Need advice on buying Radeon

[DOOM]

I looked on mySimon.com and eBay.com, and I'm finding many different Radeons for anywhere from $70 to $180!!! They are all 32MB DDR 4x. Why such a discrepancy in price?

The cheapest price I've found is $70 on NewEgg.com. Why is it so much cheaper there? Is it still a good card? Or is it like a factory throwaway?

What do I need to know to make sure I don't get ripped off?

Also, what are the LE and VE models?

TIA



-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[Crashman]

LE is the full retail version chip on an OEM card. It still has DDR SDRAM. The driver checks BIOS and disables HyperZ for the LE, but it can be re-enabled in software. It comes clocked at 148MHz but most can be overclocked to the 1283MHz of the retail version. It is also the least expensive way to get a TVO version (no TVO retail 32DDR card available).
The VE is a cut down version with most of the performance features disabled in HARDWARE, which means that, unlike the LE, you can't fix it in software. It's only feature is that it supports 2 monitors.
OEM cards are usually clocked at 166, retail cards at 183. You can always overclock the OEM cards.
There is also an SDR SDRAM retail version, it sucks.

Back to you Tom...

 

[DOOM]

OK.. so on NewEgg, for the $70 Radeon 32MB DDR, it says

"It's a real radeon ddr, not LE Version!"

Does that mean it has none of the features disabled?

And why is it so cheap when the same model sells elsewhere for almost twice as much?


Thanks for the info...



-DOOM
"Ultimately, there is no knowledge -- only belief."

 

[Crashman]

Probably just a regular OEM model as opposed to the cheaper LE model. The main reason I bought the LE was to get cheap TVO. "Fixing" the driver takes all of about 1 minute. Guys with the regular (non-TVO) LE can also choose to load retail 32MB DDR BIOS to get retail specs (HyperZ and faster memory clock), the same applies to OEM Radeon 32MB DDR owners (to get faster memory clock).

Back to you Tom...