/8500 product naming scheme, did ATI ever consider assigning a different name to its 250/250MHz cards, like "Radeon 8200" or "Radeon 8500 LE"? Why did ATI decide against providing this kind of product differentiation information to its customers?

ATI looked at a number of subbranding variants and has settled on a name for the RADEON 8500-based chip that it will sell to OEMs, ODMs and AIBs. That announcement will be made shortly by the Company. The name we have settled on will serve to clearly differentiate ATI's RADEON 8500 275/275 offering from its 250/250 offering. We apologize for any confusion that may have occurred amongst our various publics as a result of assisting our AIB partners to quickly penetrate the market with our technology. There will be complete clarity soon. Stay tuned

Yeah, sucks.

[ 10-27-2001: Message edited by: Fatty ]

Tumor · « **Reply #5 on:** October 27, 2001, 01:01:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by humble:
I'm not trying to defend ATI ( I've never used their stuff) but usually a "white box" product is/was manufactured for a specific vendor to install in their product. They never have all the features you'll find in the retail version. certain things are ommitted for cost sake....others are tweaked back to decrease warranty issues. Since they are not designed to be sold seperately you dont get the "extra software" since it's supposed to be preloaded and configured.

I've been buying OEM stuff for a very long time. Under VERY normal circumstances, if you buy a product with a "Brand" name (ATI) and Model number associated with the brand name (8500)...you get exactly that. The money you don't fork out is packaging, bundled software, and perhaps a few other pieces of eye candy. ATI has gone way out in left field on this issue and they are catching quite a load of crap about it.

Tumor

Skuzzy · « **Reply #6 on:** October 27, 2001, 02:53:00 PM »

Uhmm,.ATI made no secret about the "white box" only being clocked at 250Mhz, as opposed to the retail version which is clocked at 275Mhz.
ATI had said they were going to do this several months ago. The reasoning behind it is to be able to offer different price/performance points in the 8500 product line. The "8500" is to represent the chip and has zip to do with the performance or clocking.
The OEM units have slower ram, which is cheaper, s it allows a lower price point.
ATI did the same thing with the Radeon. The OEM version was clocked slower than the retail version.
It is not a bad thing to do. Offering the same hardware features at a lower cost is good marketing. Some people could give a rats butt about FPS and just want a card to show off thier DVD system.

I have been following the development of the 8500 line and ATI did not hide the fact they were going to ship OEM units that were clocked slower than the retail units.
There is also two versions of the 7500, which is the original Radeon running at a higher clock speed. The OEM version is clocked closer to the original Radeon, while the retail box is clocked faster.
Again, 2 different price points.

Nobody seems to care that you never know what frequency you will get when you buy a NVidia based board. There were more versions of the GF2 line than I can count, all marketed under OEM branded names and many different clock speeds.
The only difference here is ATI does not outsource thier chip, yet.

Raubvogel · « **Reply #7 on:** October 27, 2001, 03:00:00 PM »

From what I heard, ATI has started to outsource the 8500. Supposedly some of those white box 8500s are made by different manufacturers.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #8 on:** October 27, 2001, 03:10:00 PM »

From what I can gather Raub, ATI has not made any formal announcements about outsourcing any of thier chips.
To date, it has been rumoured they will, but no confirmation has come forth, to my knowledge.

If someone can find any official word on this, please post it.

Rendar · « **Reply #9 on:** October 28, 2001, 01:44:00 AM »

I read that ATI is both reducing the price and upping the 8500 to 275/275.

Pongo · « **Reply #10 on:** October 28, 2001, 10:20:00 AM »

Skuzzy.
Someone looking at these cards at an online sales site would have a hard time realizing that they were different cards.
That ATI chooses to market based only on the chip is their choice but not the way that we are used too seeing cards marketed. The ones with higher or lower clock speeds with the same chip ususally have that indicated by some post fix to the model name.

OEM from most manufacures doenst mean sx. it means OEM.
The final decision is with the customers. Confusing them as to what they are getting for thier dollar is wrong. As marketing decisions at hardware vendors (or any large corp) are never random, we are left to wonder why was this done in such a questionable way.
Here is where I buy my hardware.Did the ATI distributor tell these guys that they were selling a radeon 8500sx...I think not. They have always been real forthright and honest with me but they didnt know that they had to specify the clock speed on this card.

radeon

Skuzzy · « **Reply #11 on:** October 29, 2001, 12:29:00 PM »

Ok,..I was working from the assumption that everyone knew about the "white box" product from ATI was going to be clocked slower than the retail box 8500.
Bad assumption, and I am sorry for that. I knew months ago about the white box being shipped with lower clock speeds, so it was never a surprise to me. In hindsight, I should have said soemthing on the boards here about it.
I can see where someone that did not know about it would be upset.

However, it is good marketing to offer products which fit different price points. NVidia does it too, the only difference is the naming convention. Even in the NVidia line of GF2 based products there is little consistency with the names of products versus the clock speed they have.

ATI jumped the gun on this product. They pretty much had to in order to get it into the stores before the Christmas season. This new generation of products from ATI is pretty much thier last hope. If it fails, ATI will pretty much be dead. Read thier financials if you have any doubts about that.
Personally, I hope they make it. I do not want to have to buy NVidia because it is the only game in town.

Pongo · « **Reply #12 on:** October 29, 2001, 03:45:00 PM »

They are making good product. I know a few AHrs are real happy with their cards that dont have near the horse power of any 8500.
As a Canadian and a PC buyer I hope they hang in there. But puting more confusion into pc buying can only lead to hard feelings I think. Its like the xp 1800

humble · « **Reply #13 on:** October 31, 2001, 05:04:00 PM »

I certainly don't qualify as a "techie"...and as I stated earlier i'm not defending ATI. I've probably built out 125-150 systems over the last 10-12 yrs and often use "white box" components. Most of the ones i get are the equivelent of "logo overrun" golf balls. However often times they are actually significantly different from the "retail" product...a idea is to make sure you understand the return policy. i've only had 1 or 2 real bad experiences...but sometimes you do feel you got jammed.

miko2d · « **Reply #14 on:** November 01, 2001, 09:52:00 AM »

What do you expect from the guys who falcify the benchmarks?

According to the Tom's Hardware Guide the drivers check the name of executable and if it's quake3 the quality settings are modified (to lower-quality textures) so as to produce the better frame rate - overriding the quality settings specifically checked in the Quake options menu.

So Quake would run faster on Radeon then GeForce but actually it would be running at lower quality settings!
Renaming quake3 into something else or carefully comparing the screenshots clearly shows the difference - as demonstrated by THG article.

If that is not an outright fraud, what is?

miko