versions of radeon 8500

[Kaczor]

I hate to ask a question that has been raised before, but after searching a number of forums I am still a bit confused as to all the flavours of the Radeon 8500 out there....
I understand that we have (excluding 'Powered by ATI'):
8500 Retail - clocked at 275/275, dual monitor + tvout
8500 OEM - 250/250, single monitor +tvout
8500 LE - 250/250, single monitor +tvout
8500 'LELE' - 230/230, single monitor +tvout

Is the 8500 LE a *retail box* and if so is there such a thing as LE OEM?
And what the heck is the LELE packaged like?

I understand that all of these come in both 64 and 128 MB versions...

this is a bloody mess....
(perhaps this info should be in the FAQ...)

 

[Mday]

i have no idea what LELE is...

there is LE retail, there is oem as well. there are 64 or 128MB varients. and there are some boards that are not made by ati as well (cheaper, slower).

 

[Kaczor]

Apparently some of the LE cards come clocked at 230/230 not 250/250.
They have been dubbed LELE by some...
What i don't know is whether these are just the LE OEM ....

 

[Rand]

Directly from ATi you have:

ATi Radeon 8500LE 128MB Retail Box/OEM: 250/250, VGA-out and Video-Out.
ATi Radeon8500 OEM 64MB: 250/250, VGA-Out, DVI-Out, Video-Out.
Radeon 8500 64MB Retail Box: 275/275, VGA-Out, DVI-Out, Video-Out.
Radeon 8500 128MB Retail Box: 275/275, VGA-Out, DVI-Out, Video-Out.
ATi All in Wonder Radeon 8500DV 64MB Retail/OEM: 230/190, VGA-Out, DVI-Out, Video-In, Video-Out, SPDIF-Out, RF Remote, IEEE 1394 FireWire etc etc.
ATi All in Wonder Radeon 8500 128MB Retail/OEM: 275/275 (Features as 8500DV except only analog Video Editing/Capturing, and no IEEE 1394 FireWire ports)

s the 8500 LE a *retail box* and if so is there such a thing as LE OEM?

The R8500LE is available as Retail Box and OEM in 128MB configurations.
There is no 64MB Radeon 8500LE, but the regular OEM Radeon 850064MB is the same as what an 'LE' 64MB would be so it's often advertised as 'LE'.


The above are the cards produced and sold directly under the ATi brand name.
Third party cards are available in various clockspeeds, Output features, DRAM capacity etc.
Third party boards are generally 250/250.
There are a handful of third party boards in OEM clocked at 230/230, 250/200, 250/275

The larger brand name boards such as Hercules, Gigabyte etc are almost always 250/250 in OEM, and 275/275 in retail.
Soyo is available at 290/290 in Retail and OEM.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Just rem that just because you have CRT+DVI doesn't mean you can use dual display features. For that you need 2 RAMDACs and this is often skimped on by non-ATI Radeon cards. The diff between retail and oem in actual perf is about 10%.

 

[Rand]

The diff between retail and oem in actual perf is about 10%.

That depends entirely on what OEM/Retail board your referring to and whom it's produced by. For example, if I was to compare Soyo's OEM vs. ATi's Retail, then Soyo's OEM is actually faster.
Even so assuming your comparing the typical 250/250 vs. 275/275 of ATi's boards the difference is seldom 10%. A 10% performance difference would indicate a 100% linear increase in performance by the increasing core/mem clock.
Needless to say, the Radeon8500 or any graphics card is far from scaling perfectly linear even when the system is completely bottlenecked by the graphics card.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well from the notes I've made from the reviews I've seen 10% is almost 100% spot on in any game. I understand what you are saying and agree to a large extent, but I was trying to be breif and keep it simple without having to do endless research on the matter. Of course clock speeds are a good guide to perf, and the key factor to o/c'ability is the rating of the RAM (ns), howwver these things are often omitted and hard to find out.