Differences between RADEON LE and RADEON VE?

[MallowJr]

I'm selling my old comp to my sister, but I took the 3dfx voodoo 5 from her comp because I like the colour and sharpness of it compared to the GeForce 3 that I had. I'm weary going back to Nvidia, even though my dad has a geforce2 GTS that looks awesome on his monitor.

Anyways it's a bit confusing with all the ATI Radeons shown on Newegg.com, can't consider what is better than another.
Do Radeons perform better than voodoo 5 in games? I have heard ATI has great 2D...my sister doesn't need TV OUT or anything spectacular inputs, just a monitor input.

Thanks,
ELmO

 

[Noriaki]

A Radeon 64MB Vivo performs only slightly slower than a GF2GTS in 3D, but has much better quality.

There is also a Radeon 7500 and Radeon 8500 coming out soon, the 7500 will be like a Radeon Ultra, and the 8500 will be competitive with a GF3 (programmable T&L, and should be nearly as fast).

The Voodoo5 is more GeForce 256 DDR speed range...well that's not really fair, it's a bit faster than a GF256DDR.

I love the ATi cards, I'm hoping to get my hands on a Radeon 7500...or maybe 8500 if they don't cost to much (but they will) in about 2 months or so (that's when I'll have money).

Lots of speed, excellent quality, and the best TV-out quality of any Video card (Good for my DVDRom->TV)

As for <$100, the Radeon LE is easily the best card you can buy in that price range if you are willing to do a little tweaking.
I think the LE is about $72 from Newegg.com

 

[MallowJr]

The VOodoo 5 may be slow but..in quake 2 and counterstrike at least, 3dfx opengl made the games look a lot better no matter how much tweaking I did to the geforce 3.

My sister needsa card for my old 900 mhz Tbird now though, so I was wondering if I should just buy another V5 AGP off ebay or go for an ATI that is cheap (over $100 is a bit much I think..she's paying me $300 for the system).

 

[Noriaki]

Yeah I forgot something.
See my Edit.

The Radeon LE is a great card, and if you tweak it a bit you can get near GF2GTS performance out of it with much better quality.

 

[MallowJr]

I read that anandtech review on the LE.
It looks like I'll go with that...I know black and white runs perfect on my V5, Radeon LE shouldn't have a problem with it?

Thanks,
ELMO

 

[majewski9]

Radeon LE is the perfect card! 71$ hack it and it is great for 3d! The 2d is better than any Nvidia card!

 

[Noriaki]

Yeah the LE will run it at least as well as the V5.
And the LE has the benefit of hardware T&L.

 

[majewski9]

No problems when I ran it!

 

[MrGrim]

<< The Voodoo5 is more GeForce 256 DDR speed range...well that's not really fair, it's a bit faster than a GF256DDR. >>



LOL! Funny stuff.

 

[MallowJr]

Any more info on how to hack it? Thanks friends.

Edit- MRGRIM I guess it's funny, but some of us prefer quality over quantity I guess. I ditched my geforce3 for my voodoo 5..can't give it up yet at this time. =]

-ELmO

 

[MallowJr]

Majewski what resolution did you run it at?
and did it run at a smooth frame rate?

Thanks,
ELmO

 

[MallowJr]

NM saw the LE Version.

What's the diff between the ati radeon LE version and at radeon VE?

 

[uhohibrokeit]

ive used voodoo5's maxed out, and geforce3s running 32bit color (voodoo cant do) at 1600X1200 and the voodoo cant compare, i just dont see where your comming from at all

 

[MrGrim]

<< Any more info on how to hack it? Thanks friends.

Edit- MRGRIM I guess it's funny, but some of us prefer quality over quantity I guess. I ditched my geforce3 for my voodoo 5..can't give it up yet at this time. =]

-ELmO >>



Ah, obviously I wasn't clear enough. The lol was about Noriaki who thinks that a V5 has the same (or a bit better) performance as a GeForce256 DDR. Still makes me laugh ahahaha.

 

[FuManStan]

Not sure if this is correct, but i think the difference between the LE and VE is that the LE is basically the same as the Radeon except HyperZ was disabled and the card was clocked slower. This can easily be fixed with a bios flash and an overclock. The VE, if i remember correctly, had no hardware T&L support.

 

[MadRat]

Both run SDRAM, not DDR like the VIVO. The VE has TV-out.

 

[bocamojo]

Mallow, the difference is in the pipeline. The VE is specifically designed for dual monitors, and to be affordable. So, ATI basically split the 128 bit pipeline in half, giving 64 bits to each video out. The LE has the full 128 bit pipeline. So, if you're not going to run dual monitors, you should go with the LE, which is the better performer due to having a bigger pipeline. Other than that, there is no difference between the two.

 

[bocamojo]

Also, just to clear things up, the LE runs with 32MB of DDR, not the slower SDRAM of the low end retail ATI Radeon video cards (which come in 32MB and 64MB configurations).

 

[MallowJr]

uhohibrokeit, have you seen other cards in windows and games other than quake 3?
Run a geforce3 side by side with some of the older games, ie Quake 2, CounterStrike...you will be lying if you say the GeForce 3 "LOOKS" better than 3dfx. Run them side by side, you'll never know until you try another card on the same monitor. Yes for later games like Black and white AND Quake 3 I'm sure at higher resolutions with 80FPS it looks great, but I'm talking about older games - especially with the new detonator drivers, it's incomparable to other cards that seem to place more emphasis on the colours/clarity (Yes I used NVMAX and tweaked a lot of settings out of the geforce3 before selling it), and 2D sharpness. Now, sit a geforce3 side by side with an ATI or 3dfx and you will see the difference in clarity in windows. Overall the GEForce3's time isn't for me right now, and I will need nvidia to show that they care about the quality of colours/no banding (even at 32bit color there is still banding seen) and 2D before I consider them again. It may just be the gainward card I got since my dad's nvidia geforce2 gts in his dell looks great on his monitor. Games like Q2/CS have 3dfx opengl though, so that's probably why I like teh colours a lot better than the greenish/orangish that the geforce3 put out (even with color correction programs).

I will get an ati radeon LE for her because I'm curious to see what ATI has done since rage pro (which was a paltry card, but the colours were the best I've seen in 32bit for any card I've used since), and she will probably find it fine compared with the voodoo 5 at the same price.