ATI Radeon 8500 LE: 250 or 230 ?

[SuRGV]

I just read posts from someone buying the same card at the same store, Futureshop, and they could let their cards run happily at 275/275 just by flashing the new BIOS (1009 from Omega)!
So did I !!! Yahooooooooooo !
So it's like an ATI 8500 retail now. Haha.

[WyWyWyWy]

Hmm?
So is this a BBA 8500LE?
Does yours run stable at 275/275 now?

[SuRGV]

what is BBA ?
It is running stable at 275/275 without any single problem. YOu may not like 3DMark but I gained about 700 points from 8375 to 9071.

[Tempest]

Great! Try playing some UT2003 on it. That's one game that truly reveals the possible unstability of a 8500LE... My 250/250 Hercules LE ran 3DMark beautifully @ 275/275 but crashed in UT in under 1 minute.

[WyWyWyWy]

BBA = Built By ATI.
i.e. "THE ORIGINAL"(tm) Ati product.

[SuRGV]

I played UT2003 for about 10 minutes without any problem. However, when I exited the game, it went back to desktop and 1 second later, a beatiful dead blue sreen appeared showing errors in memory or something. I can't remember because the machine then restarted.
I'm not sure if this is becuase of running the card at higher speed. After playing Empire Earth or Age of Mythology for 1 hour or more, similar problem occur at normal speed (original BIOS): when exiting the games to desktop, one second later Windows pops up a error message saying that the game has caused errors and terminated it. !
There may be something with the brightness because I set my desktop to a bit dark. When games exited, desktop is very bright and it tries to change the brightness and crashes !
And one more thing. RefreshLock is always on when playing games. It could be an issue too.
Dont know yet.

[SuRGV]

Yes it's BBA