using benchmarks to gauge wrong approach

[Sustain13]

the perpetual quest for speed is not the way to gauge whether Direct 8.0 is an improvement....you've got to look at the screen...

First, I'm speaking about my fellow Radeon owners. The GeForce is not built to work with the new 8.0 features so those of you (a majority I know) with that graphics board should stay away from Direct X 8.0

But, as stated previously, I could really see the difference in both Unreal Tourney and Wheel of Time --the shadows, and fog effects were just outstanding...using using Direct X 8.0 and the new ATI beta drivers ---but a word of warning---these are beta drivers and Unreal Tourney sent me to the blue screen of death much more frequently than before....and until ATI releases a final version (a long wait I'm afraid) of the Direct X 8 drivers these kind of problems should be anticipated....as well as some incompatibilties with games that have not been configured to work with 8.0

bottom line is that part of the radeon chip was designed with 8.0 in mind (which is why I bought it in first place), in addition while the radeon will never be as fast as the GeForce, a number of reviewers have the noticied the essential point...Radeon simply looks better... colors, etc are richer....and at just over $100 buck a pop for the 32mb DDR card I don't see how you can go wrong

What would be really useful for myself and other radeon owners is an easy way to switch back and forth between Direct X 8.0 and 7.0x for some older games....any feedback on the feasability and how to's would be greatly appreciated here...