NVidia has always posted those demos where you could see the features of the GeForce1/2/3 being shown off, and now ATI has done the same for the Radeon 8500. This page on the ATI site has four demos ranging in download size from 5 to 30mb, showing the use of Truform and Smartshader. Three more demos are on the way too.

As expected, the new ATI Radeon 8500 drivers have been released. You can get them for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Win9x/ME. These drivers offer Smoothvision anti-aliasing and better performance. Thanks Crimsonbeak.

AnandTech has whipped up a new article looking at the performance of ATI's latest drivers for the Radeon 8500. AnandTech puts the Radeon 8500 against the GeForce 3 Ti500. Among other things, the new drivers now fix the Quake 3 image quality "bug", and support SMOOTHVISION (anti-aliasing). In a lot of games, the Radeon gets pretty damn close to the GeForce 3 now although in games like Unreal Tournament the GeForce 3 blows the Radeon away (though at a 1600x1200 resolution). When it comes to AA support, ATI can now compete with NVidia as well

The inclusion of SMOOTHVISION proves that the technology is superior to anything else we've seen out there on both a performance quality level. Unfortunately the drivers aren't flawless and there still are random bugs. While ATI has done their best to list any incompatible games or other scenarios in the driver release notes, they can't change the reality of not being able to test on every person's system. The drivers are still not up to par with NVIDIA's Detonator series from a stability standpoint but it's good to see ATI actively addressing their problems.
According to ATI we should begin to see a regular flow of beta drivers from ATI on a much more frequent basis (possibly every few weeks?).

AnandTech also mentions these new drivers should be released today.

ATI's Visit to AnandTech: All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV Preview & more is, as the title might've led you to suspect, a preview of the upcoming All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV which again offers TV tuning, video capture and Firewire support. This card should be out before the end of the year according to ATI.

How ATI's Radeon 8500 drivers "optimize" Quake III is an article on Tech-Report, with more on the ATI Quake 3 drivers issue. Some more screenshots with visual proof are posted as well.

The FiringSquad has posted an interview with David Nalasco of ATI, talking about the Radeon drivers. As most of you are aware, there is some controversy around the ATI drivers and the game specific optimizations. According to David, the next driver release should fix the Quake 3 image quality problem (it currently has "an issue that prevents it from correctly interpreting the texture quality slider setting")

There's an interview with ATI's Greg Buchner on Cube.IGN, talking about ATI/ArtX's involvement with the Gamecube. They are providing the graphics chip, if that wasn't fairly obvious.

Ok well this is where it gets interesting. Saw this on some foreign pages the other day that I couldnt understand but RageUnderground (Thanks HardOCP) has the scoop on what ATI was up to with their Quake3 specific drivers. Seems ok to me to make your cards work faster on apps that you know are popular, until you see this:

- yes, we did do optimizations specificly for Quake 3.
- yes, we did it because it is being used as a benchmark in reviews of our cards.
- yes, we sacrificed imagequality to gain better framerates.

That is just plain underhanded. It's one thing to make sure your drivers work well with particular apps, but its a whole different thing to actually make the game uglier in the name of benchmark numbers. Especially when the only way for people to disable this option is hacking drivers or renaming their EXE files. Score one for ATI!

Tech-Report has a quick Q&A with ATI, seeking more clarification about the 250/250mhz speed of OEM ATI Radeon 8500 cards. In the future, OEM ATI cards will carry a different name to easily see if its an OEM card or not.

Source Magazine got an unnamed ATI employee to answer 4 questions about the recently released ATI Radeon 8500. The questions are about Smoothvision, WinXP/AthlonXP compatibility, game engine optimizations, and OEM card speed. Thanks Erik.

HardOCP has some more investigation on the ATI Quake specific extensions in their OpenGL drivers. Seems pretty conclusive that the drivers look for a particular application string (uake) and the drivers act accordingly when that application is running.

Max Reboot has posted some newer ATI Radeon drivers, for Win9x/ME and Windows 2000. No word on changes but you will probably want these if you own a Radeon.

HardOCP has put together one of the best Radeon 8500 articles out there. (Here's the first batch) What is interesting to note also is on the last page there is a mention of a special version of Quake that ATI actually optimized for. Fruity!

Tech-Report has some lowdown on the ATI Radeon 8500 cards which ATI seems to be playing around with clock speeds again. The OEM cards are going to be slower than the retail versions, much like what they did with their last cards.

Max Reboot has some new ATI WHQL Drivers for Win9x/ME. Not much info on them except word that these are the ones used in the reviews of the ATI Radeon 8500 that we saw yesterday.

The ATI Radeon 8500 should be showing up in stores by now, and AnandTech as usual has all the benchmark numbers that you need. However, even this newest Radeon with a 275/275mb clockspeed and 64mb of DDR Ram can not come close to beating the GeForce 3, sometimes getting scores similar to the cheaper GeForce3 Ti 200.

So for those buying today, is the Radeon 8500 a waste of money? Because of its aggressive pricing, you can find Radeon 8500 cards well below the MSRP of $299. Assuming a street price of $250, the Radeon 8500 can give you performance approximately equal to that of a $199 GeForce3 Ti 200 (street price of $179). The potential and additional features of the Radeon 8500 could justify the increase in cost but at this point, we'd recommend more of a wait and see strategy. If you need solid performance today at the best overall price, the GeForce3 Ti 200 is perfect for you. That may change as the Radeon 8500's drivers improve but for now it's just not worth it.

Other reviews are up at Tom's Hardware and Riva Station (in German).

ATI has announced that the Radeon 8500 card is now shipping to retailers across the world. ATI's latest Radeon has a core clock speed and memory clock speed of 275mhz and comes with 64mb of DDR ram, and should be retailing for $299.

German computer site Chip.de has posted some benchmarks of the Radeon 8500, putting it against the GeForce 3 Ti/500, the regular GeForce 3 and the Radeon 7500. They run all the cards in Quake3 , 3D Mark 2001 and 3D Mark 2000. It looks like the ATI Radeon 8500 actually managed to beat the GeForce 3 Ti/500 in 3D Mark 2001, while slightly trailing that card in Quake 3.

	Quake 3 demo 001 640x480	Quake 3 demo 001 1024x768	Quake 3 demo 001 1600x1200	3D Mark 2001 640x480	3D Mark 2001 1024x768
ATI Radeon 8500	158fps	148fps	101fps	8573	7426
GeForce 3 Ti/500	159fps	150fps	106fps	7578	6820
GeForce 3	159fps	146fps	95fps	7200	6391

Here is part of Chip.de's conclusion, Babelfished from German to English.

The autocracy of Nvidia is scratched with ATIs Radeon 8500. For the first time for a long time ATI, " eternal second " succeeds in enthronen its largest competitors. Even particularly on DirectX 8,0 optimized Spielbenches, like Aquamark or 3DMark 2001, run faster than on Nvidias pixel acrobat.

ATI announced a few more Radeon cards. The Radeon 7000 and 7200. Though these won't be exactly beat GeForce 3 performance, they are pretty cheap at $79 and $99 respectively.

ATI has announced their Radeon 7500 is shipping, carrying a suggested retail price of $199. The Radeon 7500 runs at 290mhz with a 230mhz memory clock and has 64mb of RAM. Performance should be up to 60% better compared to the original Radeon cards according to ATI.