ATI's Radeon 8500 & 7500: A Preview

DroneZ

DroneZ is currently only available in benchmark form.  This OpenGL game will take advantage of vertex shader programs, which makes it a good benchmark for the Radeon 8500 and GeForce3. 

We ran it at 1024 x 768 with the 'GeForce2 BUMP' settings enabled.  For the Radeon 8500 and GeForce3, we also included benchmarks with the 'GeForce3 BUMP' settings enabled.

Finally the Radeon 8500 is flexing its muscles and is able to slightly outperform the GeForce3, even with the new Detonator 4 drivers.  This is promising for the Radeon 8500 once it gets some better drivers, but then again we still have yet to see a title truly require the features of either the GeForce3 or Radeon 8500. 

AquaNox

Just like DroneZ, AquaNox is currently only available in benchmark form (courtesy of NVIDIA for their GeForce3 launch).  The settings were left at default and pixel shaders were enabled for the Radeon 8500 and GeForce3.  The resolution was set to 1024 x 768 x 32.

The Radeon 8500 is more competitive than everything else on the list but it still cannot reach the GeForce3's level of performance.  By now you're probably tired of the driver story but that seems to be the most likely culprit.