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Now that we have covered
the technical background of the Radeon 8500, lets
take a look at the board itself, and what's included
with the package:
If you notice, the 8500 comes equipped with your basic card fan. This was surprising considering the card's core clock speeds are running @275MHz. You should also notice the various outputs that the 8500 supports. With the DVI connector, you don't have to worry about buying adapters just to make your flat screen compatible with the latest card.
Included in the packaging
of 8500 cards is several connecters and adapters,
as well as a few full version games, and your installation
CD. The 8500 comes with a s-video cable, and s-video-to-composite
adapter, a composite cable, and a DVI to VGA adapter.
With all of these adapters and cables present, it's
a sure bet that ATI wants to make sure that no user
is left out on how they can display their applications.
The composite adapter is also useful if you want to
record your games or movies, and your VCR doesn't
support s-video. Also included are full versions of
Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life Uplink.
Call me crazy, but if I want to show off the power
of my card, I probably would stick to something that
has been released currently. A game like Serious Sam
would have complimented this package nicely. But with
the overwhelming popularity of games like counter-strike
and team fortress, who can blame them?
Also included is a full array of ATI multimedia software, including their DVD player which showcases their dominance of hardware DVD playback. In addition, there is a demo of a product called facemail, which will allow you to use certain "stand-in" faces to communicate messages via email instant messaging, and online chats. Future versions will allow you to use your own face to communicate what you are trying to say.
Even with all of these
features, the card is no good to many gamers if it
cannot produce impressive results. But before we get
into the benchmarks, I think it would be fair to discuss
the stability of the card's drivers. It's widespread
knowledge that ATI has a spotty track record with
their drivers being stable in intensive applications,
or more specifically video games. So has ATI turned
over a new leaf with the 8500? Well yes and no. As
far as games go, I haven't had any games crash due
to faulty drivers. However, I did notice the card
has a tough time handling programs like MSN Messenger
that pops up a little display whenever someone logs
on, or whenever someone is sending a message to you.
The framerate of the game that I would play would
become distorted, and would make the performance of
the game very sluggish as long as the display that
popped up was in the background. This especially happened
in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake 3 Arena,
as your gaming would come to a crashing halt whenever
someone logged on. But other than that issue, the
drivers are as stable as drivers can get.
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