Nvidia has once again pulled the clockspeed trick out of the hat, just as they did with the GeForce2 Ultra, the GeForce2 Pro and others. Although that isn’t a bad thing, more performance is always welcome, regardless of what methods are used to make it happen, it doesn’t really offer anything new in terms of features over the previous generation.

Despite the impressive performance of the GeForce3 Ti 500, ATi’s Radeon 8500 does offer a whole slew of new and exciting features, features that the GeForce3 lacks. These new features could quite possibly prove to be more important the raw performance alone. If the GeForce3 Ti 500 and ATi’s 8500 would offer about equal performance, then the focus will not be on the performance anymore but rather on the additional features. We’ll just have to see how well ATi executes the launch of its Radeon 8500. If they are able to do frequent driver updates that both increase performance and implement all features correctly, their Radeon 8500 could very well be the obvious choice for a high-end graphics accelerator, both in terms of performance and features.

For the time being Nvidia can proudly say that they, without the shadow of a doubt, have secured the performance crown. We’ll have to see what will happen in the next few weeks when ATi releases their new Radeons, but it’ll be an interesting fourth quarter for sure.

Sander Sassen