Radeon 8500 and high AGP bus speeds?

[rogue1979]

I got the Radeon 8500LE from newegg for $107. Yes, it came clocked at 250/275 stock with 3.3ns ram. This sucker rocks at 295/322 on stock cooling no voltage mods yet. My previous Gainward Geforce 2 Ti at 300/520 got about 5600 in 3DMark 2001, now I am getting about 8100.
Fantastic improvement, though in real world gaming I noticed only a small performance boost and slight improvement in 3D image quality, 2D about equal. My Gainward would take a 168MHz fsb, max for my board. However, the Radeon 8500 gets artifacts and texture tearing at anything over 153MHz on my Epox 8K7A. This is with several different drivers and even at stock speed. Has anyone else experienced fsb speed limitations with the Radeon 8500?

 

[rogue1979]

I have tried reinstalling the driver, reformatting, disabling fastwrites and side-band addressing, and running at stock speed of course, as well as using 2X agp setting in the bios. Anything above 151MHz is showing wierd stuff. I am using Rage3D tweaker to overclock, Win98SE with driver 9031.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[VirginiaDonkey]

good luck with your FSB issue, wish i could help...my poor ol rig tops out at 151 mhz

 

[dunkster]

I ran game-stable at 147 FSB with my crappy AGKGA XP1600+ and GF2GTS.

I bought the same 8500LE64, since enhanced with ramsinks & silver orb. It scored 9295@295/335 core mem at 146 FSB - unstable at 147 FSB.

I've seen a couple of other posts about the 8500LE needing lower FSB for stability with FSB-overclocked systems.

If you find a solution, I'd like to hear about it.

 

[rogue1979]

I found the solution!

Good bye Radeon 8500, hello Geforce 4 Ti 4200!

Man, I really wanted to like this card, a fantastic value for $107. It overclocks well, 295/322 stock cooling. Great 3DMark 2001 scores and a definate improvement in gaming framerates. But in the real gaming world it was a let down. 3 different sets of drivers and I couldn't find one that was compatible with all the games I play. I have been recommending it based on the price-performance ratio and the fact that I have two Radeon 32MB DDR's running flawlessly with 9031's. I thought Radeon driver issues were a thing of the past, but obviously the 8500 is a different story from the original Radeon. Also my 2D is not as sharp as my low-pass filter modded Gainward Geforce 2 Ti 500. Also while framerates were faster according to the little counter, I couldn't see much of a difference. The 3D colors were a little richer, but details were not as sharp as the Geforce. I have been working on it for 4 days and I am ready to throw the towel in. Good gaming just doesn't have to be this hard, back to Geforce for me. This is the second time I have tried ATI and been disappointed, when the original Radeons came out I had the same problems. This card also chokes on any fsb speeds above 150MHz, not acceptable for my Samsung PC2700.

The Radeon 8500 is going back to newegg in the morning. I gave my beloved Gainward Geforce 2 Ti 500 to my oldest son and I couldn't talk him into giving it back, so I am using a Radeon 32MB DDR right now. Not the fastest, but at least it plays everything correctly with any of the three drivers that the 8500 flopped with. I have to wait for my credit card to be reimbursed before I can order the Gainward Geforce 4 Ti 4200 :frown: