On Thu, 2002-01-31 at 19:32, Glen Foy wrote:

Is anyone currently using the ATI Radeon 8500? What is your opinion?

I am. My Opinion: Don't buy one. In Windows (uh-oh - profanity :-) ) it crashes when playing DVD's full-screen. Ziff-Davis benchmarks suggest you'll do better (or at least as well) for less money with a GeForce 3 Titanium. In Linux: it's only 2D-supported under XFree86. I guess if you don't mind 'gears' at 300fps it's OK, but when people having a Geforce 2 can run nearly 4x faster... :-( I watch DVD's under Linux (Xine), but the frame-rates are only around 7.5fps, with sporadic chunks getting dropped. Much of this is teething problems. I fully expect this card to become well-supported in Linux after another couple of releases. Oh yeah - I originally bought a Radeon 64MB DDR with this new computer last Fall. This ATI card had a fan on the graphics-processor, and the bushing started to get noisey. I bring that up, because after only about 6 weeks, this Radeon 8500 is going the same way. When it gets too bad, I'll rip it off, drill a honkin' hole in the side of my case, and fit a chassis-fan and some ducting to replace the ATI fan... What do I like? 64MB of DDR memory. At 1280x1024 x 24 bits deep, I'm using about 1/2 the memory. For games, that leaves room for textures. For business, that gives me room to move to a 21" monitor / 1600x12800 later on. This card can do dual-head. One port is a standard D-Sub15 VGA connector, the other is a DVI connector for a flat-panel. ATI includes an adapter so that the DVI connector can be adapted to become a second VGA connector. There's also a TV-out jack, which echoes one of the other outputs (could be nice for watching a DVD on a large-screen TV). You can bet, though, that these features won't be supported under Linux for some time to come... :-( XFree86 5.0??? Again: spend your $$$ on a Geforce 3 Ti. -Gord -- Gordon Pritchard, P.Eng., Member IEEE Technical University of B.C. - Research Lab Engineer mailto:gordon.pritchard@techbc.ca direct phone: 604-586-6186