View Full Version : Hercules 3D Prophet AIW 8500 DV review
http://64.246.22.60/~admin61/siteimages/b3dsmall.gif (http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/hercules/aiw8500dv/index.php)I just uploaded my review of the Hercules 3D Prophet All-In-Wonder 8500 DV. A card not only targetted at the gamers, but more to the video editors among us. But how well does the card perform with games? What other features does this card bring?
You can find it all in my review (http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/hercules/aiw8500dv/index.php)
Anonymous
01-Jun-2002, 15:16
Don't the 8500s only have two TMUs per pipe? I'm not trying to look for mistakes or anything, but this jumped out at me.
Nice article.
I always though you could plug two monitors into one of those things, bummer.
Dave Baumann
01-Jun-2002, 15:45
Don't the 8500s only have two TMUs per pipe?
Yes, thanks. It updated. :)
Doomtrooper
02-Jun-2002, 05:04
Whats the clock speed on the Hercules 8500 Dv's 230 ??
You mean why is the clockspeed 230Mhz?
The clockspeed is indeed 230, as mentioned in the review.
Anonymous
02-Jun-2002, 15:14
Any chance you could put some labels on those graphs. I've got no idea what's being shown by the first 3 graphs on page 4.
Doomtrooper
03-Jun-2002, 01:18
You mean why is the clockspeed 230Mhz?
The clockspeed is indeed 230, as mentioned in the review.
Oops missed that in your review :roll: ..must have been asleep..I heard that higher clocked DV's were shipping and wondered if you had gotten one.
Hellbinder
03-Jun-2002, 06:40
Overall, Great Review.
My only comment is that i totally disagree with your concusion about IQ. hundreads, nay thousands of people have all come to the same conclusion.. that Ati Iq just looks better. For whatever reason. Its not a rumor, nor just some Ati fanatics opininion or anything else. While I dont understand how you came to the "they all look the same" conclusion.. Its a free world. Where I differ is your proclimation that you have uncovered the dark secret that Nvidias iq really does suddenly look the same.. and that thank god someone has displelled those nasty rumors,,
Im sorry, It may look the same to you, but it sure as hell does not look the same to me, or about 75% (at least) of the rest of the reviewing world. The Fog is much better looking, as well as the color saturation. Overall Geforece series has a grainish look. Where Ati's overall quality is very clean, smooth, and has a deep vivid color.
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 11:25
Well, in fact Nvidia has far better tri-linear filtering.
If you want to use Anisotropic filtering, again Nvidia delivers a better image quality with Ani 2X, due to the fact that ATI does not do tri-linear filtering with Anisostropic filtering. You need to use 4X or higher Ani filtering if you want to get this so called good image quality.
So I do not agree with the fact that all others are stating that ATI's image quality is better. I used my Philips 21" hooked up with BNC cables to compare the quality and I find that ATI's image quality is more blurry then Nvidia.
You can get a better image quality with the ATI cards, but you need to tweak a lot....
Dave Baumann
03-Jun-2002, 11:33
Well, in fact Nvidia has far better tri-linear filtering.
Trilinear filtering one Radeon 8500 was updated sometime ago so that its pretty much the same as NVIDIA's - the only difference between the two is that NVIDIA arcs the mipmap boundries whereas ATI don't.
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 11:47
Exactly, which reflects in running a game with tri filtering on, in an image quality which is just not as nice as with Nvidia.
Stating that ATI delivers a much better image quality is just not true. I'm not a Nvidia fan-boy (far from it), but this is the truth.
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 18:57
hi
i have also the hercules videocard. because i'm intrested in high performance in games, i tried to overclock the aiw card. the highest i achieved was 265/205 (normal 230/190), but without memorycooling and with the standard ati-gpufan. if you upgrade your card a in these ways i think 275/220 shut be reachable.
i there anybody else, who overclocked his radeon8500dv?
greez ganto
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 19:38
the 8500 DV is supposed to be
the top of line product,right?
why would ATI use such slow memory?bah
The 8500DV is not the top of the line. Just as I mentioned, there are newer faster 8500 cards. The DV is not targetted as the highest gamers performer. Normal 8500 cards are clocked higher.
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 19:56
oh btw,wavey:
did you unlock the multiplier
on your atholon rig?
i thought it would be very interesting,
for benchmarks to include scores from
the CPU highest overclock to lowest
underclock.on the same rig/setup.
to see if the GPU is really off-loading
task from the CPU.or just cow poop :)
especially for nvidia's product...
which is very CPU depended and
that implies its not off-loading task
or its nvidia's screwy implementation. :)
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 20:06
oops marco,you wrote the article :) my bad
can you include the full 3dmark scores
next time? thanks :)
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 20:43
i know, that there are cards who run with 310/310 but they don't have a tv-tuner nor a fire-wire connector. but when you overclock your radeon8500dv you have nearly the performance of a 250/250 oem radeon8500. and all the specials you also have . so for gamers this card shout be interesting too. an you don't need an additional firewire-card and tv-tuner that can stop your fsb overclocking achievements. (sorry for my bad english :oops: ).
greez ganto
Dave Baumann
03-Jun-2002, 21:24
FYI, WRT to clock speeds and specs: ATi has made two versions of the A-I-W 8500.
The first version (the one Marco has reviewed – or at least the Hercules version) uses a digital analogue tuner (i.e. an analogue tuner that’s chip based) the advantage of this is that its quite small so they can fit other peripheral items on the board such as the firewire port etc; the clockspeeds of 230/190 I believe are there because this tuner chip had a lot of interference from the board when working at normal Radeon 8500 speeds so they downed the clock rates to stop the interference.
Since then ATi have released another 8500A-I-W with 128MB of BGA RAM and running at normal Radeon 8500 speeds, however to achieve this they have used a standard analogue tuner which evidently doesn’t suffer from the interference. Because the analogue tuner is larger (and probably more power hungry) the board is unable to carry the extra elements such as firewire.
At present, AFAIK, the higher clocked Radeon 8500AIW has only been picked up by ATi themselves, which means its currently only shipping in the markets ATI are still operating in. Currently the only 8500AIW Hercules produce is the 230/190 clocked version.
Anonymous
03-Jun-2002, 21:48
marco:
my question and comments about unlocking
athlon's multipliers was directed at you. :oops:
and if anybody wants to comment.that's fine too
sorry about the confusion. :oops:
Nope I did not unlock the mulitpliers on my Athlons.
And I see that my old Mobo is still listed on the review, which is correct, as I did all the benchmarks on that MoBo.
I have a new KT333 based Mobo, which is up for review next.
I will have a look at overclocking with this review.
I do have another big and pretty intresting review coming, so I have to decide what is going online first.
I will keep you all up to date..
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