Radeon 8500 oem and drivers

[Lopez]

And that'll work with all third-party cards? In that case, I'm buying my new rig tomorrow Also upgrading my processor (from Duron 800) to an Athlon XP 1600+

[Indiana]

MK, be careful. Most OEM boards aren't really stable at retail speed (which you'll run them on after flashing an ATI retail BIOS) because of the undervolting issue mentioned above. Some only have 4ns RAMs.

So check the card at retail speed (275/275) with some 3dMark or Q-III loops if there are graphical glitches or freezes before flashing.
Or simply flash the ATI OEM BIOS, it's still an ATI BIOS, but with OEM speeds (250/250) - or you could simply draw some pencil lines onto those two resistors and go for the 300/300...

EDITed for typos

[MK]

Indiana - Thanks for your advice, you are perfectly right. But let me clarify some things:

I only gave the recommendation to flash the retail BIOS because it seems to have far less aggressive memory timings compared to the OEM BIOS versions. Therefore stability improves compared to any OEM bios from ATI or any 3rd party manufacturer.

I did not say anything particular about the speed one should apply. The reachable speed settings at stock mem + core voltage vary significantly. They are dependent on the specific card respectively manufacturer. They can only be found out by an individual test before any tweaking is done.

Once these numbers are found out, they can be applied permanently to the card`s BIOS by using the FlashRadeon V2.1, if I got the guys and their 35 pages right over on the Rage3D forum ( http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...eadid=33588280 ). And yes, I have been reading it all!

I`m sure the OEM core & mem speed you specified is just a typo. The retail Radeon 8500 has 275 MHz core & mem speed, the 8500 LE is usually at 250 MHz core & mem and there are reports about a "LELE" version at 230 core & mem.

The exact voltages for core & mem vary as much as the speed rating of the RAM that is used on the cards. Retail ones are on Hynix 3.6 ns, most OEM`s too and the minority of the OEMs are on 4.0 ns.


Lopez - yes that usually works with every OEM card. But if you are not 100% sure what you are doing: leave it !


MK

[Lopez]

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.

Hmm... datorbutiken.com claims it runs with the original ATI drivers and is oc'able to 275 MHz.

By the way, the Asus A7V133-C works with an Athlon XP 1600+, right? The problem, I imagine, is that I have to upgrade the bios to make it work. Is it possible to do that after mounting the new CPU?

[MK]

First: Don`t believe everything you read.

Second: I assume they are right. Wether the original ATI drivers work or not depends on which maufacturer is put down on the BIOS. There seem to be OEM cards with an ATI OEM BIOS, as Indiana mentioned before. You should be able to run these cards with the original ATI drivers. In case the 3rd party manufacturer put its name in the BIOS, the ATI drivers refuse to work as with any other non ATI product.

Concerning your BIOS update: I don`t know if your motherboard supports the Athlon XP. I assume ASUS has a reliable homepage where you can find all the neccessary informations. However: If you upgrade, you have to flash the BIOS before you put the XP in!

MK

[Indiana]

Originally posted by MK
In case the 3rd party manufacturer put its name in the BIOS, the ATI drivers refuse to work as with any other non ATI product.

But even then you can force-installe the ATI drivers through device-manager, so this not really an issue (except for total newbies that only can handle drivers with a setup.exe).

[MK]

Indiana - Really? I didn`t know that you can force the driver installation via the device manager. Are there any bad side effects in using that method ?

I cannot think of one but hey - it`s the computer industry!

MK

[Indiana]

Well, you can force install nearly everything in device-manager. The question is: will it work?
If the card is based on the ATI reference design (and AFAIK all OEM are) and it's just the cards name in the BIOS, there should be no problems.

It would be another thing if the card is really different in hardware (e.g. if an OEM decided to scrap the RageTheater chip and use a BT or Chrontel for TVOut).

[cbman]

The A7V133 does work with the 1600+ and it shouldn't require a bios update to at least start with the 1600+ (Such was the case of the board we had for 1/2 a year in a demo machine) it just reports that its a 1400 athlon. But we all know that's against AMD's Rules