ATI Radeon 8500 LE: 250 or 230 ?

[SuRGV]

Hi friends,
This is my second post..this time regarding my new ATI Radeon 8500 LE 64 MB videocard.
I thought mine would be 250 MHz core/Mem but it is only 230 MHz for both Core and Mem. But then I thought it's a fine card at $100 CAD and forgot about it until today when I read MaximumPC and know that only the OEM cards run at 230 MHz Core/Mem and the boxed card runs at 250 MHz Core/Mem. Mine is boxed one.
Do you guys think that someone bought this box, swapped it with an OEM card and returned it as mentioned in the article? But I got this box, it was perfectly sealed !!?!?!
Should I go and get exchange for another one ?

SuRGV

[K6-III]

The card you got is the LELE, which is clocked at 230mhz, and not the LE which is clocked at 250mhz...

[Marshmallowman]

with ATI's always ask what clock speed they are, the variations they have on the core/memory clocks is very confusing.

Cores can very from 200 up to 275 and 200 to 250 for mem clocks for LE's. What kind of memory does it have?

I would tryi it out and see how far it OC's, I have retail 275/275 that is only good for 290/285, put I have seen some LE's that do 300/300.

If it does not clock up up very well, you could try taking it back. But those clocks are not unusual (there are worse out there)

[SuRGV]

K6-III,
Well I may not be so up-to-date about Videocard but I've never heard of LELE. It doesn't show LELE on the box.
As I remember from the article in MaximumPC, someone was in the same situation as mine and the spokesman of ATI said that all the boxed ones should run at 250 MHz core/mem and only OEM card may not run at 250 MHz Core/Mem.

SuRGV

[SuRGV]

Marshmallowman,
Mine can go up to 275/250 stable. Good ?
SuRGV

[MetalCartman]

My Hercules 8500LE 64MB (retail) runs @ 250/250 stock. o/c'ing the memory is nearly impossible, I get screen corruptions after a minute in 3DMark2k1SE, it is 4ns RAM. The core however is o/c'able up to 270~275MHz, but I haven't tried a 24h stability test with it...

[Marshmallowman]

not bad SuRGV, thats should get you a decent game of ut2003
my brother his pretty happy with his at 250/250

whats you impression of game speed

The cores are usualy good for 275 or so, but mem really depends on the ram they use.

[SuRGV]

Marshmallowman,
Eventhough mince can runs stable at 275/250, most of the games I frequently play (Empire Earth, Age of Mythology, UT, Dungeon Siege) don't require much power and at 230/230 it runs most games perfectly. I dont overclock this baby if I dont run tests. Oh I got only 31 fps in Dungeon Siege test. Is it a bad score?
I'm new in UT2003 and I can play well at 1024x768 as compared to my old comp with P3@800 + Geforce 2 GTS. I can say much better. No complaints about it.
I might just bring the card to the store and exchange for another one just to see if I can get a 250/250 card.
SuRGV

[K6-III]

First try flashing it to the Radeon 9100 bios. Then see how well it OC's....

[Marshmallowman]

the 9100 bios may/may not help, but it won't be by much.
It reduced the OCabilty of my retail card..in fact it gave artifacts at the standard speed.

I think its not worth the possible hassles, since its not a mad OCer
I would see if they are amenable for an exchange, doing it nice and early and you should have a good chance of them going for it, point out the cough*offical*cough ATI le clock speeds to them.

[SuRGV]

This is what I got from ATI technical assistant regarding my issue:
"The Radeon 8500 runs at the core/memory speed at 250 MHz, the Radeon 8500LE, runs at 230/230 Mhz. There is nothing wrong with the card, but that is the clock and memory speed for the Radeon 8500LE. That is because the LE version is a lower version of the Radeon 8500"
Is this bs ?
I will cite what the spokesman of ATI said in MaximumPC. Damn it.
SuRGV

[Jon P. Inghram]

The full blown 8500 was 275/275. LE was originally 250/250, then 230/230. When you buy one there's no telling what kind you'll get. I bought my 8500LE from CompUSA and ended up with a 230/230 LE at first. When clocked up to 250/250 it seemed stable so I flashed the BIOS to lock it at the higher speed. I discovered afterwards that with AA on it'd start showing artifacts, so I flashed it with the original BIOS. When I rebooted it was dead. Put my G400 back in, and found out that USCW will corrupt the bios if enabled when you flash the 8500... DOH. Didn't have a PCI card to fix it, but thankfully CompUSA didn't mind exchanging it for another one. Got home with the replacement it turns out it's a FULL 275/275 8500, not LE! Apparently ATI just sticks whatever's available in the box when they ship 'em.

[Novdid]

But they seem to have gotten their act together with the 9xxx regarding clock speeds though. Now you can be pretty much shure that your 9700 runs at 275/270 and not 250/250.

[SuRGV]

I just exchanged for another one and it is exactly the same. I guess it is the whole batch Futureshop is selling. ATI Technical insists that LE is rated at 230/230. So I give up.
BTW, its mem speed shows artifacts from 245 MHz and up (I was wrong to state that it is stable at 250 MHz mem before). But the core can go higher than 275 I think because I have not tried any test higher than 275 yet.
8898 points for 3DMark2001SE at 275/240 is not bad for my system I guess.

[Marshmallowman]

If you are keen, there is the pencil trick, which can be used to increase the voltage going to the gpu and ram.
Its not something I would normally do to a video card, but the slower 8500's have lower voltages than the retail. so you have a nice safety margin, but given the performance you get now, I would not be any hurry to try it.