Lot of choices for Radeon 8500, which is best?

[Taylor]

There's "ATI", "ATI OEM", there's "OEM" there's "core:230", etc...

Just what is the best radeon 8500 available, I'm talking about video performance, not the bells and whistles like dual double dotcom output and teevee jeebee. I just want to know what to look for in the basic guts of the card, I'll decide later what options i need to have.

For instance the 8500 LE is priced lower for some reason. What is that reason?

People are talking about radeon 8500 being over 300 dollars, unless you get the OEM, so I figure that means the radeon chip in another brand of vidcard, eh? Or does that mean the cards radeon sells to OEM's are slower than the ones they sell direct to the public?

Pricewatch has a core250 ATI radeon8500 for under $200

I'm confused please help

[Cisco Kid]

Originally posted by Taylor
There's "ATI", "ATI OEM", there's "OEM" there's "core:230", etc...

Just what is the best radeon 8500 available, I'm talking about video performance, not the bells and whistles like dual double dotcom output and teevee jeebee. I just want to know what to look for in the basic guts of the card, I'll decide later what options i need to have.

For instance the 8500 LE is priced lower for some reason. What is that reason?


You wanna save yourself aggrevation just buy a retail 8500, comes with 275clk/275 (550) mem and you can clock it to 300/300 pretty much outa da box.

Forget the OEM scene if you are worried about a crapshoot as far as overclocking, some people get luck some do not. Ask Silversinksam he can give you enough research to make your head spin on the OEM scene, although he got a great product from Royal PC and it was OEM.

Then for my usual push I say buy a 7500 will meet the needs of most gamers easy for $102 -$108 US can you say deal??


Cisco Kid :cool:

[Taylor]

here's an ad from pricewatch:

MUST MENTION PRICE WATCH - ATI 8500 Radeon Chipset with 64MB DDR Memory, AGPversion, support DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3. (* Retail Box*) $210

So why is everyone saying they're over $300?

And are all the RB cards at 275?

I just got a 7200, for cheap, and I've had a few radeon LE's and they're fine, but I'm building this box for my brother, whom I love dearly and it's nothing but the best, so to get back to the 8500:

What kind of mem speed can I expect from RB cards as opposed to the OEM? I'm seeing some oem's claim better than 4ns. Hard to believe, eh?

[-Exi|e-]

When you see "OEM" before or after a product, always be cautious. Always try to get a Retail if you can. For now, i'd say get a 7500 since the GeForce 4 and other next generation cards will be coming out in early next year (ATi?) unless you want to keep your card for a year or so.

[Cisco Kid]

Originally posted by Taylor
here's an ad from pricewatch:

MUST MENTION PRICE WATCH - ATI 8500 Radeon Chipset with 64MB DDR Memory, AGPversion, support DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3. (* Retail Box*) $210

So why is everyone saying they're over $300?

And are all the RB cards at 275?

I just got a 7200, for cheap, and I've had a few radeon LE's and they're fine, but I'm building this box for my brother, whom I love dearly and it's nothing but the best, so to get back to the 8500:

What kind of mem speed can I expect from RB cards as opposed to the OEM? I'm seeing some oem's claim better than 4ns. Hard to believe, eh?


It is a crapshoot for OEM unless the seller can guarantee you that your getting a retail bios and 3.6 ns ddr ram which I doubt.

Retail comes with 3.6 ns ddr ram, and when this card came out it was close to $300 now more so around $230-250 I think. If you can get it for $210 retail boxed I would be surprised, I just wonder if they even have any in stock left at that price. Worht giving a go just say you want ATI Retail boxed not some other manuafacturer with a built by ATI sticker on the board that ends up having 4 ns ram, (not that that si bad, but if you pay for retail it should be retail.)

Cisco KId:D

[-Exi|e-]

You should really read Silver's posts about this, he as a poop load of data on this.

