Radeon 8500LE VS Radeon 9000

[Robbnaldo]

Okay, I've been doing alot of research as of lately and have come down to buying one of the two cards.


I can buy both cards for the same price here in Canada for around 150.


I don't know to much about the Radeon 8500 LE, but they both appear to be "MX" versions of the Radeon 8500.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

This is my first post of many posts on these forums

 

[AnAndAustin]

In speed order they line up like this:

Rad9000
Rad9000PRO (20% faster than 9000)
Rad8500LE (15% faster than 9000PRO)
Rad8500 (10% faster than 8500LE)

The Rad9000 should o/c to about 9000PRO speeds, the Rad8500LE should at least reach Rad8500 speeds while neither Rad9000PRO or Rad8500 o/c much at all. All these cards are very closely based on the same technology so all features etc are near enough identical. The 9000 series do have slightly better MPEG playback but for all intents and purposes the 8500 series are far superior, the 9000 series are simply cheaper to make, hence more profitable. With Radeon cards manu matters, often the clock speeds vary by up to 10% and on 8500 cards dual display is often omitted. Also look out for oem/bulk vs retial as the oem cards again are nearly always clocked lower bu up to 10%. The final factor in Radeon shopping is the RAM size, 128MB is definitely worth it as this alone boosts a Radeon by a good 7% even before the extra RAM is truly needed making the Rad8500LE-128MB preferable to the Rad8500-64MB and even the Rad9000PRO-128MB to the Rad8500LE-64MB.

Anyway, check out the bechmarks:

Tech-Report
AnAndTech
Firing Squad
HardOCP

EDIT: Benchmarks and summary info, the % quoted is how much faster the 8500LE is over the 9000PRO.

Tech-Report XP1800+ 8500LE vs 9000PRO (both 64MB):
3Dmark2001 = 13%
VillageMark = 63%
Vulpine GLmark = 1%
CodeCreatures = 5%
Quake3Arena = 0% (same)
Jedi Knight 2 = 30%
Serious Sam 2 = 5% SLOWER
Commanche 4 = 3% SLOWER
SpecViewPerf = 1% faster
AA hit is identical.

AnAndTech P4B 2.4ghz 8500LE-128 vs 9000PRO-64:
UT2003 Antalus = 14%
UT2003 Asbestos = 13% SLOWER
JK2 = 45%
SS2 = 4% SLOWER
Q3A = 32%

FiringSquad P4B 2.53ghz 8500LE vs 9000PRO (both 64MB):
3Dmark2001: 11%
SS2 = 4%
Q3A = 28%
JK2 = 40%
Comm4 = 2% SLOWER
AA and Aniso hits are the same as the Rad8500 cards.

So Rad8500LE tends to be 15% faster than Rad9000PRO although the 9000PRO is slightly faster (4%) in Serious Sam 2 and Commanche 4. In UT2003 things seem very close but it seems Rad9000PRO drops to far lower levles at certain points than the Rad8500LE. See below ...

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q4/0210041/nv18_nv28-06.html

 

[PG]

The 9000 still has 4 pipelines like the 8500, but the 9000 only has one texture unit per pipe. This will hurt 3D performance in multitextured games.
The 9000 also only has one vertex shader where the 8500 has two.
To even further reduce final card costs ATI added the 2nd RAMDAC into the 9000 GPU itself along with the functions that were normally carried out by a Rage Theater Chip on the 8500. This is similar to what was done on the 7500. The final 9000 GPU is still smaller than the 8500 so it's cheaper to produce.
Basically you can get most of the 8500 performance for a cheaper price in the 9000.

 

[alkemyst]

my 8500 o/c's to 306/306

stock cooling.

I would go with the 8500LE over any 9000 series.

 

[vss1980]

Actually in all honesty (depending on pricing where you are) you may find that a Geforce3 ti200 is near the same sort of price to a Radeon 9000 (straight, not pro) and would out-perform it in many cases. It is actually quite impressive to see the Geforce3 chip still being offered competitively as it nears its sales retirement.

Of course (depending on what part of the world you are from) you may be able to find a Radeon 8500LE for pretty much the same price as a Geforce3 ti200, which should offer better performance than either the R9000 or GF3 ti200.

 

[ScrewFace]

The big difference between the 9000 and the 8500 is that the 8500 has 2 texture units per pipeline whilst the 9000 only has 1.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well prices do vary a lot around the world, in the UK (and most other places outside the US & Canada) the 4200 cards were cheaper than the Rad8500 cards for months and GF3 are a LOT cheaper than the Radeon cards.

