|
 
We also ran
some Serious Sam: TSE time demos with anti-aliasing
enabled on all of the cards.
|
|
|
OpenGL Benchmarks with Serious Sam SE and AA |
|
Almost Done! |
|
Once we turned
on 2X AA, NVIDIA's GeForce 4 Ti 4200 surged past the
Radeon 8500 LEs, besting them by over 40% at every
resolution. Let's up the ante a bit and enable 4X AA
next.
We left out
the 1600x1200 numbers because none of the cards tested
were able to run 4X AA at that resolution. The
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 increased it's performance lead again,
almost doubling the performance of the Radeon 8500 LEs.
CONCLUSION:
NVIDIA GeForce
4 Ti 4200:
This article
initially started out as a review of two Radeon 8500 LE
cards from Apollo Graphics and ATi and then evolved into a
full blown shootout between ATI's and NVIDIA's newest
"mainstream value" products. Because the GeForce 4
Ti 4200 we tested was a reference card that will not be
available at retail, we'll hold off on giving it an
official rating, but we have to say we were very impressed
with this product overall. The arrival of a true
GeForce 4 class part, at a price under $200, should pique
the interest of anyone looking to build a
new system or upgrade their existing video card. A
product with all of the capabilities of the Ti 4600, like
dual vertex shaders, nView multi monitor support and the
Accuview AA engine, at this price point is very exciting
to say the least. NVIDIA has done a great job with
the GeForce 4 Ti 4200. With it's price / performance
ratio, it's going to be very tough to recommend any other
product in the Ti 4200's class. Definitely stay
tuned for full retail reviews, as products based on the Ti
4200 become available. Both of the Radeons we tested
are readily available at retail though, so we will give
them a rating next.
APOLLO
GRAPHICS DEVIL MONSTER II RADEON 8500 LE:
The Apollo
Graphics Devil Monster II Radeon 8500 LE, is a very well
rounded card that definitely deserves consideration, if
you're in the market for new video card. While it's
performance was the lowest of the three cards we looked at
today, it was still a capable performer and would make
anyone upgrading from a GeForce 2 (or lower) class card,
very happy. It's fully DirectX 8.1 compliant, has a
healthy 128MB of on-board RAM, it's dual-monitor ready has
TV-Out, ships with DVD playback software and has the best
cooling solution we've seen to date on any Radeon.
The Devil Monster II is also priced very well and can be
found on line for under $170! Based on it's great
feature set (especially considering the price), adequate
bundle, decent performance and great price, we give the
Apollo Graphics Devil Monster II Radeon 8500 LE a
HotHardware Heat Meter Rating of
7.5...
ATI RADEON
8500 LE:
The ATi built
Radeon 8500 LE is also a great "pure" gamer's card, and
should find a home in many of your systems. The ATi
Radeon 8500 LE was not equipped with a second monitor
connector but it did have TV-Out and 128MB of BGA packaged
DDR RAM, and was the lowest priced card coming in at under
$160, with many on line retailers. At that
price point, you will be hard pressed to find a similar
performing product with "future-proofing" features like
full DirectX 8.1 compliance and 128MB of RAM. We
liked the ATi Radeon 8500 LE very much. Based on
it's great price and performance, we give the ATi Radeon
8500 LE a HotHardware Heat Meter
rating of 8...
Discuss This, Or Any Other Hot Hardware
Article In The Forum!
| 