The Retail speeds are 275/275 and the OEMs are 250/250, those being from ATi, but 3rd party Retail cards have been seen at 230/250 or so.

[Taylor]

Originally posted by -Exi|e-
When you see "OEM" before or after a product, always be cautious. Always try to get a Retail if you can. For now, i'd say get a 7500 since the GeForce 4 and other next generation cards will be coming out in early next year (ATi?) unless you want to keep your card for a year or so.

OK so 7500 retail starts at $150, 8500 retail starts at just over $200.

gef3 ti200 starts at around $160, the ti500 goes $300.

Whatever card I get, my brother Scott will still be using it until I build him a new box.

Which I hope is quite awhile.

The one I'm doing for him now is a Dragon plus with raid-0, twin Barracudas, and kingmax pc2700. It's overbuilt and not overclocked. (He lives in Portland which is too far for me to fix it if an OC goes awry.) However if he decides to learn how to OC the thing, which I'm hoping he does, he'll have a good start. I don't have a CPU for it yet.

So I'm thinking the 8500 is close enough in quality to the ti500 that I'll save the extra $100. I just want to make sure I know what I'm getting into. I want to maximize the oc potential for my bro.

[Cisco Kid]

Originally posted by Taylor


OK so 7500 retail starts at $150, 8500 retail starts at just over $200.

gef3 ti200 starts at around $160, the ti500 goes $300.

Whatever card I get, my brother Scott will still be using it until I build him a new box.

Which I hope is quite awhile.

The one I'm doing for him now is a Dragon plus with raid-0, twin Barracudas, and kingmax pc2700. It's overbuilt and not overclocked. (He lives in Portland which is too far for me to fix it if an OC goes awry.) However if he decides to learn how to OC the thing, which I'm hoping he does, he'll have a good start. I don't have a CPU for it yet.

So I'm thinking the 8500 is close enough in quality to the ti500 that I'll save the extra $100. I just want to make sure I know what I'm getting into. I want to maximize the oc potential for my bro.


BTW where are you getting you 7500 price from, it can be bought online in retail box for anywhere b/w $102US to $108 heck it only $199 Canadian at futureshop.

Thats why I suggested the 7500 for the price you can not go wrong and it has tionnes of headroom to be overclocked. I just finished playing UT in "adept" lecel one on one at 110% gameplya speed and averaged 102 fps.

Basically a 8500 is double the price of a 7500 but I do not think it gives you double the performance but it does give 100% DX 8 while the 7500 supports some DX8 features but not all. heck how many true DX game titles are there anyways? Not many. Either is good choice, if ya want the best get a 8500 if you want good solid performance at a really good price you can not go wrong with a 7500.

The G3 Ti200 are too close in price to a retail 8500 that why I would by 8500 instead, but nothing can really compete with the technology the 7500 offers at $102 US imho

Cisco Kid:D

[Taylor]

OK thanx guys, I'm off to read Silver's posts.

[Silversinksam]

Taylor,
Cisco kid hit the nail right on the head!! The box must say BUILT BY ATI and dont worry your not alone in being confused with this OEM virtual nightmare with the Radeon 8500, dont feel bad even the resellers are confused as to what they are selling.

Here is the info that matters between OEM and Retail

Bottom line is this as many retailers are selling 'retail' units that are not 275/275


THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS:

BUILT BY ATI is the 275/275 TRUE retail card

All others are POWERED BY ATI.


SPECIFICLY ASK THE VENDOR WHAT IT SAYS ON THE BOX

If your ordering retail BULK or a white box chances are 99.999% that your getting an oem not retail and only God knows what core and memory speed you will recieve.



