ATI's Radeon 8500 - New drivers expose potential

Max Payne 1024x768x32 NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 ATI Radeon 8500 89 84 | 0 | 18 | 36 | 53 | 71 | 89 | 107

In our October Radeon 8500 review the GeForce3 Ti 500 carried a 19% advantage over the Radeon 8500. While the performance advantage has not been nullified by the latest drivers, it has been significantly reduced to just over 6%.

Max Payne 1600x1200x32 ATI Radeon 8500 NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 54 53 | 0 | 11 | 22 | 32 | 43 | 54 | 65

As the dependency on a higher bandwidth memory subsystem increases, the Radeon 8500 is able to pull ahead to the point where it is just slightly faster than the Ti 500. The advantage isn't noticeable but it's definitely a change from what we saw a month ago.

UnrealTournament 1024x768x32 NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 ATI Radeon 8500 124 85 | 0 | 25 | 50 | 74 | 99 | 124 | 149

As improved ATI's drivers have been, there are still serious issues with UnrealTournament. The massive performance advantage NVIDIA holds here is reduced since the last review but still large enough to point out a major problem with the Radeon 8500's drivers.

UnrealTournament 1600x1200x32 NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 ATI Radeon 8500 93 60 | 0 | 19 | 37 | 56 | 74 | 93 | 112

Even at 1600 x 1200 x 32 the performance issues still exist. While we originally assumed it was a problem with the vsync controls we aren't so sure anymore.