Radeon 8500 speeds

[tmung]

I'm thinking about getting a Radeon 8500 because they're pretty awesome and too cheap to pass u. However, that last bit sums up my financial situation I know there is sometimes a difference in speeds for OEM cards and retail cards, is this true of the Radeon 8500? Will this make a [big] difference? Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[Tates]

ATi built retail boxed card - 275/275
ATi OEM & other brand retail cards - 250/250
ATi LE - 230/230

 

[darktyco]

The difference between OEM and Retail speeds is pretty small, and there are a few mods you can do on the board to bring it up to par with the retail. Be careful you don't get the LE though, the 230/230 clock speed isn't good- also the boards are sometimes poorly listed and some people have received LE's when trying to purchase OEM's off places like e-bay and a few retailers.

 

[tmung]

Is there any visible difference (on the board) that distinguishes an LE from and OEM? What kinds of mods would I have to do, just basic software OC-ing or some hardware modding too? The price difference is so large, especially on places like eBay, but I'm still not sure. If I can get the actual hardware up to retail speeds I'll go ahead and do it, but otherwise I may just have to wait and get a retail board.

 

[Mavrick007]

Is there any difference in hardware, be it ram, gpu or what not with the OEM and Retail Radeon 8500?
I saw someone get 300/600 out of his Radeon 8500, which I would guess would be the retail, but could you get that with the oem too?

 

[darktyco]

There are minor differences that ATi used to keep the OEM and LE boards from reaching retail speeds including RAM timings and voltage, and core voltage. Flashing the BIOS on the boards with a flash utility that you can download from http://www.xcl-clan.com/ will usually allow the boards to reach 275/275 (retail clocked speeds) easily, provided your board has 3.6 ns memory. To find this out, check the ram chips on the board, the second or third line will either in with - 36 or - 40, for 3.6 or 4.0 ns memory. Flashing not only makes your board run like a retail, but it will also improve its stability even at a lower clock speed.

If flashing it isn't good enough for you, you can try a pencil mod for it that will allow you to increase the voltages. But of course you could just try downloading Powerstrip and upping the frequencys, but often that leaves artifacts in certain games and isn't as stable as just flashing it. Good luck!

 

[tmung]

darktyco, you have no idea how much you have helped. I really appreciate it, and this makes me much more comfortable buying an OEM of the card when I have the cash. At least now I can ask (however pesky it is) the eBay seller the last digits on the RAM and know just what I'm getting.

 

[stevens]

Yeah i recomend going oem.

 

[DClark]

A person over at the Rage3D forums who is "in the loop" at ATi has mentioned that ATi has started shipping some Retail Radeon 8500s with 3.3ns ram and clocked to 300/300. It doesn't make the OEM/LE versions any less attractive, but it would make the retail version more attractive than before (the retail version is around $80cdn more expensive than the OEM/LEs up here in Canada, and that price may not justify a 25mhz speed difference). This is similar to the stealth upgrade they did for the Radeon 64mbDDR ViVo (originally clocked to 184/184, it had its 5.5ns ram changed to 5ns ram and clock increased to 198/198). People only started finding out about the "second editions" after they bought it and found the increased core and memory clocks; it wasn't publicized by ATi.

So if you're in tight with your local computer shop, you may want to see if you can get a fresh one off of a new shipment, or have them check to see if their most recent shipment came with the 8500s clocked to 300/300. The 275/275 retail version is probably by far the most common still in circulation though; don't expect the 300/300 version to be relatively common for a month or so yet.

 

[Crapgame]

I wouldnt recomend OEM without knowing for a fact you have 3.6ns RAM on the card. Several E-Bay sellers are pimping out the 230/230 "LE" versions with as high as 5ns RAM and flashing will more than likely not be an option. On the "pencil trick" keep in mind this isnt unlocking your T-Bird CPU, your not using the graphite to make a connection that doesnt exist like in the CPU but adding a connection along the side of a resistor. To much can fry your card, I mention this cause a few folks have been rudely awakend trying to use a PCB repair pen or defogger repair kits. Myself, rubbing a pencil along a resistor to add voltage gives my much less than a warm fuzzy feeling, adding a different resistor or attaching a methode of adjustment seems to be much more saine.

I had the same question in mind when I whimped out and got a retail 7500, dont forget about the ATI software too(I almost did). I just wanted to hammer in the fact that were not talking about a retail HDD vs OEM that will be the same short a copy of Ghost lite or something, it's more of a gray market lottery when your talking OEM AND E-Bay. There's an upset post of the day regaurding OEM ATIs on rage3d so in reading enough of those I like to give people the bleakest veiw possible. :Q

 

[darktyco]

Too true. I read that post regarding the person who bought what was labeled as an "ATI Radeon 8500 OEM" on E-bay only to get the 230/230 clocked LE version of the 8500. And I think (but don't quote me) that most of the OEM's did indeed have 3.6 ns RAM, since most of the people I hear talking about the 8500 OEM (myself included) have the 3.6 RAM.