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Software Included With The
ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 |
Looking Good... |
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Multimedia Center:
The ATi Multimedia Center is the key piece of software that
lets the user take full advantage of the All-In-Wonder
Radeon 8500's features. Whether you want to watch a
DVD, VCD or simply do a little channel surfing, the
Multimedia Center software has it all covered with their
easy to use software. In fact, ATi also makes it easy
to look up the dates and times of your favorite television
shows using the GuidePlus+ utility, which downloads a weeks
worth of programming using the Internet. Once you
decide which program you want to watch, simply click on the
program to view it. If you prefer, you can even set
the VCR option to record the show you want in AVI, MPEG-1,
MPEG-2, or ATi's own VCR format.
Another strong
feature of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 is TV-On-Demand.
TV-On-Demand is similar in function to TIVO, allowing you to
pause live television and then resume it in a matter of
minutes, or even hours, depending on your hard drive space.
I do want to be clear when I say that TV-On-Demand functions
like TIVO. However, it is nowhere near as
robust with its programming features. The last time I
made the casual association of the two features, I was
bombarded with feedback on how the two are so different.
They are, but they are similar in the concept of pausing
live TV and resuming the program later on.
An additional
key feature this Tech Writer got a lot of use out of, was
the ability of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 to create a
transparent television picture over the existing desktop.
To be honest, at first I thought this was going to be one of
those features that is more of a "migraine-maker" than a
real convenience. Well, I will gladly say that the
transparent desktop feature was far more impressive than I
though it could ever be. As I am writing these very
words, I am simultaneously watching "Star Trek TNG" without
any difficulty discerning the desktop application from the
television picture. I'm not sure how ATi managed to
pull this off without giving people seizures, but the
picture is subtle enough that it doesn't get in the way of
the desktop, while the TV picture is still clearly viewable.
This, of course, will be loved by some and hated by others
but we'll tip our hat to ATi for a job well done.
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Overclocking
the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 |
Turning Up The
Juice! |
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Before we get
started with the performance of the All-In-Wonder Radeon
8500, we thought we might start with a little overclocking.
To get the job done, we enlisted the help of the latest
version of Powerstrip, to start pushing the card beyond its
default 275MHz. core and 275MHz. memory speeds. With
this particular card, we successfully increased the core
speed an additional 25MHz. topping out at 300MHz., a gain
slightly over 9%. The DDR RAM peaked even higher,
reaching a maximum speed of 325MHz., just shy of a 19% gain
in bandwidth. As a whole, the All-In-Wonder Radeon
8500 gave us a decent amount of additional horsepower to
play with, matching the GeForce4 Ti4600 clock for clock.
The question is how much of a gain could we expect to see?
Could the Radeon equal the performance of the more powerful
GeForce4 Ti4600? Well, you'll be able to see for
yourself in the pages ahead when we started pump some Quake
3 through its veins. But first, let's take a look at
the HotHardware Test System, shall we?
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HotHardware Test System |
AthlonXP All the
Way!! |
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Shuttle AK35GT2/R
Motherboard
AMD AthlonXP
1800+.
256MB Corsair XMS2400
(2-2-5-2)
2 IBM GXP 60 7200RPM
40GB HDs
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 -
275/275
nVidia
GeForce3 Ti500 - 240/250
eVGA GeForce4 Ti4600 - 300/325
Creative 52X CD-ROM
Standard Floppy Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 8.1
Detonator 28.32
ATI Display Drivers Ver. 6.13.10.6043
ATI Multimedia Center
7.6 |
A Few Words About The Benchmarks:
To help our readers understand how we achieve the scores
that we do, we felt it necessary to explain our methods
a little. Before starting any tests, we went to
the ATI website, downloaded and installed the latest
version of the ATI Multimedia Center as well as the
latest version of the display drivers. By default,
Windows XP loads the desktop with the best visual
appearance settings, which could adversely affect the
benchmarks. With our test system, we set the
desktop settings for "best performance" to reduce any
unnecessary load. Next, we went into the video
card driver settings and set both OpenGL and Direct3D to
"Best Performance," and disabled "Vertical Synch."
To give a frame of reference, we compared the various
benchmarks to a GeForce4 Ti4600 and a GeForce3 Ti500 to
show where the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 fits into the
big scheme of things. |
To start off our
benchmarking tests, we ran MadOnion's 3DMark2001SE to test
the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500's DirectX capabilities.
All tests were run at the default settings, only the
resolutions were changed. As with all tests in this
review, the performance was gauged against a GeForce4 Ti4600
and A Geforce3 Ti500.
We can clearly
see the advantage the Ti4600 has over the All-In-Wonder
Radeon 8500 with its higher clock speed and memory speed.
It was surprising how the performance of the All-In-Wonder
Radeon 8500 almost equaled that of the slower GeForce3
Ti500. Perhaps we are seeing a major difference in
driver performance here. Let's see what happens as we
increase the resolution.
This time
around, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 slipped below the
Ti500 by almost 300 points with a 4% difference. Now
we'll kick the resolution even higher and see if
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 continues its slide.
What else can we
say? The Ti4600 dominated 3DMark2001SE in all three
tests; the Ti500 put up an impressive showing as well,
beating the Radeon 8500 by 6.5%. Although the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 lost ground to the Ti500 in the
last two rounds of tests, the card still put up a decent
score.
Don't you worry,
we're not done with the torture yet! Next, we'll throw
in some Comanche 4 and see if the Radeon can tip the scales
back in its favor.
Comanche 4 & Serious Sam SE |