ATI's Radeon 8500 & 7500: A Preview

Even Better Anti Aliasing

As with the GeForce3, the Radeon 8500 features a true multi-sampling anti-aliasing algorithm that ATI calls SMOOTHVISION.  SMOOTHVISION actually goes one step further in that it offers a programmable/random sampling pattern in order to reduce some of the blurring and artifacts that are associated with fixed pattern anti aliasing. A positive side effect of SMOOTHVISION is that the AA is made more efficient by not anti aliasing pixels that don't need to be.

Unfortunately, in the current state of the drivers, SMOOTHVISION is only operational under Direct3D games and even then it is very difficult to get working properly.  This unfortunately limited the scope of our tests.

Pricing

The Radeon 8500 will retail for $399, although we believe that by the time it does hit the streets ATI may drop the price a bit in order to be more competitive with the 8500's counterpart at NVIDIA.

The Radeon 7500 will retail for $199 but again, in order for it to be competitive it will have to be a bit cheaper. 

The Radeon 8500 and 7500 won't be going up against the GeForce3 and GeForce2 Pro when they launch, instead NVIDIA will have a new set of cards to compete with so ATI had better work on that pricing a bit.