Amen-Moses said:
I'm trying to understand why that matters, the 8500 was about 4 times the speed of a GeForce 3 card, the 9200 runs at exactly the same clock speed as the 8500 but has dual bus RAM and a few new widgets but it doesn't really matter as the 8500 is discontinued and it sure as heck isn't in an Xbox!
(I'm also trying to figure out why ATI would discontinue the 8500 and replace it with the 9000 range if it was a better card, surely someone would notice.
)
Amen-Moses
lol mate no offence but you are really showing your ignorance on a number of issues here..
1. The 8500 is about the same speed as a Geforce3 at best.
2. the 9000 is most definitely slower than an 8500 - it has less pipelines. It is also clocked lower for the record, at 250/200 (400) iirc? The 8500 is clocked at 275/275 (500) with more pipelines.. you decide which is quicker out of those.
If you doubt what I say above, go check out any reviews of the 9000, or benchmarks, or ask on other hardware forums on the web - you will find what I just said is correct.
ATI are very naughty with their numbering convention. The 9100 is faster than the 9200 as well. The 9000, 9100 and 9200 are only DX8 cards too, not DX9 despite their name suggesting otherwise. Plus the 9500 is quicker than the 9600 and the 9550 models.
Again, none of this is my opinion, I'm stating undeniable facts here.
Here's one source for you anyway..
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021218/vgacharts-04.html
Note the relative positions of the Geforce3, Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 (of which a 9200 is an exact copy except it's AGP 8x which is meaningless in performance terms)