R8500 LE

[Oct_7]

Hi,

I just want to ask, what are the differences between the r8500 retail box and r8500 LE, and how much the difference affects the preformance. How about the driver issue?

Thx alot

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[AEboy128]

The r8500 retail is clocked at i believe 275/275, the 8500LE is @ 250/250 and the LELE is @ 230/230. The LE is about 10% slower and i haven't seen any benchmarks on the LELE.

Tom's Hardware Tested... Buyer Approved!!

 

[fozz]

I read the following on a post on the newegg.com site:

"The OEM units have now been designated "LE" to indicate that the core/memory speeds are set at a slightly lower 250/250Mhz rating as compared to the retail boards coming in at 275/275. The difference in benchmarks, while noticable, between these two boards and their differing speeds is somewhat misleading as you will most likely never actually SEE the difference with your own eyes in actual gameplay. The best price/performance ratio is definitely the OEM/LE version".

Now, if you look at this one on sale from Bunta.com:
http://www.bunta.com/products/prod_frame.asp?mode=spec&item=VCAT8500B
Which one is that??
It has the DVI output....is that relevant?
Basically, I was going to buy that one but I wanna be sure I don't get the 230 one (the LELE one...).

Any ideas?

 

[bront]

The Retail (275) runs maybe 5% faster than the OEM (250).

I sold my soul to Microsoft, and all I got was this lousy operating system.

 

[AEboy128]

I'm not sure which one that'd be. Although you'd never see the performance gain/loss either way.

Tom's Hardware Tested... Buyer Approved!!

 

[fozz]

Cheers for the answers!
So can anyone advise me the best place to buy an 8500 online (in the US) that I should be able to get up to retail speeds?
I am looking on Pricewatch.com and some specify that their cards have 3.6ns RAM...is that relevant?
I wanna order an 8500 soon so please point me towards the best seller to get me a card that will NOT be a 230Mhz one!
Cheers all!

 

[AEboy128]

<A HREF="http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=13" target="_new">http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=13</A>

There's a review of the 8500 LELE from Newegg that was turned into a Retail radeon. But i'm not sure you want to modify you're card like they did. I'm not sure anymore which speed ram (in NS) is equal to in memory clock. 3.6 i believe is 275 maybe that's 3.0 though. I'm not sure.

Tom's Hardware Tested... Buyer Approved!!

 

[FatBurger]

I believe 3.6ns RAM is what is used on the original Radeons (275/275 and the first 250/250).

The ram on your card should be of the 3.6ns variety or you can forget about updating your BIOS

Yeup, looks like we're right.

BTW, you can download the BIOSes from there, or ask me for them. I've got them sitting on my computer at work, so I can email them to anyone that desires.

I've heard back from two people (out of about 5) that I sent the file to. Both had some problems. One figured out what it was (I can't remember, sorry :frown: ), the other flashed it back to OEM without any difficulty.

High and low 3DMark scores are 500 points apart in this article for those who want the results without the effort of reading it (~6300 - ~6800).

Based on this article, I will email Newegg to inquire about the memory being used on the card. I'll post their reply.

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[FatBurger]

On a side note, I found a retail 8500 for $219. It's the Ati retail, as per an email I received from them.

<A HREF="http://shop.store.yahoo.com/nova-tek/atirad8564dd.html" target="_new">Link</A>

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