Difference between Radeon LE and Radeon VE

[Jabster]

I was under the impression that the LE was a severly crippled card but according to some in this forum it is actually the VE that is crippled and does not have the T/L and only one pipeline. Which one is it?

I heard that the LE is an OEM only card but what is the VE (OEM or retail) and how do I know which one I'm getting. I'm thinking of buying a ATI Radeon 32MB DDR but I'm just scared that I'll end up with a severly crippled card that is not much faster than my current TNT 2 Ultra.

 

[GT578]

I made the upgrade from tnt2Ultra to Radeon LE last week. LE is a stripped down version of the retail/OEM radeon 32mbDDR...LE has 32MB DDR....just that core/mem is running at 148mhz instead of 166 and hyper-z is disabled in Direct3D.
Speed can be changed to 166+ and hyper-z can be enabled with a simple tweaker...that's what I did....VE is a REAL crippled core of the radeon....forgot all the details cuz I don't read about it much...but anyways......it was a significant upgrade for me considering I didn't even want to cough up the money to buy a Geforce2MX which is around $80-90 or so. I found my LE for $77 at a place 5 min. from my house(monarch computers)...so i took a gamble and it was a good one.

OH ..and the framerates on the games I occasionally play(CS,Q3 for benchmarks really, UT, and black & white) all went up but what was more apparent from the upgrade was the smoothness and better quality 3D....everything runs smoother....and framerates don't drop as much as it did with the tnt2Ultra....