Radeon 8500, 8500le, and the Geforce4

[krupted]

Well, seeing what video card im using right now, i think the Radeon 8500le 64mb i just bought will be an improvement, but did my hastely purchase set me back a little with the 'le' version?

Whats the difference between the regular version and the LE? Can i overclock this card to give it a noticeable gain?

And how does this card compare to Geforce4 cards? I hear its faster than a MX440 DDR, but is it that much slower than a Ti4200?

Any other info on this particular card would be great, maybe what catalyst drivers are good for it, and what overclocking utility i should use. And should i put a 'socket a' hsf on it? Or is the regular setup good enough?

also, will i finally be able to play games like gta3 and the like at 1024x768? the g4 mx440 would do it, but it was a little slow.... no matter though that thing is now rottin in hell hheehehehehahaha

thank you

[F_A_L_C_O_N]

mine which is from Hercules (see sig) and OCed the way it is (sig) its pretty much on par with GF4200, of-course 4200 can be OCed quite a bit higher (with heavy cooling 4600 speeds are achievable I think)

as far as mx4 440 goes we are probably talking 2x the score in 3Dmark so not really the same league

BTW difference between LE and non-le is only in core/mem speed
ATI R8500 is at 275/275 if I remember right

you might wanna use "radedit" instead of utility (thats after you know achievable speed) which edits your cards bios
utility I used for checking is rage 3dtweak

Hercules has pretty good core cooling (basically blue orb) so I only slaped some heatsinks on ram (nothing fancy)

since I am on lcd i play everything 1024/786 and the only game giving me some trouble at default settings was UT2003
when some open maps would go to low 30 for couple of secs
benchmark is a solid 104/63 fps though

Oh and if you watch any movies or play games on TV you will not be disapointed

[cr8250]

I have an Radeon 8500LE and can overclock it past the "8500" default settings. The 8500 is 275/275. My 8500le came clocked at 250/275 and I can run stable at 275/300, however it also has the Hyunix 3.3ns ram. Not 'state of the art', but good enough for me.

[coyote81]

I have the ATI Radeon Hercules 8500LE, I have no problem running in any game I have tried. I have stock cooling and it works great, used to have it Overclocked, but I deleted something in Rage 3D Tweak and now it won't reinstall, have to wipe the HDD, but have all important stuff saved on CD's anyway.

[krupted]

cool! this sounds like a decent purchase.... specially for the price.... the card should come today so ill let you know how it goes......

[dfgsd]

with your current setup I think there would be little difference between a 8500le, 8500 and gf4 ti.

[cr8250]

Looking at your profile, moving from a TNT2 vanta to a Radeon 8500le should be a signifcant boost in gaming performance.

[Todd a]

Just be carefull. I know NewEgg had some OEM Radeon 8500LEs that were clocked lower than normal. If I recall correct they ran at 225 or 230Mhz core/memory. I think this was an overorder from a major OEM like Dell that dumped them back on the "grey" market. ATI was not happy about this, but at least NewEgg did list the speeds on it.

The LEs ran at a slightly lower voltage on the core and memory. This made it pretty hard to overclock them much. There was a way to connect a few points on the board with a pencil to slightly increase the voltage and make it much easier to overclock to and past the non-LE speeds. Most would do 300/300 without any trouble.

[krupted]

I like it a lot! i would say it is about twice as fast as the mx440. The picture quality, ESPECIALLY in tv-out is NO CONTEST, its amazing! i thought i just had an old crappy tv, now it almost looks like my monitor!!!


One thing thats wierd though, i cant seem to get agp fast writes to say ON. theyre enabled in the bios, but in the control panel its off. I click it to ON, restart, and when i come back theyre OFF again.....


It came with default speeds of 230mem and 250core. i dont think this is too terrible, as i have it now clocked at 270mem and 285 core. I dont want to go much higher until i replace the heatsink/fan and get some sinks for the memory. Its samsung memory, that should be good stuff, eh?

I think the biggest difference is now i can play anything at 1024x768 whereas i had to run 800x600 get get fluid games.


And i hear about bios flashes, what gives on those? anything else i can do to make this card a little quicker?

[krupted]

take that back, it seems to run fine at 300 core and 285 mem, damn, should i try higher? on stock cooling? maybe ill just go play some games