Stocking Stuffers: Radeon 8500LE and 9100 AGP

[tcsenter]

Interested in a great budget video card for kids, parents, sibling, or even your own computer? Radeon 8500LE and 9100 (same difference) are faster than 64-bit Radeon 9200SE and most (if not all) 128-bit Radeon 9200s.

Allstarshop.com

Sapphire Radeon 8500LE 64MB DDR AGP (CRT only) - $30.00! (plus $5 ~ $10 shipping, tax in CA)

Sapphire Radeon 9100 Atlantis 128MB DDR AGP CRT/TVO/DVI (230/250) - $43.00! (Free Ship, tax in CA)

Sapphire Radeon 8500LE 64MB DDR AGP CRT/TVO/DVI (250/225) - $45.00 (Free Ship, tax in CA)

Sapphire Radeon 8500LE 128MB DDR AGP CRT/TVO/DVI (250/200) - $49.00 (Free Ship, tax in CA)

Note: When I put two of the $30.00 8500LEs in my shopping cart, the shipping quote was $9.00 + some change, then I added a 'Free Shipping' model to my cart (e.g. Radeon 9100), and the total shipping cost actually decreased to $5.04 for three cards. Go figure.

IKor-Design

Apollo Radeon 8500 32MB DDR AGP CRT/TVO/DVI (250/250) - $35.89 (Free Ship, tax in IL)

I just received this Apollo card yesterday and its pretty slick for $36.00. Has the Rage Theatre Chip and clocks are 250/250 (i.e. 8500 LE). It scored just short of 8100 3DMarks in 3DMark 2001SE on a low-end VIA KM266/VT8235 mainboard with XP2000+ 266MHz, 512MB PC2100.

 

[John P]

I might pick up the Sapphire Radeon 8500LE for troubleshooting my home LAN. My old ATI 8500LE gets a 3DMark2001SE score of 9550 with a Athlon XP 2800+.

 

[Savarak]

how do those compare to the GF3Ti200?

 

[John P]

Radeon 8500LE and Geforce 3 Ti200 are about equal. If you are looking for a cheap upgrade from a Geforce3 Ti200 for gaming snag a used Geforce4 Ti4200 or Ti4600 for about $50. Or be like me and wait a month or two and wait for the 6600GT to come down to the $150-$170 range.

 

[kreb]

Hey...I have a Radeon 7000

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: kreb
Hey...I have a Radeon 7000

DOH! Now's yer chance to ditch it for a vastly superior cheapie.

 

[alm4rr]

Hey...I have a Radeon 8500

 

[superpandapower]

Radeon 8500 rocks! Had one for nearly two years. Of course, X800 XT PE rocks even more.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: superpandapower
Radeon 8500 rocks! Had one for nearly two years. Of course, X800 XT PE rocks even more.

@ 10+ times the cost, we should hope so.

 

[Nick5324]

Why are the 128MB 9100 and the 128MB 8500LE priced $6 different and with slightly different clocks? I thought these two cards were the same...

 

[AStar617]

Originally posted by: Nick5324
Why are the 128MB 9100 and the 128MB 8500LE priced $6 different and with slightly different clocks? I thought these two cards were the same...

I could be COMPLETELY wrong about this, but isn't the 9100 an 8500 with hardware DX9 support?

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: superpandapower
Radeon 8500 rocks! Had one for nearly two years. Of course, X800 XT PE rocks even more.

served me well too, except i upgraded to matrox p650 just yesterday

 

[tcsenter]

Why are the 128MB 9100 and the 128MB 8500LE priced $6 different and with slightly different clocks? I thought these two cards were the same...

They are the same. If you look in Allstarshop's catalog, there are a few more 8500LE and 9100 models priced higher. There is a Radeon 9100 64MB AGP that is identical to the $30 8500LE with single CRT output except the 9100 is $20 more. Same card, different Device ID's.

They probably paid more for the cards they are charging more for. Its not unusual to see this.

I could be COMPLETELY wrong about this, but isn't the 9100 an 8500 with hardware DX9 support?

Nope. Same GPU, same specs, sometimes different clock rates, sometimes not.

 

[wbresson]

You can flash the 8500 to a 9100 but you don't gain much. Google it

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I bought an FIC R9200 (64MB, 128-bit) at MicroCenter for $40 a few month back (different HD thread), works decently. From what I've read here, and in benchmarks on some other sites, the 9100s are actually a tiny bit faster than the 9200, due to some GPU differences. Mine didn't have the RageTheater chip though. It did have the CRT+DVI+TVout.

None of the 9000/9100/9200 cards are DX9, btw, only DX8/8.1 (fixed-function PS1.0/VS1.0 only). Don't get confused by ATI's misleading "9xxx" moniker. If you have a 7000/7200, definately consider trading-up, the 7000 doesn't even have hardware T&L. Good if you want cheap multi-mon or DVI output too, and the TV-out on most of these cards is excellent, better than NV, if you watch DVDs a lot.

If you want to play more modern games, like FarCry/Doom3/HL2 though, I would get something a little more "beefy" in the GPU dept, like a used 9500/9700, or a 9600Pro/XT model. My 9200 is only just barely enough for UT2K4, and not enough for FarCry.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: wbresson
You can flash the 8500 to a 9100 but you don't gain much. Google it

Not enough to justify the risk. Peak memory bandwidth from R8500 to R9100 increases from 8.6GB/s to 8.8GB/s, due [IIRC] to 4x DRAM interleaving in the R9100 BIOS compared with 2x for R8500. Everything else is a matter of clock rates, which can be changed through software.

