We never leave enough alone and of course overclocked the Radeon until blue smoke shot out from every memory
IC and the computer spit out the red hot video card.... well no,
but we did 'tweak it nicely.' Without any additional cooling and without using the "Pencil Trick" we were able to push
the Radeon 8500 from a clock speed of 275 MHz core to 305 MHz. Memory was
upped from 550 MHz to 612 MHz.
This is a pretty
decent overclock considering that we were still using the stock ATI (who here thinks
ATi should learn a lesson from nVidia an use sexier heatsinks?). The memory did get quite warm during
testing and we're pretty sure that it could have gone a bit higher if we had
added ramsinks, which we didn't do.
3DMark2000 is still a popular benchmarks for
evaluating 3D performance even though it is getting a bit dated. 3DMark2000
continues to provide benchmark results that gauge DirectX7 performance and
hardware transformation and lighting that older games still use. Version 1.1
ensures more reliable functionality with hardware and operating systems that
were released after the launch of 3DMark2000 in December 1999.
Higher numbers denote better
performance.
| 3DMark2000 v1.1 Benchmark Results |
|
Video Card |
3DMarks |
Ranking |
| 1. |
GeForce2 Ti |
11101 |
 |
| 2. |
GeForce3 Ti500 |
12964 |
|
| 3. |
Radeon 64 DDR |
6115 |
|
| 4. |
ATi Radeon 8500 |
12758 |
|
| 5. |
ATi Radeon 8500 (oc'ed) |
13297 |
 |
Unlike it's older brother the Radeon 8500 does
very well in 3DMark2000 because the whole card is being used. The older Radeon has one texture
unit left over doing nothing. Unfortunately it looks like the default benchmark is more of
a CPU tester now.
3DMark2001SE is the latest installment in the 3DMark series by MadOnion. By
combining DirectX8 support with completely new graphics, it continues to provide
good overall system benchmarks. 3DMark2001SE has been created in cooperation
with the major 3D accelerator and processor manufacturers to provide a reliable
set of diagnostic tools. The suite demonstrates 3D gaming performance by using
real-world gaming technology to test a system's true performance abilities.
Tests include: DirectX8 Vertex Shaders, Pixel Shaders and Point Sprites, DOT3
and Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, support for Full Scene Anti-aliasing and
Texture Compression and two game tests using Ipion real-time physics.
Higher numbers denote better performance.
| 3DMark2001SE Benchmark Results |
|
Video Card |
3DMarks |
Ranking |
| 1. |
GeForce2 Ti |
5301 |
|
| 2. |
GeForce3 Ti500 |
8974 |
|
| 3. |
Radeon 64 DDR |
4012 |
|
| 4. |
ATi Radeon 8500 |
9354 |
|
| 5. |
ATi Radeon 8500 (oc'ed) |
10057 |
|
The Radeon 8500 does very well in 3DMark2001SE. I wish
all next generation cards offered this much performance gain (from Radeon to
Radeon 8500)! Usually a score of 3000-4000 in 3DMark means DirectX 8.0 based
games would be playable at 1024x768-32-bit. Note that my
3DMarks scores are damn fast without even a GeForce 4! =
)
3DMark2000 Ver 1.1
RSS Newsletter
