ATi AllInWonder Radeon 8500DV

ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV
One Card, a multitude of technology

By Dave Altavilla
12/26/01
 

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo Benchmarks Now, it's a "classic"

Let's see how the AIW R8500DV posts against nVidia's finest in a benchmark that has historically been their strong suit, Quake 3 Arena.

We like what we saw in this test and we're sure you will as well, should you take the plunge with one of these cards.  At the highest resolutions, the AIW R8500DV does start to fall behind the Ti500 somewhat but competes well with the Ti200.  As we've noted in previous articles based on ATi's product, the ATi driver team has a little work to do with respect to OpenGL performance.  However, with the promise of regular driver updates and releases, we are hopeful to see this picture improve even more than it already has, since the first release of drivers for the R8500.

The ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV was a complete breath of fresh air for us during testing in the lab.  Never before have we seen such an impressive set of features for TV, Digital Video Editing and Playback.  The remote control alone had us literally "oohing" and "ahhing" with its control over the desktop, DVD, CD and TV players, all from the comfort of a cushy chair in another room.  The remote control even was able to completely shut down the test system with just the simple press of the power button until all features were turned off and then eventually the OS was placed in shut-down.  We were thoroughly impressed with the card on this level.

3D Gaming performance of the AIW R8500DV is also quite impressive considering the card's complete arsenal of capabilities.  We found it to perform somewhere in between the level of performance one might find with a GeForce3 Ti500 and GeForce3 Ti200.  With a price point currently hovering around $315 on line, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV is a very compelling solution for those users looking to bring TV, Editing and Multimedia functionality to their desktop.  Consider the new found freedom with ATi's fantastic remote control functionality of the card and you have one great piece of Hot Hardware in the palm of your hands.

We'll give the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV a HotHardware Heat Meter rating of