Difference between ATI Radeon 8500 LE & 8500 , vs GF3 ti 500

[Mohammad]

I have a AMD XP 1700+, DDR and GF2 MX 32MB right now. I am planning on upgrading to either the radeon 8500 / LE or GeForce 4 ti series. Are the 8500 / 8500 LE cads comparable to GF 3 ti series as i think GF4 ti is better in performance. What exactly is the difference between 8500 and 8500 LE ? Are there different ns like 3.3 / 3.6 etc available on ATI ? and What speed can i get and from whick make ( i heard 250/250 is nice ) ? . One last question i had was that i heard that the new ATI 8550 drivers make the card much better , what is the deal with that ? Thanks

 

[JSSheridan]

The Radeon 8500 is roughly equal or slightly better than the GF3 series. The 8500 is clocked 10% faster than the 8500LE (275/275, 3.3ns vs 250/250 3.6ns) and both cards overclock respectably. Do get a 128MB card with 3.6ns (250MHz default) or better memory speed. These are getting hard to find, but BCD 2000 has them for $91. Just type "8500LE" in the search field. As for drivers, use whichever set works best for you. I think you can find an archive at Rage3D. Catalyst 3.0 or higher are required to use DirectX 9. HTH. Peace.

 

[edro]

I have a Radeon 8500LE from NewEgg and it's clocked 275/275 default. It runs great. It blows away all the GF3 cards I see at all the LANs I go to (Over 100 people).

IMO, the Radeon 8500 is not even in the same league as GF3. The Radeon 8500 is more in the range of the GF4 TI4200, but 2/3 the price.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: edro13
I have a Radeon 8500LE from NewEgg and it's clocked 275/275 default. It runs great. It blows away all the GF3 cards I see at all the LANs I go to (Over 100 people).

IMO, the Radeon 8500 is not even in the same league as GF3. The Radeon 8500 is more in the range of the GF4 TI4200, but 2/3 the price.

i have a 128mb ti4200 and 64mb 8500. only game i play is CS. the ti4200 is faster even at high res... but my 8500 handles nicely at 1024x768 with AF juiced to the max. the 8500's image quality rips the ti4200 a new brownie hole. with that in mind, after i fix the capacitors on my motherboard, i will be taking the ti4200 out and putting hte 8500 back in.

 

[touchmyichi]

Edro, I wouldn't exactly say a radeon 8500 blows away a geforce 3, pretty similar preformance. Just radeon might outpreform it. Geforce 3 ti 500's and 200's are dirt cheap, as are 8500's. But just spend a couple more bucks to get a ti 4200.

 

[Mohammad]

So the 8500 can be overclocked to give a better performance, but how overclocking the GF4 ti 4200 to like 4400 / 4600. Are some manufacturers better at overclocking. If i choose to go with GF4 ti 4200 , how great is a performance between 64 MB and 12 8 MB as the price difference is 20 bucks only. At pricewatch the lowest for a GF4 ti 4200 is :

$ 130 by Inno3D
$ 136 VisionTek
$ 145 Chaintech
at NewEgg VGA PALIT Ti4200 128MB

Which one of these are better brands in terms of overclocking without getting any external cooling?

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: touchmyichi
Edro, I wouldn't exactly say a radeon 8500 blows away a geforce 3, pretty similar preformance. Just radeon might outpreform it. Geforce 3 ti 500's and 200's are dirt cheap, as are 8500's. But just spend a couple more bucks to get a ti 4200.

I agree. I have a 128mb R8500 (275/275) and a GF3 o/c'd to ti500 levels. The R8500 is faster, but by no means does it "blow away" a GF3. The GF3 is actually a little bit better under games that push MAX CPU load. Same deal for image quality. The R8500 is better, but no means is the GF3 considered "bad" either. There's only one area where the R8500 is decisively superior and that's in DVD playback with software DVD decoders.

 

[Wasert]

On ATI's website the Radeon 8500/8500LE 128MB appear under legacy video cards. What does this mean?

 

[Myrandex]

Newegg has a gf4ti4200 129MB AGP 8x for $138 with free shipping. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=14-260-016&refer=pricewatch
Buyaib has a powered by ATI radeon 8500LE 128MB with 3 year warrantee for $88 with free shipping. http://www.buyaib.com/atidevmoniir.html

 

[HumbleFish]

Just incase Your having trouble finding a 8500, ATI has brought back the 8500 under another name- the 9100... I'm not sure if it's the LE or not... I think it's the LE... Anyone know?

 

[Brian48]

From what I understand the 9100 is what the R8500LE used to be at 250/250, but I can't confirm that. As to the current R8500LE's out on the market, I would AVOID ALL OF THEM, unless I can get a guarantee that it's one of the older ones with a clockrate of 250/250 or higher. The current crop, including the retail ones from ATI, are clocked at 230/230 (or lower). What's worse, these come the butt slow components so they can't even overclock very well. Sure, you still might be able to find one that is clocked at 250/250 or above, but I wouldn't hold my breathe as these are far and few between.

 

[Mohammad]

what are the core/mem clock differences for a 8500 and GF4 ti

 

[JSSheridan]

I believe that the TI 4200 is clocked at 250/500. However, I don't believe that the performance difference between it and a Radeon 8500 can be understood just in terms of clock speed. The TI4200 is faster than a 8500 despite the slower clock speed.

Now, when comparing different cards that are based on the 8500 but run at different speeds, then comparing clock speed gives us a good idea between the performance of the various cards. Peace.

 

[Tullphan]

So how does one overclock an 8500 & how does one tell about what frequency it's running at?
Does overclocking really help?

 

[JSSheridan]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
So how does one overclock an 8500 & how does one tell about what frequency it's running at?
Does overclocking really help?

I think that Powerstrip is a good utility. It will detect the card's clock speed, and allows you to easily change it. Overclocking helps sometimes. With a 2.0GHz Athlon, overclocking the 8500LE gives you a noticeable difference after a 10% increase. This is a case of being video card limited. On the other hand, if a system has a 1.4GHz Pentium 3 and a Radeon 9700Pro, overclocking the video card wouldn't really affect the performance very much, but increasing the CPU clock speed would. That is an example of being CPU limited. From what I know, The 8500 is CPU limited up to the 1.3GHz on an Athlon system, maybe a 1.8A GHz CPU for intel, but after that the system is video card limited. The 9700Pro will scale a bit past 2.25GHz on the Athlon. Read this article. Peace.