Radeon 8500 LELE OC and Bios

FUNCTOR

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
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Hey!

I just bought a radeon 8500 LE (or thats what it was listed as anyway), and found out that it was clocked at 229/229, which makes it an LELE. Anyways, I was aware the LE had a bios with lower voltage settings so you couldn't overclock it too high. I also learned that many people flashed the LE card with the bios from the retail 8500, which gave them higher voltages, and could then overclock their LE's much higher (in some cases higher than retail values).

So, I decided I would try this. I saved my old bios just in case, and when I tried to flash the ratail bios, I got errors. I couldn't even reflash the bios I had saved. After many attempts, I rebooted my machine to find that there was no video signal at all.

I tried installing the card on 2 boards with integrated graphics, and in both cases, it seemed like it couldn't access the card. Do I need to install a pci video card and try? If I do try a PCI video card, will the flash program still be able to access the AGP card?

Also, anyone know where I can get the flash program? I do not trust the one I have now.

All things must surely have to end...
Functor
 

10GHZ

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Jan 21, 2002
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the problem is that you only "heard" plp talking about how you can flash the radeon retail bio on a LE card. i havn't read ANY guide that says it's safe to do so. to get higher voltage, u should try the pencil trick. it is always unsafe to flash any bios, not 2 mention you are trying to flash your card with a none-native bios.to the best of my knownledge,your bios maybe ruined. you need 2 get hold of a clean copy of the original bios for LE.
once you've done that you need to 1st make a windown start up disc, that's if u use window 9x, dont' know about xp, in either case, your need 2 get into a enviroment where minimal sets of device are beinig loaded, so dos would be ideal. you then need 2 install a pci video card, set "primary display" to pci in your bios, set your boot sequence to A drive 1st, then reboot the computer, after you got in 2 dos, try flash the card again with the originial bios. it would probably take a number of attempt to get it to work. anybody have a better idea?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
The flash program will give each card a different device number, so using a PCI card to see the screen usually works. Sometimes it doesn't. Which is why I keep an old ISA card lying around and some old AGP boards that have ISA slots.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?