I find 8500 to be rather useless because of its quirks, bugs and varying performance. it also puts out relatively ugly frames (9500+ have far better image quality). R100 and R200 are similar in this way.

Also you definitely do not want any Radeon for D3D 3-6 games because these cards do not support some older features like table fog because ATI didn't bother. This will mess up a number of games. Geforce 1-5 don't have this problem.

swaaye wrote:

I find 8500 to be rather useless because of its quirks, bugs and varying performance. it also puts out relatively ugly frames (9500+ have far better image quality). R100 and R200 are similar in this way.

Also you definitely do not want any Radeon for D3D 3-6 games because these cards do not support some older features like table fog because ATI didn't bother. This will mess up a number of games. Geforce 1-5 don't have this problem.

Now I understand why the old D3D games looked a bit different on my old 8500. Tja... I knew I should have gotten a ti4200 at that time but it was double the price 🙁 Anyway, 8500 was still better then a R9000 pro 😀

Yeah I used a 8500 myself from 2001-2003 or so. Before that I had the original Radeon DDR (then G400, TNT, G200). I had a number of problems with games with the Radeons, and the 8500 was very troublesome during its life for lots of games because the drivers were awful for years. Before Radeon 9700, ATI truly did have terrible drivers.

Since then I've had a chance to play with lots of GeForces and everything else and I will say for certain that a GeForce card from those days was the better product overall. Voodoo is still the best choice bar none for pre 2000 games.

I purchased a Radeon 32MB DDR back in the day. Should have gotten a GeForce2 instead, but they were way more expensive at the time. And the GeForce2 MX was too slow for me. So I picked one up, and from day one I had a major headache with it. Had my share of driver issues and compatibility issues with older games. Visual anomalies were especially present with those. And it took quite an effort to get Unreal to run properly on that thing too. And it didn't like my Voodoo2 card either. But it did teach me to be more familiar with hacking the Windows registry. 🤣 @ ati drivers

Once I got a GeForce2 Ti about a year later though, it was a sigh of relief. So what if the Radeon supported EMBM; very few games at the time made use of it anyway, so no big loss. Couple months later I then got a new mobo and CPU and decided to give ATI another shot by purchasing a Radeon 8500, judging by the cheap price compared to GeForce4 cards. Same old BS all over again. Sure the performance was nice but there were quite a few quirks (especially with visual quality) with that card that I could never fathom down. A couple months later I splurged and got a GeForce3 card instead. Less compatibility issues with games, and anti-aliasing was actually usable. I sold my 8500 on ebay many years ago.

The R3xx cards restored my faith in ATI and their drivers, however. The last ATI card I purchased was a Sapphire X1600XT PCI-E (not counting another X1600 Pro AGP that I got for free). To me the R5xx was their last great line of products. Not so sure about afterward.

Long story short, my faith has always been in NVIDIA for their compatibility (with both hardware and software) and superb drivers, beginning with the TNT (except for their FX line). Not sure if I'll ever go back into the red camp. As I've also mentioned before I've had my share of compatibility issues with DOS games with earlier ATI chips. And on top of that they were crap for a lot of 3D games. If there's one thing the Rage 128 and original Radeon were good at though, it was that they didn't take as much of a performance hit as their competitors did in 32-bit color rendering mode.

And yes, in the pre-2000 era, 3deefx was the hallmark for game compatibility. Buy a Voodoo(3) card and virtually any game will run on it without a hiccup (except maybe early DOS Glide games and MW2).

Back in the days I used cheap Nvidia TNT2's (M64/Vanta). Then I heard good things bout ATI's 9xxx lineup and bought a 9600XT and a 9200SE to upgrade. They did not work for me, the 9600XT gave lockups, the 9200SE DOS VESA and refresh rate support was a step backwards, and In windows I also noticed strange output in certain games/apps. Returned all ATI stuff, Put three Geforce MX440's (the slower ones) in all systems, no modern gaming then, but otherwise all works fine.

Later tried to find a way to get a bit more 3D performance without noisy fans, thus used heatpipe passively cooled Geforce 6600 / 7600 GS / another 7600 GS / 7300 GT. Eventually they all died in their own heat. Well done Nvidia...

Currently I have switched to ATI. one HD3450 AGP, yes AGP: maybe it is because I use hacked drivers for windows 2000, but there is only one driver version that doesn't give me BSOD's, being 9.02B. What I find funny is that the windows F8 bootup menu is shown kinda garbled. Despite that the card works satisfactory overall.
Then a HD5450. I use just one PCI Express lane. it works fine so far.
My stowed retro systems have a Geforce MX440 128 bit, and a 6200-A. If required I can put in a Voodoo 3.

Yup add DOS to the list of Radeon negatives for retro gaming.

And yes the PCIe to AGP bridge chip has always been trouble. I had an X800XL AGP that only worked with certain driver revisions. That was their first bridged GPU. They broke D3D on the AGP bridged cards for about 8 months straight at one point. There is usually a special AGP "hotfix" driver to use.

Regarding noisy fans, it has always been hit or miss. The Radeon 9700, 9800, X800, and X1800 had quiet fans. Some of the midrange and budget cards are loud because they use cheap tiny speed demon fans or just don't properly set fan speed. Then we got the X850XT/X1900XT blower that was similar to the FX 5800 Ultra cooler and very loud. NVIDIA has had their loud stuff too but also quiet, like the 7900GTX heatsink. It's certainly still a problem today. You just need to ask around, like at the Silent PC Review forum, to find out which cards are quiet.

