Should I get a Radeon LE... or should I get a Voodoo 4?

[DannySwazz]

In my other topic I got replies favoring the voodoo 4 and the radeon le...I've read some bad about both cards.

Which one should I get? I want a card that will be able to run the majority of games without my having to download loads and loads of drivers ...etc. And one that will last me for at least a couple of years.

 

[AppleTalking]

If those are your only two choices, get the Radeon LE. Although they may be somewhat delinquent with their driver updates, ATI is at least financially solvent enough to continue producing new drivers. If you want a card that will last you a little while, don't get one whose manufacturer went of business and thus won't be able to provide you with driver updates to support new games/technologies.

I think that you should consider the Kyro II, though. It's only $30 more than the Radeon LE and will outperform it by quite a bit. And its tile-based rendering will ensure that it will be a worthwhile graphics solution for years to come.

Nick

 

[AppleTalking]

Okay, I just read your original thread (should have done that first I guess). Cross the Kyro II off the list, you'll never be able to use its power with that CPU.

I recommend the Radeon LE, so long as you aren't scared of BIOS flashing and overclocking in order to reach the performance of a Radeon 32MB DDR.

Under your system, a Voodoo4 and Radeon LE would perform about the same since both would be heavily limited by your CPU. I still recommend the Radeon LE, though, because ATI is still around to produce driver updates.

Nick

 

[DannySwazz]

Hah, your making my CPU sound really bad man.
I think take your word on this one and go for the Radeon LE.

 

[DClark]

Man, what does ATi have to do to shed the stigma of the Rage128 driver debacle?

ATi has released 29 Radeon drivers this year alone; I've used 5 or 6 of them and they've all performed well. Don't worry about ATi's driver support - ATi has learned their lesson.

As for the LE, I run mine day-to-day stock clocked but with the HyperZ hack and it performs fine - I wouldn't risk flashing the BIOS, since it's so easy to turn on an overclocking utility (and some people who have flashed their BIOS said that it didn't enable HyperZ, it just raised the default clock speed).

Overclocked LE 3DMark2K1 score (3011)
Stock LE 3DMark2K1 score (2254 - scoring bench only)
The above tests were done with a P3 700 (@980 for the overclocked score), 128mb of generic ram, and HyperZ enabled.

 

[BFG10K]

Get the Radeon LE. It's by far the best choice of the two cards.

 

[Sandan]

The reviews I have read when trying to decide on a new card did not place the Kyro II quite a bit ahead of the Radeon LE. Anand's review, as well as a lot of others, basically rates them similar. Because they benchmark similar and given that the Radeon has DX8 support and T&L, which should help with future games, I bought the Radeon. Not to mention it is about $40 cheaper.

 

[DannySwazz]

I was meaning to ask, what does the Radeon VE have different from LE?

 

[jobberd]

plenty. the radeon le is your basic radeon with 32 mb ddr ram, except with no hyperz and underclocked. the radeon ve is a very crippled version of the radeon. it is underclocked (i am unaware by how much, although it is significant), and has sdr instead of ddr ram. it lacks one of the radeons 2 rendering pipelines, and its ramdac is crippled, giving roughly the same image quality as a geforce. ah yes, it is also missing a T&L engine. the only redeeming quality of this card is that it is the only (ATI) card to support hydra-vision. It can support 2 monitors or 1 monitor and one tv, and it manages it better then any geforce mx card does

 

[kmmatney]

I'd say go for the Radeon LE. Like someone said before, I didn't even bother to flash mine, I just used "RadeonTweaker", which you can download from rage3d.com. The voodoo4 is barely fsater than the voodoo 3. If you want a Voodoo card (for glide compat. or whatever) then I would suggest the Voodoo5. The Voodoo4 would have to be "very" cheap to be considered, in my opinion.

 

[Wingznut]

Radeon LE. And I think the only people who complain about driver updates, are those who haven't owned a Radeon.

 

[TechieJ]

I currently own an OCed Radeon LE now and unfortunately ATI's newest Win2k drivers are still not up to standard compared to the ones for Nvidia and Kyro II cards.

 

[powervr2]

sorry about my ignorance (I don't know much about radeon LE)
but radeon LE is a 64 bit bus?
if that is true then it will suffer more bandwidth problems than a regular radeon...low performance on higher res. ( and that flash on the bios can't boost that bus)
I am wrong ?

 

[Mem]

<< Radeon LE... or should I get a Voodoo 4? >>



I would go with the ATi Radeon LE,you`ve better driver support for now &amp; the future.

 

[Finlay]

Radeon LE has the same 128bit bus that the Radeon DDR has... Check Anand's review...

I just bought one yesterday, and so far it rocks! Haven't even enabled HyperZ yet or OC'd, but even so I'm impressed.

 

[Torghn]

Definatly go with the Radeon LE. I use a Radeon 32MB DDR in my main comp (Duron@900) and it works great. I also have a Voodoo4 PCI in a P3-600 that doesn't have an AGP port. The voodoo is nice and worth the $55 I spent on it, but only because I didn't have an AGP port to put a Radeon LE in .