The Unitech Optimus 8500 eXP
A RADEON 8500 tweaked out for the masses

By -Chris Angelini
May 29th, 2002

Our test system was comprised of a single i850E test bed with a Pentium 4 2.2GHz Northwood processor.  Details are listed here.

HotHardware's Test System Movin' On Up - Now With an i850E Motherboard

Common Hardware:
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz. (2200MHz) Northwood Processor
Intel D850EV2 i850E Motherboard
512MB of Samsung PC800 RDRAM
IBM DTLA307030 30GB. ATA/100 7200RPM HD
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Windows XP Professional with Direct X 8.1
Intel chipset drivers, version 3.20

Video Cards:
Unitech Optimus 8500 eXP

PNY Verto GeForce4 Ti 4400
ASUS V8200 T5 GeForce3 Ti 500 64MB

Driver Revisions:

ATI Reference Driver 7.70

NVIDIA Detonator 4 Reference drivers, v.28.32

Test Settings:
Quake III: v.1.31 four demo with all quality settings maximized.
Serious Sam SE: Elephant Atrium demo.  Extreme Quality script with texture size maximized.
Comanche 4: 32-bit, audio disabled, with tri-linear filtering.
3D Mark 2001 SE: Default configuration

Head-to-Head / Performance Progression Quake 3 Arena

While the Optimus 8500 is able to beat the GeForce3 Ti 500, the newer GeForce4 Ti 4400 still takes a first place finish.  Even overclocked to 306/324MHz, Unitechs flagship isnt able to keep pace with the less-expensive Ti 4400 card.  ATIs latest 7.70 drivers squeeze an additional three percent from the card and overclocking contributes an additional 14 percent at 1600x1200.

Anti-Aliasing Tests:

The story worsens for the Optimus 8500 as anti-aliasing is enabled in the Quake III benchmark.  Even the GeForce3 is able to apply 4x AA faster than the Unitech card.  NVIDIAs Quincunx and 4x algorithms simply appear to be more efficient than the brute-force super-sampling approach that the RADEON 8500 processor employs.

Anisotropic Filtering:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to compare graphics processors due to the varying implementations of different technologies.  The matter is further complicated by software tricks each manufacturer uses to squeeze extra performance from certain applications.  So, its not always easy to determine if a particular setting is resulting in the same quality between chipsets.  Anisotropic filtering is a perfect example, as ATI and NVIDIA reportedly use different methods to accomplish the same filtering technique.  Even still, the Unitech card is able to perform 40% faster than the GeForce4 Ti 4400 using the latest 7.70 drivers. 

Serious Sam and Comanche 4