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LOSTCIRCUITS
SHORTCUTS:
Top page
Vertex Shaders
Pixel Shaders
TRUFORM, SMOOTHVISION
Specs and Mods
Test Configurations, Overclocking
3DMark2001
3DMark2002
The Hall of Fame
Aquamark, Villagemark
ViewPERF, Quirks with Caligari
Quake3 Arena, Wolfenstein
Conclusion
 FIC RADEON 8500    
The Little Card that Could
(Review by MS, January 4, 2002)
Performance

As mentioned earlier, the release of the Radeon8500 was somewhat overshadowed by nVidia's coming out with the Titanium series. In addition, we are looking at the FIC OEM version clocked at 250 MHz for both core and memory, keep this in mind when looking at the benchmarks.


One thing that crystallized early on is the fact that in benchmarks that don't require a lot of GPU power, the Radeon is slower than the GeForce3 Ti500 or, in some applications, even slower than the GeForce256. With only 420 fps in Incoming, there is some performance delta to the Ti500 that in the same system configuration scored a whopping 460 fps (Athlon XP overclocked to 1750 MHz). Likewise, in Expendable Timedemo, the Radeon maxes out at around 138 fps while the Titamium reaches some 158 fps and the original GeForce256 easily runs over 170 fps. Per se, these benchmarks are completely irrelevant but the point is that anyone trying to base an evaluation of a graphics card on low resolution applications where either CPU power counts or else different additional visual enhancements like EMBM or Dot3 product bump mapping is used by one but not the other cards can get and create a wrong impression.

3DMark2001

3DMark2001 is one of the applications where the Radeon8500 really shines. All one needs to do is to look at MadOnion's Online Result Browser to see that most of the top scores are occupied by the Radeon8500. While in most of the demos, the scores are relatively even between the Ti500 and the Radeon8500, there are some distinct differences in some of the demos that desere some attention.

Details at 640 x 480 x 16 bpp for the FIC Radeon 8500

For comparison, here are the scores of the ASUS V8200 T5 (Ti500) in the same system configuration

Details at 640 x 480 x 16 bpp for the ASUS Ti 500

next page:    => A Closer Look =>

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