Ive recently picked out some new hardware for my yearly major upgrade, and ive narrowed it down to another HD (IBM 40gb 7200rpm), a MSI MS-K7T266 Pro2 board(kt266a chipset) and an athlon xp 1800. the thing i wanted u peoples opinion on was the video card. I am either gonna get a radeon 8500, or GF 3 ti-500. Ive used nvidia products for a couple years now and i like them, but i heard the new radeon rocked, and with the later drivers coming out and that dX 8.1 will take full advantage of it. I also like the tru-form deal, thats kind of impressive, altho i really havent seen any games used with it, but just wanted to get an opinion on that, since it will be a year investment. : :D

That's a good question...

I'm not considering an upgrade for now, but if I had the $$$$ and free choice, I'd go for the nVidia... why ? Their cards are a proven solution, since the days of the good old Riva TNT. Good, evolutive, drivers, and almost a standard in gaming.

All depends on ATI being able (or not)to sort out the problems with their drivers. The ATI is a better choice for those who consider gaming secondary and would prefer the features: dual display, DVD-TV and so on. But it may be a risky choice for gamers...

PS:BTW ATI upgraded their Radeon drivers today [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'm going the Radeon route, even with weak drivers they're competing neck and neck with the 3Ti's. Plus I don't know what your prices are like but in Canada the 8500 Radeon OEM is close to $200 cheaper than the 3Ti. Now the OEM card is clocked a little slower than the retail but using Powerstrip u can easily overclock to match the retail one , check out the forums @rage3d.com for more info.
By the way I have the same board, runs great for me but I've heard some problems with it and the XP chip (I run 1.33G T-bird), check out the MSI forum @amdmb.com seems like a possible BIOS problem.

[ November 15, 2001: Last edited by greasemonkey ]

[ November 15, 2001: Last edited by greasemonkey ]</p>

thx for the help. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Just to let you know just got my 8500LE (OEM), runs great so far. Did a quick 3DMark2001 bench and got 7167 with the card running @ 275/275, no system overclocking (yet :D ). ATI has said they are really going to concentrate on their drivers for the 8500 too, so expect to see updates every couple of weeks.

awesome, im going with ati. [img]smile.gif[/img]