Customer Reviews

ATI Technologies Radeon 8500 Graphics Card

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First off let me help you novices out there a little bit. Don't buy a video card because of its price, its hype, or its look, do your research! This card is excellent, it is blazingly fast, (it beats geforce 3), and it is a steal... BR>A key feature in the radeon 8500 is the programmable pixel shaders. Let me tell you a little more about them. Geforce 3, 4 and radeon 8500 all share them witht he exception with the Geforce 4 MX. The newest games will use programmable pixel shaders and if you don't have a video card that uses this, then you can't play it. The radeon beats its competition while being half the price! but be cautious because there has been driver issues with ATI and what seems to be "cheating drivers"

Pros:
blazingly fast
comes from a respectable company
excellent image quality

cons:
driver issues

I have had this card for about 6 months now. I got it before the GForce 4 came out and before the Radeon 9700. If your looking to get the MOST for your money this card is the way to go. It's faster then the all the GForce 3's and is just as fast as the GEorce4Ti 4200, for a fraction of the cost. Driver support was an issue in the past as you will read in some of the older reviews of this card, but now ATI has fixed all the driver problems they have had in the past. In fact they have been coming out with drivers faster and of a better quality then Nvidia for about the past six months. If you buy this card I recomend downloading the newest drivers from the ATI website as soon as possible, the new drivers are of MUCH better quality as I said before...

To get the most out of your older games with this card to to your display properties- advanced- Direct3d or openGL, and bump the Anisotropic Filtering up to 16.With little or no performance hit your games will look MUCH better.

great for gaming. With dual head monitor support + DVI & TV out, the 64 MB memory on this Card and the extremely affordable pricepoint make it one of the best options available today. If you are a hard-core CG effects person, this won't be the best option, but otherwise, it is the way to go.

I really am happy with my radeon. It performs all the present games very nicely with most all settings enabled. Counter-strike will never be the same after 2x quality antialiasing and 16x antisotropic filtering. With a faster processor I could do any game I wanted with that...

ATI used to forfeit the driver quality game to nVidia, but with the 8500, things seemed to have changed for the better.
This is the card to get if you can't afford Nvidia's Geforce4 Ti 4600 or can't find Geforce4 Ti 4200 in stock (as was the case when I bought this card).

ATI has always come out with the good technology before NVIDIA has, but things have gotten in the way. Mostly driver problems have made ATI's graphics cards piles of junk. This card is an acception. ATI has had enough of being behind in the buisness. They have finally come out with a great new card!

I have had the 8500 for about 8 months now, and I have to tell you that I have not been very dissapointed (except for the GeForce 4 coming out RIGHT after the release of the 8500) :( I have to admit, that the graphics are highly improved. I never imagined an ATI card giving off better graphics power than the GeForce 3. RTCW, SS2, MOHAA, UT, Q3A, they all look better with this card. I like the good antistropic filtering with this card. Makes a great difference.

I like the dual monitor support, svideo out, and other features that make computer multimedia fun on the tv.

Svideo is great. You can download your favorite high quality DivX movies, and have the ATI software fit it dirrectly into the tv screen, and also make it dvd quality. Just be warned that you will have to hear the sound from your speakers that are hooked up to your computer. This is a slight incovenience.

Here is what I would recommend for the 8500. Anything lower than this and you may and probably will see system problems like repeated rebooting and very slow framerates:

ATLEAST 500mhz P3
ATLEAST 80mb of ram
ATLEAST Windows 98 (Me, Xp, 2000 are good too watch out for NT though)

I had a 450mhz system with 64mb of ram when I first bought my 8500, and before I upgraded just about everything to a 1.1 ghz amd athlon t-bird and 512mb DDr ram and XP, this video card was giving me no love whatsoever (especially in games).

My only wish is that the drivers would be improved so that games would look up to par with the GeForce 4 (they are very close though).

In all, this card is great. It has better features and graphics than the GeForce 3, and is ALMOST as powerful as the GeForce 4, but at half the price.

Well my previous review for this card was not good. But I just built a new, faster computer and put the Radeon to the test again. My new system is as follows: Tyan Trinity 510 MB(using the current via 4-in-1 drivers), Pent-4 1.8ghz(478 pin), Radeon 8500 of course, 256meg ddr pc2100 ram, WD 20 gig 7200 rpm hd, soundblaster pci 512 sound, antec full tower case w/300watt p/s, and the standard cd, ups, etc. My cooling of the system is provided by 1 cool slot fan, 3 80mm fans, and one pci slot exhaust fan under the radeon. After upgrading to this system and reinstalling the radeon with the current 6071 drivers I have a new found love for this card. Serious Sam SE plays like a dream and actually looks better than my GF4 MX card! Aliens vs. Predator 2-ditto. Word of advice, this card was designed for faster systems(1ghz and up) with the motherboards supporting 4x agp and fast writes. I think the new drivers ATI put out recently has helped also. Worth the money-now that is.

ATi has finally started making some good drivers so the card runs very smoothly.
Very good costomer support from ATI, this is my first ATI card and I love it.
Very good price too, if you want to play games on High Resolution this is the card to go with.
ATI keep up the good work

I have had this card for 4 months now, and Ati still has not gotten their drivers worked out. They have improved slightly, but just about every game I play (Aliens vs Predator 2, Serious Sam 2, Serious Sam 1, Tribes, RTCW, MOHAA) has stuttering and freezing problems that last for up to 2 seconds. My Voodoo 5500 runs much better than this card. I do have to say that the graphics are outstanding though. But that means nothing if you have to put up with substandard performance. My system is and Amd athlon 850, 256 pc100ram, samsung 6gig hd, soundblaster live. I have tweaked and played with this card for 4 months and am disappointed. If you want a stable card stick with Nvidia.

Origianally I bought the Radeon 7200 vivo card and I was impressed as to how good the gameing quality and the great DvD playback of the card. But when I bought the 8500 series I could not belive the problems I have with this product!
I have a Pentium 4, 256 R-dram Windows Xp home edition PC and the 8500 drivers don't play most of the current game's correctly! I get fuzzy graphics and color distortions on Aliens vs. Predator 2 the same goes for Half life opposing force, Return to Castle Wolfenstein even though I have the game running on the defalt graphic settngs 640-480 dpi. I have downloaded two of the latest drivers, the secound driver did solve the problem with Aliens vs. Predator 2 but I am still having problems with most of my direct 3D and open GL games!! The only thing Ati got rite with the software drivers was the DvD playback, but what good is it if you can't play most of your games!!!! If you don't need a video card soon and would like to buy the 8500 I suggest you wait until Ati makes a better software driver. If you need a video card right away, I suggest you buy one of the less expensive geforce 4 or if you can spare the cash buy yourself the Nvida Ti 4600. I sure wish I did!!