The GeForce 4 line of cards also has a few issues under DOS especially with VESA. I had a Ti4200 and it would show a lot of tearing in VESA games, some wouldn't even work at all. Any workaround for that?

gerwin wrote:

Back in the days I used cheap Nvidia TNT2's (M64/Vanta). Then I heard good things bout ATI's 9xxx lineup and bought a 9600XT and […]
Show full quote

Back in the days I used cheap Nvidia TNT2's (M64/Vanta). Then I heard good things bout ATI's 9xxx lineup and bought a 9600XT and a 9200SE to upgrade. They did not work for me, the 9600XT gave lockups, the 9200SE DOS VESA and refresh rate support was a step backwards, and In windows I also noticed strange output in certain games/apps. Returned all ATI stuff, Put three Geforce MX440's (the slower ones) in all systems, no modern gaming then, but otherwise all works fine.

Later tried to find a way to get a bit more 3D performance without noisy fans, thus used heatpipe passively cooled Geforce 6600 / 7600 GS / another 7600 GS / 7300 GT. Eventually they all died in their own heat. Well done Nvidia...

Currently I have switched to ATI. one HD3450 AGP, yes AGP: maybe it is because I use hacked drivers for windows 2000, but there is only one driver version that doesn't give me BSOD's, being 9.02B. What I find funny is that the windows F8 bootup menu is shown kinda garbled. Despite that the card works satisfactory overall.
Then a HD5450. I use just one PCI Express lane. it works fine so far.
My stowed retro systems have a Geforce MX440 128 bit, and a 6200-A. If required I can put in a Voodoo 3.

Seems that for post-voodoo gaming, it's the Geforces that one should get. Though I still gotta say I loved my Radeon 9600. Reinstalling the drivers was a bit of a hassle I remember, but installing the Sapphire driver (the card itself was from Sapphire) somehow fixed it. Later Sapphire removed I think those drivers from their website? I can remember looking for them in my offline database. I really wanted THAT driver 🤣, because it worked, or at least for me.

And about those passive GF6/GF7 cards? I later bought 2 GF7600GS's, both passively cooled and both overheated WAY too fast! After a lock-up the huge heatsink was TOO HOT to touch for even a second! That's when I realized these cards were never meant to be cooled passively so both cards have gotten an "upgrade" in the shape of a 8cm fan. Only thing is, they take up like 3 slots now 🤣!

I skipped the GF1 to GF4 though, much later I used a couple of the MX's and was pleased with how they behaved. They were MUCH faster then a TNT2, much cooler, better image quality, quiet because of passive heatsink. Those MX's just work 😀

I wasn't very eager when I read the stories about the GF FX though, but looking back they seem about as good as the GF4's. Maybe it's best to stick to <=DX8 for any GF5 and before?

Edit:Can still pair those early Radeons with Voodoo 2's though hehe 😜

Well it seems the Radeon 8500 is not to everyones taste... I've only used it a few times and not had any issues with either Windows or Dos games (yet).

Anyway, i've also got a 64mb Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 (Kyro-II chip)... I wonder if this will be better than the Radeon 8500? Obviously the Kyro doesn't have hardware T&L or pixel/vertex shaders, but who cares when it's going to be used with old Windows and Dos games 😀

I also have an old S3 Savage 2000, but it's crap and the drivers really do suck!

ATi really took their cards to the chopping block to create their SE/LE versions.

Retro 3D Accelerator Screenshot Collection

The Radeon 9200 whalloped the 9200SE by almost double in 3DMark01 and 03.

elfuego wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

swaaye wrote:

I know TNT2 is about the same speed as a V3, but the one I tried (a Diamond V770) had horrible graphics quality 🙁

OK, this is hard to believe, but there was once a chinese no-name OEM TNT2 pro under the name 'Eagle TNT2 pro'. That one had the best graphics quality of all NVIDIA video cards I have ever tested (on a CRT). And it had the most awesome anisotropic filtering ever - 3D quality was even comparable with V5 5500 (at LOD -2). I also remember massively overclocking it (i think it was 200mhz or 220mhz instead of 175mhz). Try to find one of those.

And by all means avoid any other 'eagle' Nvidia card - all others were garbage (gf, gf2mx, gf4 etc)!

Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Pro was nice and factory overclocked. One of those might be good, too.

sliderider wrote:

elfuego wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

OK, this is hard to believe, but there was once a chinese no-name OEM TNT2 pro under the name 'Eagle TNT2 pro'. That one had the best graphics quality of all NVIDIA video cards I have ever tested (on a CRT). And it had the most awesome anisotropic filtering ever - 3D quality was even comparable with V5 5500 (at LOD -2). I also remember massively overclocking it (i think it was 200mhz or 220mhz instead of 175mhz). Try to find one of those.

And by all means avoid any other 'eagle' Nvidia card - all others were garbage (gf, gf2mx, gf4 etc)!

Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Pro was nice and factory overclocked. One of those might be good, too.

I think you messed up the quotes a lil bit, I never said such ugly things about the GF MX's 😜

How about the...

Falcon Northwest Special Edition Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 TNT2 Ultra @ 195 MHz core / 200 MHz RAM (or so). 😁

Now there is an ultra super rare TNT2.

swaaye wrote:

How about the...

Falcon Northwest Special Edition Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 TNT2 Ultra @ 195 MHz core / 200 MHz RAM (or so). 😁

Now there is an ultra super rare TNT2.

Aaaah. So thats the one Madonion was blabbing about in 3Dmark 01 "if you have been running this on a falcon, you would have been done by now" 😁

Yep, the same guys who trashed-talked about Windows accelerators back in the day because they reduced DOS gaming performance.