Wolfe Posted April 8, 2002 Share Posted April 8, 2002 Well I finally did it. I replaced my venerable Voodoo5. *sniff* I'm gonna miss that video card. But times change and games become more demanding, and the old gal just wasn't keeping up with things. So I decided to get a Radeon 8500. The LE version (downclocked from 275/275 to 250/250) with 128MB of mem. I went with the extra mem because of some recs on other boards concerning how Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Jedi Knight 2 play better with 128MB of VRAM. Yeah, I know. I've seen Tom's article insisting it isn't necessary, but I tend to trust people who actually use their cards to play games more than a review site. The card is nice. It's much smaller than the 9 1/2" V5 and quieter too (only 1 nearly-inaudible fan). 2D quality even at high resolutions (1600x1200) is excellent; about the same as the V5, but still just a notch below Matrox quality. Being able to use anisotropic filtering is a God-send. The Voodoo5 doesn't have this very nice feature, and it makes the ground and obliqued building textures look truly excellent. It almost single-handedly removes all texture shimmer in obliqued objects without any anti-aliasing at all! But unfortunately Aniso can't do anything about the trees in CM; Aniso only does obliqued textures (those at an angle to the camera). The Aniso isn't perfect, however. It can't completely remove the moire pattern that you can sometimes get when scrolling over urban streets. The cobble-stone textures can cause a moire pattern to appear; the Radeon does a decent job with it but it can't cure it completely. Overall I'd say the Radeon's Aniso does a better job at curing texture shimmer on the ground than the V5's 4xRGSS mode. It's really sweet, and doesn't impart much performance hit. These pics are ~130KB each. http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AF_0.jpg http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AF_16.jpg http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AF_16_4xPerf.jpg http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AF_16_4xQual.jpg 16x Aniso really impacts the grass and building textures. 4xAA doesn't add much to the equation. Even high-res grass like Richard Tremblett's bumpy_hires has its texture shimmer almost completely eliminated. Building textures are cleaned up very nicely too. Unfortunately I have to say the anti-aliasing on this card isn't what I had hoped. The Radeon's Smoothvision was supposed to do some flavor of RGSS modes similar to that of the Voodoo5, but apparently ATI only implemented a number of OGSS (ordered grid super sample; like the GeForce2) modes instead. See Beyond 3D's Radeon Review In CM the '4x Performance' setting is no better than the V5's 2x setting; either in terms of reducing texture shimmer (including the tree sprites) or for calming edge crawling. And '4x Quality' is somewhere inbetween the V5's 2x and 4x modes (except for edge-crawling which is roughly equivalent to the V5's 2x mode). Panther V5 0xRGSS Panther V5 2xRGSS Panther V5 4xRGSS Panther R8500 4xPerf Panther R8500 4xQual In the below pics you can really see the difference AA and AF make. The initial pic has a lot of texture aliasing and is going to shimmer like mad as you move through the scene. The next two pics (V5 AA) clean up the ground textures as well as the buildings and trees: http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AA1_V5_1024_0xRGSS.jpg http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AA1_V5_1024_2xRGSS.jpg http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AA1_V5_1024_4xRGSS.jpg The 4th pic is the Radeon with 16x aniso, but without anti-aliasing. It's aniso is better at cleaning up the ground shimmer (even at great distances) than the V5's 4xFSAA, but it can't do anything about the far buildings directly ahead because they're not obliqued: http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AA1_R8500_1024_0xQual_16xAniso.jpg But note that the pavement texture is better on the V5's RGSS; this is because the Aniso doesn't completely cure moire patterns. It's much easier to see when moving through the scene, I can't show it with still pics. The R8500's 4xAA can help clean up the building textures and can also help with the shimmering trees, though the V5's RGSS is still superior for both. Too bad the V5 doesn't do Aniso. http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/AA1_R8500_1024_4xQual_16xAniso.jpg Unfortunately, one really annoying feature of the Radeon is the fact that even with a 128MB on the card, the AA modes are very limited: '4x Quality' is only available for 1024x768 and below. The V5 can physically do 1480x1110 in 4xFSAA mode in CM. It was very slow, but the card could atleast DO the resolution; the Radeon doesn't allow you to even try. And strangely '3x Quality' only goes up to 800x600. Odd. My preferred res (1440x1080) can only receive 2xPerf AA with the Radeon. It's not worth bothering with, IMO. There's also an issue with the previous screen showing through when using anti-aliasing. I'm using the 9021 drivers on Win98 and, like the V5's mouse trail issue, the card will show part of the previous screen. But the Radeon shows the *entire* screen that isn't written over, not just a small area where the mouse cursor is. It's pretty annoying. I haven't tried other driver revs. Aside from CM, games like Serious Sam 2 and RtCW are a whole new experience. Instead of being stuck at 1024x768 with textures turned down, I can run both games faster than the V5 at 1600x1200 with full textures and 16x Aniso enabled. Sweet! The card overclocks nicely to 275/300 core/mem (faster than the retail card's stock settings). The 128MB 8500LE and 64MB 8500 were the same price. I use Power Strip to overclock and create new resolutions the card's drivers don't natively support. And I use Unituner to tweak various settings not covered by ATI's drivers (tried Rage3D's Regtweak but it crashes on my system and Radeonator is not compatible with Win98). Over all I'm very happy with the card. I just wish the anti-aliasing were implemented better. For anyone interested in upgrading, there you go. - Chris [ April 07, 2002, 11:28 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted April 8, 2002 Share Posted April 8, 2002 Unfortunately the entire ATI line of video cards doesn't support fog-tables (to the extent that CM needs) under DirectX. A small failing, but one that is overly conspicuous when you want to play those scenarios where it's present. Of course if CM is just one of many games you may play, then the Radeon 8500's are great cards. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted April 8, 2002 Author Share Posted April 8, 2002 Yep! Forgot to mention that one, thanks. Tried playing with every setting in the registry I could find, but no dice. Atleast not for Windoze users. - Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted April 12, 2002 Author Share Posted April 12, 2002 Update! It appears that Powerstrip does not overclock this video card. The Powerstrip display says it does, but Rage3D Tweak insists it's only running at stock 250/250 speeds. And indeed the FPS numbers agreed with Rage3D Tweak. So I used R3DTweak to overclock instead, and I actually get a performance increase this time! Gee, what a concept. But I am only able to go up to 290MHz on the RAM; 300 caused some artifacts in Serious Sam 2. Also, if you're interested in getting one of these cards, be very careful in choosing a card. Mine is the 128MB 8500LE Retail version (bought it at Best Buy). There are 8500LE versions at 250/250 and 8500LELE at 230/230. Also the 'OEM' 8500 is clocked at 250/250 rather than 275/275. And OEM-LE is clocked at 230/230. Also, there is atleast one manufacturer (Sapphire Tech) who has clocked the RAM down to 200MHz on their 8500LE card! So be careful which one you pick up. - Chris 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manx Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 Just picked up a Radeon 8500 three days ago - comes with 64MB, 350 DAC. As Wolfe says: great card, but no Fog in CM. Running stuff like IL2, OPF, and GR/DS with everything maxed out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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