You may get a pretty box from an OEM that retailers are selling as RETAIL(Thats because they are idiots) THE BOX MUST SAY --BUILT BY ATI-- to be 275/275

But there is one exception to this and thats the soon to be released Gigabyte RETAIL radeon8500 that also is 275/275(and its a better card than ATI's retail unit as it has faster ram and full hardware monitoring


Radeon 8500 OEMs come in several configurations, but basicly fall into these versions, and keep in mind they may have different variables for the GPU resistor and the Vmem resistor

250/250 3.6ns memory
250/250 4ns memory
230/230 4ns memory
250/250 OEM bios 3.50 vmem
250/250 3.15 vmem

And several combinations in between

Buying an OEM is a cr@pshoot and most vendors wont tell you what version you will recieve




PS if your not experienced with electronics DO NOT attempt to change these resistors and these resistors should not be checked with the Power on

http://www.overclockers.com/tips757



PS If you do get an OEM card and get lucky and are able to run it @ 275/275 artifact free Pinky was kind enough to host the Bios Flash on his FTP.

[-Exi|e-]

Gotta hand it to you Silver, your the best when it comes to Radeon retail/oem questions;)

See Taylor, i told you so, lol.

[Silversinksam]

Thanks -Exi|e-,

You know as much as I love my OEM Radeon 8500, my next card is going to be a Nvidia as I am no fan of ATI(Have I said that before:p )

The Radeon 8500 is a top shelf video card and ATI driver development is as pathetic as ever.

I gave ATI one last chance as I was an ATI customer for years and gave up on them when the drivers for two seperate Radeon ddr vivos I bought just couldnt cut the mustard.

Get this, I had a Rage Fury Maxx that I accidently got thermal adhesive on the pins(first and last time I made that error, we learn by our mistakes right?)

Anyway I lost the reciept for one of the Radeon ddr vivo's I bought to replace the Fury Maxx and it was just incompatible with my system and ATI to thier credit send me a developer copy of thier driver that was pre Beta and that didnt work.

I paid 199 clams for the DDR vivo model and Ati said hey we'll just give you another Fury Maxx (was like a $99 card)

Anyway I said screw it and sold the card and bought a Nvidis card and lived happily ever after....


I saw an opportunity to get a OEM 8500 for $169 and had no clue at that time how many OEM versions there were.

I happened to get lucky and get a Retail card with just an OEM Bios.........Does 300/300 and doesnt even get hot as at load its around 36*c (I'll give ATI kudos for making a cool running GPU, but I hear some ATI 8500's run as hot as Nvidia GPU's so go figure)

But I cant use Win XP with this 8500 as I had a few Opengl issues and I was hoping new drivers would fix this....BUT IM NOT HOLDING MY BREATH AS ATI JUST IN USELESS WITH THIER DRIVER R&D dept.

[Taylor]

Wow! Thanks!

This is why I love this place, you all just waded in to help...

OK, I'm convinced to wait for the Gigabyte card for Scott. Then if it's overpriced, at leat it may help bring down the price of the ti500 or the ATI retail 8500.

For me, I'll play with this 7200 for awhile, probably get a 7500 soon if they're so cheap.

BTW, the box I'm working on now is a 900duron in an epox 8kta2l, and my adapter is a RIVA TnT2- works pretty good but then I just finally got Quake- I'll install that and then I'll see how good this tnt2 is. I have been wondering why Nvidia doesn't get mentioned much lately.

[-Exi|e-]

Silver

I had a Vivo myself for about a year but in that year i had some problems with drivers (flashing textures in Rogue Spear) took me about a week of installing and uninstalling drivers to find a good set. When i installed Windows XP on my system, i had that driver loop thing with my Vivo, so i thought it was my card, that was before ppl started to notice the problem, so i went out and bought a Ti200 (i had some dough to spend) and i have nothing but good things to say about my card. I started with the 21.83, all was good but when i installed the 22.80's everyone was using i saw a huge performance increase. Not to kick ATi when they are down but i never got such an increase in performance with there drivers and my Vivo. Oh well, i guess some never learn.

Edit: I gave my Vivo to my brother, let him handle the problems that come with it, lol. jk