As for diffs between the Rad8500 design and the Rad9000 design. The 9000 series has enhanced MPEG playback via pixel shaders and is subject to less variation in abilities, image quality, dual display and TVout than the 8500. The 9000 does only have 1 vertex unit to the 8500's 2 BUT it is slightly enhanced. The 9000 still has the 4 pixel pipelines as found in the 8500 but the 9000 can only lay down 1 texture per pass instead of the 8500's 2 ... BUT the 9000 can loop back 6 times (vs 8500's 3) within the pipelines before writing the result to the frame buffer. So all in all the 9000 series offers a few enhancements and a few cut-backs, but when all is said and done in 3D it loses a bit in the Vertex shader while things pretty much even out in the pixel dept. However regardless of how things are in theory and on paper it is the final perf and prices which make the diff ...

When it comes to actual perf the Rad9000PRO (which is about 20% faster than the Rad9000) is still 15% slower than the Rad8500LE (which in turn is still 10% slower than the Rad8500). If model numbers, MPEG playback or 3rd party manu implimentations are important to you then Rad9000PRO is the card to go for (unless Rad9000 o/c's as well as it should), esp if it has a 15% lower price tag than the Rad8500LE. But from the benchmarks listed above it is clear that 99% of folk shopping in this price range should grab those 8500 series cards before the stock runs out, the 8500 series cards are clearly superior and the 8500LE-128MB tends to come in CHEAPER than the Rad9000PRO-128MB too!

 

[Duvie]

Where will the rumored 9500 and 9500 pro fit into that???

 

[The_Lurker]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Where will the rumored 9500 and 9500 pro fit into that???

Much faster than all those cards Considering it is a DX 9 card, and rumored at being exactly the same as the 9700 but with a 128bit-memory pipe instead of 256bit-memory pipe, (i've heard other rumors at it having 4 texture units where as the 9700 has 8? ) at any rate, it'll outperform all the cards now, although cost more. It'll be somehwere in the GF4 performance range.


Also, the GF3 Ti200 DOES NOT outperform a Radeon 9000 in anything i've seen. With 3dmarks, on the same system specs as mine, i've seen GF3 Ti's do on average about 500 points lower than mine. (i hit around 6000, they hit around 5400, 5500 depending on how tweaked out it is). Plus, you get better DVD playback, 2D, depending on the card, the Radeon9000 has DUal Ramdac's and has DVI, S-Vid and DSub 15.


With regards to a 9000 to 8500LE, the 8500 will outperform it for sure. Also, note that we over at Rage3d has not been able to oc the 9000 (it's clock locked in the BIOS), we've been trying to work around it (first we had problems dumping the bios w/ ATIFlash 1.0 which is widely available, and had to dig up V1.1, and right now we can't seem to edit the bios w/o it messing the checksum up and not recognizing the card after flashing w/ the modded bios) so your best bet would be for the 8500LE. I wanted to get a 8500LE 128mb however i couldn't find it ANYWHERE for $150 CDN, so i picked up a Radeon 9000 128mb. Bad idea. I shoulda gotten the Radeon 9000 Pro 64mb (btw, 64mb to 128mb makes no difference in performance on the R9000 cards, can't remember the review i read that on though). So if you can find it, get a 8500 128mb LE or not, (they oc well). Btw, dun by Xelo (they really suck, downclock's everything, although the 9000's clocks are the same for ALL OEMS since ATi seems to have imposed stricter rules, 250/200 for R9000 and 275/275 R9000 Pro) or any other third part realy. Best is Sapphire tech (since they actually manufacture the cards for ATi, so it's like buying a built by ATI card w/o the increased costs), if not, pick up a 9000 Pro. At any rate, both are great cards for the price, and wont disappoint. Hope that helped a bit.

 

[AnAndAustin]

There's a lot of rumour surrounding Rad9500 cards. I'd imagine ATI will bring the Rad9500 in with 4200 level perf for about $150 and Rad9500PRO with 4600 level perf for about $220 ... so I believe the scene will look like this:

Entry Level ($50-60) Rad9000, GF4MX420 and GF2 (for as long as that lasts)
Low Mid-Range ($80-100) Rad9000PRO, GF4MX440-8X, GF4MX460, GF3 and Rad8500 (while you can still get them)
Mid-Range ($120-140) GF4TI4200 and Rad9500
High Mid-Range ($160-200) GF4TI4400, GF4TI4600 and Rad9500PRO
High End ($350-400) Rad9700PRO and NV30

It shouldn't be long before Rad9700 with DDR-II and 'value' NV30 come along, but I'd expect this to be the picture going in to December. It should certainly be interesting.

 

[Deeko]

I'd get the 8500 or 8500LE over the 9000.

 

[Superman9534]

i just bought a 128MB Radeon 8500 LE off newegg for $99 shipped. GREAT deal. Should show up in the next few days. Im going to overclock it to 8500 speeds.

 

[BFG10K]

The 9000's single TMU per pipeline configuration often hurts its' performance in fillrate limited situations compared to the 8500. The 8500 (LE or non-LE) is a better choice for 3D gaming.