VERY common mistake by people here: nV doesn't have a 12 month cycle

[SnakeEyes]

My card wouldn't overclock to Ti500 speeds. Of course, it was one of the first GF3's on the market. Anyway, from what I understood, memory rating notwithstanding, one of the changes between the original GF3 and the Ti series was that there were some board optimizations that allowed the boards to operate stably with the memory / core clocked higher (though still with the same basic core and memory chips). In my experience, at least, this seems to have been true. I'm sure those that had original GF3's that overclocked to Ti500 speeds were in one and/or of the following situations:

1) Bought a GF3 later in its lifecycle (closer to Ti coming to market), and probably benefited from optimizations to their hardware as a result.
2) Heftier cooling to their cards / volt-modding the cards.

I vaguely recall many reports of people overclocking their regular GF3's to Ti500 speeds, but most of these that I read were being reported at around the time Ti500 was coming to market..

BTW, just because owners of several (even most) original GF3's could overclock successfully to Ti500 speeds, I still don't know that there was anything wrong with a higher price tag for Ti500's:

Analogy- Many CPUs available today (and in the past) overclock very well. In fact, some overclockers (me included :D) will buy OEM processors with certain markings likely to hit the higher speeds just taking the chance, and saving $$ over the higher priced chips rated at the speeds we're aiming for. Others will pay a few $$ extra (on order of $50, in my experience) for a pre-tested overclockable processor, guaranteed to hit the speed that they're after. In this analogy, Original GF3 = OEM processor NOT pre-tested, Ti500 = higher rated (factory) processor / pre-tested overclockable processor. Both of the last two were (and are) basically only different from the untested OEM processor in that they were guaranteed to operate at a given speed, while you took your chances with the former. I consider it to have been paying for the guaranteed extra speed (clocks, anyhow) when buying the Ti500, and nothing more. ;)

Edit: Added last two paragraphs.

[sbp]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
$350 is still expensive.So is $400. :p

you're telling me ATI can afford to sell the R8500 at $300(and it was usually found much cheaper) when it is a new card, and nvidia can only give us a mature board at $50 less? i don't think so. there were some minor changes to the layout of the Ti series as well, which probably lowered production cost. additionally, was it really "cheaper" or had gf3 prices already come down to $350.

"Theoretically was one thing, the reality was another."
they were both rated the same. whether or not in actuality the memory used with the ti500 was "better" doesn't matter. besides which, i have heard of many, many people overclocking their gf3's to ti500 levels When the GF3 hit store shelves in April 2001 it was $399. When the GF3 Ti500 showed up it was $349. Cheaper? Yes.

And as SnakeEyes has thoughtfully shown many cards is not all. http://sbp777.homestead.com/files/winkie.gif

Don't forget the Radeon 8500 lukewarm drivers had to be tuned up to see more of its performance.

Now all that said I understand what you are saying StealthHawk. That perhaps there should have been higher clock rates or something more.

[Cotita]

hmm, it seems you are right about the ti500 having an MSRP of $350. that's weird. i always thought it was $400. in that case it looks a little better in my eyes

of course I'm right, I'm always right.


Yes the geforce 3 and ti500 both have 3.8ns, but initial geforce3 couldn't reach 500+mhz on the memory. Actually you had better chance to reach past 500mhz with a ti200 (mine does 235/520) than a normal geforce 3 with stock cooling.