The ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 Review
Will The Real All-In-Wonder Please Stand Up?

By, Jeff Bouton
April 22, 2002


 

Software Included With The ATi All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500
Looking Good...


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.


 

Overclocking the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500
Turning Up The Juice!

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?

HotHardware Test System
AthlonXP All the Way!!





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