ive never asked one of these questions, but which of these s

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. :

[HamsterX]

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]

[greasemonkey]

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]

[greasemonkey]

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 ). 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]