Radeon 8500LE, 9x00s, and FX 5200. What to get?

[KyleMac]

Right I'm getting the Hercules. Worst case is it's 250/200 exactly like the Sapphire and Connect3D, best case it's 250/250. Either way it's the cheapest anyway.

 

[steverama]

Have you bought your new video card yet? I just bought my second Radeon 8500LE (built by ATI). My first one died after having done some stupid things to it, trying to get it to work at higher clock rates. The 1st was clocked at 250/250, and was an OEM model with TV out & DV output. The highest clock speeds achieved (stable) were 275/275, but I had to boost the voltage for the GPU & the memory (Hynix 3.6 ns). My 2nd Radeon 8500LE (just got it today) is a retail version with TV out only. It was clocked at 230/230. I was quite disappointed with these clock rates. I flashed the BIOS to a retail 8500, and voilà, it is working perfectly at 280/280 (stable, played games all day), without any voltage increase.
Also, the memory on my new card is Hynix 4ns, the same that is supposed to be used on Hercules Radeon 8500LE 128MB models (saw it on various reviews of the card). I hope you went for this card as it usually can overclock very well to retail 8500 clock rates.

 

[vladgur]

what advantage does overclocking from 250/250 to 275/275 gives you other than "my benchmark is longer than yours". AFAIK, youll get less than 10 fps more if at all but you risk screwing with your card? Is 8500le not enough for todays games?