Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3?

[SilverDragon227]

I'm looking to upgrade my video card without becoming broke in the process. I play Half Life based games for the most part, however I recently obtained Aliens vs Predator 2 and I have also enjoyed playing Max Payne. With the new driver's it seems that the Radeon beats the Ti 500 in most cases, however, I am only running a 900 Mhz Athlon T-bird and I am wondering if a Radeon 8500 might have any compatibility issues with my CPU. Also, being as I don't want to spend too much, I may be looking at an OEM, which seems to be clocked under the retail. Does that make a noticeable difference? I currently have a Voodoo 5500 and am only looking to upgrade due to the new games that do not support Voodoo based cards very well. Any input would be appreciated, thank you. I read the post down below that talks about modding it, however, if I buy from say, www.pricewatch.com there really isn't a way to know what the last two digits are.

 

[darktyco]

I went with the OEM 8500 and have it flashed with a retail BIOS and clocked over the speed of a retail 8500. It cost me $190 from Newegg, but I don't think they are selling it anymore, they are selling the 8500 LE instead, which comes clocked at 230/230 (compared to the 250/250 of the OEM and the 275/275 of the retail). So I got a ton of bang for my money, but if you decide to go with an OEM 8500, make sure you get a real OEM and not one of the 230/230 LE's!

 

[AA0]

There shouldn't be any issues with the cpu, you would want to turn off fast writes in your bios, but since its a nvidia feature, and really doesn't do anything, its no loss.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Get a Retail 8500. Guaranteed speed, and not much more than an OEM. It is a seriously great card.