 

[zodd24]

What's the performance difference between these cards?

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
If you want to play more modern games, like FarCry/Doom3/HL2 though, I would get something a little more "beefy" in the GPU dept, like a used 9500/9700, or a 9600Pro/XT model. My 9200 is only just barely enough for UT2K4, and not enough for FarCry.

The 9100 is significantly faster than the 9200 despite the naming convention. My 9100 plays farcry and ut2k4 at 1024 decently.

Doom 3 it gets by at 640. Same for Halo.

 

[HappyNic]

also you will have to look at the Clock rate of the core and the memory,, a Retail ATI 8500 is at 275/275,
The ATI OEM 8500 LE is 250/250.

But all these are power by ATI.. ,, but I guess the best one out of these 4 is the
Sapphire Radeon 9100 Atlantis 128mb. it's has 128mb of ram that can at least do 250.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: OS
The 9100 is significantly faster than the 9200 despite the naming convention. My 9100 plays farcry and ut2k4 at 1024 decently. Doom 3 it gets by at 640. Same for Halo.

Perhaps we have differing opinions on "plays decently" then. I require at least 35fps in most scenes. I can get 30-35 with UT2K4, at least on the indoor areas/levels, but FarCry (the demo, I don't own the game), goes about 10-12 FPS. I didn't bother picking up Doom3. I think those FPS are at 800x600, I like 1024x768, but this card is just plain too slow. 64MB of 128-bit memory, 250Mhz core, 200Mhz (DDR400) mem. I tried OC'ing it a bit, but because it's fanless and has no ramsinks, it doesn't OC stably much at all. The ram is -4, which should be good for 256, but for some reason it won't go.

 

[zodd24]

Originally posted by: HappyNic
also you will have to look at the Clock rate of the core and the memory,, a Retail ATI 8500 is at 275/275,
The ATI OEM 8500 LE is 250/250.

But all these are power by ATI.. ,, but I guess the best one out of these 4 is the
Sapphire Radeon 9100 Atlantis 128mb. it's has 128mb of ram that can at least do 250.

I'm a little confused. How can you determine performance with the two numbers? (xxx/xxx) Also, do these cards perform the same, or is the price difference justified. One of the posters stated that there was no difference between the cards.

Edit: And how does this compare to the 5200? Is it twice as good?

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: zodd24

Originally posted by: HappyNic
also you will have to look at the Clock rate of the core and the memory,, a Retail ATI 8500 is at 275/275,
The ATI OEM 8500 LE is 250/250.

But all these are power by ATI.. ,, but I guess the best one out of these 4 is the
Sapphire Radeon 9100 Atlantis 128mb. it's has 128mb of ram that can at least do 250.

I'm a little confused. How can you determine performance with the two numbers? (xxx/xxx) Also, do these cards perform the same, or is the price difference justified. One of the posters stated that there was no difference between the cards.

Edit: And how does this compare to the 5200? Is it twice as good?

xxx/xxx are core and memory speed numbers. Higher is better. If you want performance, don't get the first card as it's half slot card and is crippled with 64bit bus. The last card has only 32mb of ram so you probably want to avoid that also.

The best out of these looks like that 9100 Atlantis 128mb 230/250 for $43.00. It looks like it has the 128bit memory interface and is only clocked 20mhz lower on the core than the regular 9100 250/250mhz clock.

As to how this compares to FX5200, Radeon 9100 is faster than FX5200. It's similar to Geforce 3 speed.

 

[bearxor]

I thought I might drop a little more understanding in this thread.

The 8500LE is (IIRC) the exact same chip as a 8500, except with lower clocks.

When ATi refreshed the R200 part, they took the 8500, stripped a couple of things out of it (I can't remember what exactly. Was it an extra vertex shader or something?) and called it the 9000. This was during the 9700 launch.

People became irate because the 8500 was actually faster than the 9000, and they thought people in retail stores would be confused about this, so ATi dropped the 8500 naming alltogether and named the cards 9100, because they were faster than the 9000's.

Then, ATi took the RV250 (9000) and put AGP 8X in it, thus, the 9200.

So, out of all those cards above, I ould buy the 9100.

Good deal really. I just bought a 7200 from newegg only a week ago with dual crt output for 40 bucks.

 

[OS]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: OS
The 9100 is significantly faster than the 9200 despite the naming convention. My 9100 plays farcry and ut2k4 at 1024 decently. Doom 3 it gets by at 640. Same for Halo.

Perhaps we have differing opinions on "plays decently" then. I require at least 35fps in most scenes. I can get 30-35 with UT2K4, at least on the indoor areas/levels, but FarCry (the demo, I don't own the game), goes about 10-12 FPS. I didn't bother picking up Doom3. I think those FPS are at 800x600, I like 1024x768, but this card is just plain too slow. 64MB of 128-bit memory, 250Mhz core, 200Mhz (DDR400) mem. I tried OC'ing it a bit, but because it's fanless and has no ramsinks, it doesn't OC stably much at all. The ram is -4, which should be good for 256, but for some reason it won't go.

Both ut2k4 and farcry run around 30 fps at 1024 on my 9100.

9100 is ~33% faster than 9200.

 

[vailr]

I'd say that a Newegg refurb Radeon 9600SE for ~$57.00 would be a better choice.
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Or else a regular Radeon 9600 for $66.50.
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