how good is radeon le's image quality?

[dpopiz]

I have a radeon le and I'm just wondering if I could get a much crisper image if I got a new gfx card

 

[Rand]

I doubt you'll find any significicant difference, the Radeon LE's 3D image quality is pretty good... maybe not the best but for mainstream uses your not going to notice a huge difference with another board.
Of course anisotropic filtering, FSAA, and other such features can improve 3D image quality by a decent amount providing your unable to attain acceptable frame rates with those features enabled on your Radeon LE.

The Radeon LE's 2D image quality is decent. It's roughly comparable to nVidia's best, and marginally below what would be expected from most ATi boards but it's more then suitable for most people.
If your looking at running 1600x1200 you would most likely notice an appreciable difference in quality were you to go with a Matrox solution though. Whether the difference is noticeable at lesser resolutions is debateable and it really comes down to individual preference and eyesight etc.

DVD quality should be outstanding as per ATi's usual, and you'd be hard pressed to find anything better.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

there is a bug in my radeon le - either hardware or the driver.
in RTCW, the in-game brightness control doesn't work for me.

 

[Auric]

How do you reckon an LE has lower quality than another equivalent ATI card? As far as I know the only difference is in the rated frequency of the graphics core. My personal experience going from a Radeon LE TVO (32MB DDR) to Radeon 8500 64MB DDR OEM (built by ATI) is that the 2D quality was the same, as expected. I have not used them at 1600x1200 but I doubt they differ.

RTCW brightness worked with mine. Why does ID make such their games/engines so dark by default anyway?

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Auric
How do you reckon an LE has lower quality than another equivalent ATI card? As far as I know the only difference is in the rated frequency of the graphics core. My personal experience going from a Radeon LE TVO (32MB DDR) to Radeon 8500 64MB DDR OEM (built by ATI) is that the 2D quality was the same, as expected. I have not used them at 1600x1200 but I doubt they differ.

It's pretty much the commonly accepted knowledge that the LE's had slightly worse 2D image quality. The difference isnt very large at all, but I can notice it when working for a long period of time when the res is at 1280x1024 or higher, at 1600x1200+ I can visually notice the difference without needing to work for any sustained period of time on the system.

Naturally 2D image quality is highly subjective, and tends to vary substantially depending upon individual preference/eyesight, cabling, monitor etc etc.

Given that the LE's are not manufactured directly by ATi, it's perhaps not surprising that the image quality tends to be marginally lower.

 

[imported_zenwhen]

My "Built By ATI" 8500LE 128MB has BEAUTIFUL image quality... 2d and 3d. This is the best my 2d has ever looked... period. I could notice a huge difference, having seen and extensively used Intel graphics, TNT, Geforce 2, 3, and 4. Nvidia makes no advances in the 2d field as they move along. They really need to focus a bit when the next iteration goes together.

The BUILT BY ATI cards are going to give you crystal clear sharp 2d, with the only bottleneck being possibly your monitor.

OEM is a dumb idea in by book.

In almost all cases.