September 2002 3Digest - ATI RADEON 8500 128MB DDR Samsung (275/550 MHz)

This chip is presented by Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128MB, AGP videocard.

Features:

ATI RADEON 8500 chip, 275MHz clock rate;
128MB DDR SGRAM memory in 8 Samsung 3.3ns microchips, 275 (550) MHz clock rate, 128-bit bus;
Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode is 1100 megapixels/sec and 2200 megatexels/sec.

Wasn't overclocked.

So, it's the penultimate-generation High-End product from ATI (RADEON 9700 has been announced, but was unavailable to testers). Those willing to get some detailed information should read RADEON 8500 review. Let me explain why we divided these cards by memory makers Hynix, Samsung. According to our review of Gigabyte MAYA AP128DG-H RADEON 8500 Deluxe 128MB and Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128MB, different memory produces VERY DIFFERENT PERFORMANCE. All the details are provided in the review mentioned. Also read our reviews:

Theoretical and analytical videocard reviews, containing functional analysis of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti GPU: ATI RADEON 8500

ATI RADEON 8500 review
ATI RADEON 7500 review
PowerMagic RADEON 7500/8500 review - concerns operation of the driver v7.206, including SmoothVision; estimates 3D quality of the RADEON 8500
Manli and Sunrich RADEON 7500/8500 review - quality of operation of the SmoothVision; 3D quality of the RADEON 8500
SuperGrace RADEON 7500/8500 - touches upon the TruForm technology
Gigabyte MAYA AP64D-H RADEON 8500 Deluxe review - operation of Pixel Shaders in the Advanced Pixel Shader Test from 3DMark2001 SE
Joytech Apollo RADEON 7500 SDR 64 MBytes, 128 MBytes review
Joytech and Hercules ATI RADEON 8500LE cards - operation of 128 MBytes card based on the RADEON 8500LE
Palit XpertVision RADEON 8500 on ATI RADEON 8500LE - operation of the Radeon 8500LE in RtCW, Comanche4 DEMO, 3DMark2001 SE
Gigabyte MAYA AP128DG-H RADEON 8500 Deluxe 128 MBytes and Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128 MBytes - operation of anisotropy (quality estimation) in 3DMark2001 SE, RtCW, Serious Sam:TSE, Comanche4 DEMO, Unreal Tournament 2003 DEM
Review of Gigabyte MAYA AP128DG-H3 RADEON 8500 Deluxe 128MB 300/600 MHz

On the 10th of September 2002 the latest drivers from ATI are 6.143, 6.159, 6.166 for Windows XP.

I shall note there's Radeon2.ru web-site that tracks all software novelties from ATI and offers improved drivers versions with preset registry settings for increasing RADEON cards perfomance.

As the drivers differences are equal for the both RADEON 8500 cards with DDR memory, there's no sense in comparing drivers separately for each of these cards. See ATI RADEON 8500 (275 MHz) section for more information about drivers.

As there are no real application using Pixel Shaders 1.4. So, below are some demonstrations of one of water realization methods based on Pixel Shaders 1.4. you may compare these shots with X-Isle's water in the GeForce3 section, for example.

Pity again, but it's still impossible to demonstrate this technology at work on examples of games or demos. The same X-Isle uses NVIDIA cards specificial OpenGL extensions disabling this demo on non-GeForce cards. Certainly, the above demo was made with PS 1.4, so it works with RADEON 8500 only. You can also pay attention to the new 3DMark2001 SE with pixel shaders v1.4 test. Read more about it in the Gigabyte MAYA RADEON 8500 review.

Nevertheless, these technics allow to create masterpieces of 3D-graphics:

As it's known RADEON 8500 supports very interesting feature and advantage - N-Patches technology called TruForm. All details are in our R200 analysis and in mentioned RADEON 8500 review. Screenshots below demonstrate TruForm capabilities for creating a detailed human face.

I want to recommend to read the review of Review of SuperGrace RADEON 7500/8500, describing TRUEFORM technology in detail on the example of Serious Sam.

Below are some screenshots taken on RADEON and reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.