Which is faster, RADEON LE or nForce onboard?

[bupkus]

Which is faster, RADEON LE with 32MB SDRAM or nForce onboard?

I have 2 computers and I want to give the faster one to my nephew who plays Diablo2 etc.

Both have the AMD 1600+ OC'd to a tad better than the 2200+ (fsb=166).
One has the ASUS A7N266 with onboard video.
The other has the Epox 8K5A2+ with a RADEON LE. Remember... the one reportedly made for the Chinese market that didn't sell?
It has 32MB of memory and was supposed to be able to unlock the Z thing.

Both boxes have 512MB DDR so which do you think will game faster?

 

[AnAndAustin]

I take it it is nForce1 o/b gfx which would therefore be equivilent to GF2MX200 rather than the much faster GF4MX420 used on nForce2. If the nForce1 board is a 420 model and you correctly populate 2 RAM slots then this does give a little boost when using the o/b gfx.

Radeon LE, I'm not really familiar with, RadVE (aka Rad7000) and Radeon SDR info can be found below.

Here's how the Rad7000 (or RadVE) fairs against the Radeon SDR and GF2MX. The GF2MX is slightly faster than GF2MX200 (ie nForce1 gfx). AnAndTech

So if it's the Radeon SDR then it should generally be a fair bit faster, the RadeonVE is likely to be slower.

However an AthlonXP really deserves at least a GF3, Rad8500 or Rad9000PRO card, in 128MB form these can still be had for under $100. Using any of the older Radeon cards will mean you get virtually no gaming benefit at all from the fast CPU. Even a $70 Rad9000 or Rad8500LE will dramaticly improve perf or for even less a GF2TI, GF4MX or Rad7500.

EDIT: Here it is: Yummy (esp the P4 'Making It Faster' section)

 

[GT578]

Radeon LE has DDR memory. I run mine at 191/191...been like that for over year and a half.......most should do 183/183 easy. Its definitely faster than the onboard video on the nforce boards. Think radeon 32mb DDR speeds.....o/c its slightly faster.

 

[JwLeonhart]

Why not just go for a Geforce4MX it would be alot faster, and maybe like 10 dollars more. I think it would be pointless for the Radeon VE, unless you already have it. I was thinking about buying myself one at one time for a dual monitor on my server computer but I just realized it sucked and got a Geforce2MX400 and it can also do 3dgames well unlike the RadeonVE which a friend had and was horrible for anything except running basic word applications.

 

[rbV5]

He has a Radeon Le (as in Radeon 32 DDR) not Ve folks

It can be a pretty decent performer when tweaked, it would be my pick between your options.

 

[BDawg]

If he plays diablo, I'd go with the Radeon easily. Diablo seems to run best on non-NVidia boards.

 

[Rand]

Radeon LE, I'm not really familiar with, RadVE (aka Rad7000) and Radeon SDR info can be found below.

The Radeon LE was a primarily European product that managed to makes it's way into the Nort American market in decent volumes. It was essentially a 32MB DDR Radeon with HyperZ disabled... it was once one hell of a price/performance offering however as HyperZ could easily be re-enabled via a reg hack to offer full Radeon 32MB DDR performance at a fraction of the price.

The performance of the onboard nForce video will greatly depend opn whether your utilizing the DualChannel memory controller or not, if you only have one DIMM and your not using the Dual Channel controller performance will be quite a bit lower then a GF2 MX200, otherwise the performance will fall in between the GF2 MX200 and MX400 if the DualChannel memory controller is active.
Either way I would definitely lean towards the Radeon LE though.

 

[bupkus]

No wonder the board went for $75. Well, I guess you get what you pay for. Fortunately, I lied just trying to simplify the post.
I have 2 nforce1 boards and since they're so slow, they'll do just fine for little kids at a childcare center. Their cpus are the 1600+s and we probably won't overclock.
We're also recycling 2 KT133A mobos with 900MHz Athlons to the childcare center (our own) and getting ourselves the Epox 8K5A2+ . with 1600+s OC'd to where the fsb=166!
So my nephew will probably keep his RADEON LE for a while, cause he seems content with it and me, I'll just keep my G550 with the DVI for the obvious.

Thanks to all for the help.