Radeon 8500 oem and drivers

[Lopez]

I'm seriously considering (or rather, I know I'm going to) buying a Radeon 8500. It should be a nice upgrade from my Matrox G400 Max

Have a question though. I'm planning on buying from a third-party vendor and would like to know what drivers I'm supposed to use then. Will the drivers for ATI's own card work?

I guess it might depend on whether they use an OEM or a retail version of the chip, but let's suppose they use the OEM version...

Any other experiences, thoughts or/and tips regarding buying from a third-party? The reason for not buying an original ATI card, of course, is that there are none around right now. And who can wait? And, well, it's cheaper as well.

Thanks for the help!

[Novdid]

Yes you should be able use ATI drivers. All R8500 are essentially all the same.

Where are you going to buy the board???

[Indiana]

Until now ALL Radeon8500 OEM are based on the ATI board, quite a lot even seem to be manufactured by ATI themselves - my OEM e.g. has ONLY ATI on the board, the fan, everywhere you look, you won't see any other manufacturers name. And of course ATIs drivers run as do any OEM ATI8500 drivers, so just use the ones that are the newest / fastest / most stable. In fact my OEM R8500 came with the original ATI driver CD.

It is (was ) still clocked at "only" 250/250, but by doing the "pencil trick" Volt-Modding and flashing to Retail BIOS (you can also use Powerstrip if flashing the BIOS of a $300 card is not your thing...), it's running stable at more than 300/300. Not that it would really matter except for "3DMark bragging". My card went from ~7700 to ~8700 in 3DMark2k1 after oc'ing it from its 250MHz to 305/305 but you don't notice the faster speed when you're not running benchmarks. OC'ing especially of the RAM might help with FSAA, though.

[Lopez]

Where are you going to buy the board???

I was looking at the Point of View card at www.datorbutiken.com (big Scandinavian online computer store). You wouldn't happen to know anything about Point of View, Novdid?

Hmm... The Point of View card runs at 250 MHz but I guess you're right, Indiana, it won't really matter. I don't think I'll try oc'ing though, just in case anything would go wrong. My economical situation doesn't really allow it

[Lopez]

Hmm... The Point of View card has its ramdac running at "only" 350 MHz as well. The mere fact that it says absolutely nothing about this at their own website makes you wonder. Feels like there is a risk of buying crap...

[Novdid]

The RAMDAC doesn't matter at all. Just makes a difference if your'e running a >21" monitor and resolutions >1920x1440. The card is not crap either. I always buy my stuff at Datorbutiken and they are very cheap and reliable.

Almost all of the Point of View and LE cards are manufactured by ATI and are essentially Retails that didn't cope doing 275MHz reliably (although most of them can OC to 275MHz, if you flash to retail, and most them have the same Hynix 3,6ns RAM).

I actually ordered an ATI Retail, I'm not in a hurry, and it's just 200kr more.

[Lopez]

Have you heard anything about when they're going to get more original ATI cards?

[MK]

Indiana - where exactly did you buy the card and who is the manufacturer ?

MK

[MK]

Indiana - where exactly did you buy the card and who is the manufacturer ?

MK

[Indiana]

Originally posted by MK
Indiana - where exactly did you buy the card?

At Comtech, it was a "special offer" for 599,- DM with free packaging/shipping shortly before christmas - this was the only place I could find where the card was rated "in stock" by then (and it really was here two days after ordering).

and who is the manufacturer?

Now that's quite a tough question - I have absolutely no idea...
Comtech say "Radeon8500 OEM powered by ATI", but don't give a manufacturer. I think this is a card built by ATI, but clocked at OEM rates, cause everywhere you look on the card, on the chips, on the fan,... you only see "ATI", and no other name while nost OEMs (PowerMagic, FIC, ...) usually put their name at least on the fan. On the box there is a "powered by ATI" Logo instead the "built by ATI" one, though.

Anyway, the card is equipped with 3.6ns Hyundai/Hynix RAM and thus can be easily oc'ed to Retail-level.
However the OEM have lower Voltage on the RAMs and GPU, so you have to reduce the resistance of two resistors on the card with a graphite pencil (much easier than to unlock a TBird, since those resistors are much bigger than those L1-bridges) to get the higher speeds. Without Volt-modding the card ran stable at 270/270 and had some minor erraneous "popping pixels" at 275/275, after doing the pencil trick I have flashed the card to 300/300 and have no probs/graphic glitches whatsoever.


My 3DMark result at 300/300MHz (Win2k, 5.13.01.6011 drivers, DX8.1, AthlonXP1700+@1562, FSB142):

http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?2392389

[MK]

Indiana - thanks for the information. Did you use the "RadeonFlash V2.1" made by one of these guys of the Rage3D forum ?

MK

[Indiana]

First I tried how far the card will go with PowerStrip. Then I flashed it with the RadeonFlasher (but the old version, not the 2.1 one) to Retail.
For the 300/300 setting I used a tool from the Radeon.ru site which allows you to modify an existing R8500 (and R7500) BIOS to any clockspeed you like.

[MK]

The BIOS modification tool should be included in the 2.1 version. The new Radeon 7500 / 8500 series is getting really attractive ...

MK

[Lucid]

If the card is not manufactured by ATI, then you may not be able to install ATI's drivers.. Such is the case with Radeon cards manufactured by Sapphire at least.

[MK]

The first thing I would do with a OEM card (because of stability) is flash it back to a retail BIOS. This way I can use the original ATI drivers without any problems !

MK