Help Help

[scooter4n]

I was about to buy Radeon 8500 OEM, and the comp shop, that I'm buyng from don't know if that card 230/500MHz or 250/something?? Are all OEM's 250/500????? Help me out on this. Must have that card.
Thanks, thanks, thanks.

[Silversinksam]

The OEM card is made by 20+ OEM manufactures and to the best of my knowledge come in these speeds:

220/220 4ns mem
230/230 4ns
249.5/249.5 4ns
249.5/249.5 3.6ns
230/250 with some with 4ns some with 3.6ns

Some boards have crippled resistors for the GPU and VMem while other OEM's are simply Retail 8500's with an Oem bios.

[scooter4n]

so, your sayng there is no way you can tell what speeds they are.

[Silversinksam]

Heres a few tips,

Call the vendor and have him look at the card, on the memory chips the middle line will have a number 36, this denotes 3.6ns memory and chances are the card will be 249.5/249.5

You can also ask the vendor if he knows the core and memory speeds but many Vendors don't know a core from a tomato :p

(2 vendors that were selling Retail 8500's have since changed thier ads to OEM as they don't know what they were selling and trying to explain it to them was like pullling my own teeth out.

[scooter4n]

this shop is in town, I'll just go there today, and look.
Thanks

[scooter4n]

Ok, I got THE CARD. Hmmmmm. There is a 36 on the end of the number on the memory, thats good. But on the litle sticker on the back of the card says Radeon 8500 LE, whats up with LE?????

[scooter4n]

Any 1???

[miarhpe]

Download Powerstrip or some other utility and check your speed, I had one at 230/230 but with a little work, mine now runs good at retail or above speeds. See my post here: http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60928
also you may want to help Silversinksam with his survey here: http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51887

[Silversinksam]

Originally posted by miarhpe
Download Powerstrip or some other utility and check your speed


Thats good advise, After you determine your cards core and Memory speeds, LE is most likely 249.5/249.5 or 230/230

Since you have 3.6ns memory, if your card is able to run 275/275 without artifacts in 3dmark2001 its possible to flash your bios

Here is the bios flash should you want to go that route (http://www.aoafiles.com/dafiles/Video_Card_Files/ATI_Video_Cards/ATI_Overclocking_Programs/FlashRadeon8500.zip)

But be sure to read This (http://www.home.zonnet.nl/Hoek89/index.htm) and This (http://www.overclockers.com/tips757/)


:cool:

[scooter4n]

Sweeeet. Thanks.
And one more thing. Is there any other tweek tool exept Power strip?? I just need something without any extra things. Just don't like to have extra stuff.

[miarhpe]

I flashed my bios even though I could not get my memory stable over 250, I read a post somewhere that the bios flash fixed the memory clock problem, and since I have 3.6 ram, got my card so cheap and it only has a 30 day guarantee (I got mine "refurbished") I took a chance. :eek:
It worked, and now I cannot clock my memory back down below 250 without similar problems, the slower I go the worse it gets!!

Was I lucky or does the bios somehow control the memory range?

[Silversinksam]

scooter4n,

Powerstrip is more generic and has less Radeon specific options than the other tools. I mainly use PS just to control the core and memory.


miarhpe:

"Was I lucky ?"

-I think your luckier than alot of people that bought the Newegg OEM 8500

Many people recieved 4ns memory. :mad:

[scooter4n]

Thanks :)