PC Stats has posted a review on ATI´s Radeon 8500 Chipset

In theory, this will allow the 8500 to render more complex texture affects within a single rendering pass than the GF3 is capable of. I say in theory because first of all, nothing besides ATI tech demos currently uses the 1.4 instruction set. Secondly, Nvidia has disputed ATI's claim to superiority, noting that the Geforce 3's nfiniteFX engine is capable of the same amount of detail. Nvidia also suggest that the two extra texture operations per pass supported by the Smartshader will not add up to any real world speed increase. Finally, in order for the 8500's 1.4 compatibility to be used, developers will have to code for it. This means extra work and you can be sure that they will program for the 1.3 pixel shader spec which the GF3 supports.

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