Radeon LE vs. Radeon 64 DDR retail

[FunkyTechnician]

2 days ago I thought that I had fried my Radeon LE so I went out to BestBuy to "rent" a video card and make sure it was my card and nothing else while I waited for my LE rma. It turns out that my LE is fine and that my video slowdown was due to user error (I'll save myself the embarrassment by not explaining this).
Since I didn't have time to return it, I decided to keep the 64 DDR until the weekend though just to try it out.

In 3Dmark2001, with the 64DDR, I could only beat my best LE score by about 300 points (that's without any tweaking besides o/c to 200). When playing Tribes2, I didn't notice any difference in gameplay. It just struck me as kind of odd.

I'm glad that I didn't get the 64DDR like I had originally planned since the performance increase wouldn't justify the 100 dollar price difference.

But imo, any radeon card is a winner.

Am

 

[Vovan]

Yes LE rocks,but if you use it at games only, or try to compare MAX detailed FPS on LE and 64DDR on Quake3.
Additional 32 Megs kick *** when using Large Textures.

 

[Nagorak]

I'm really having a hard time figuring out what the limiting factor in Tribes2 FPS is. It's not CPU, that's obvious (going from 1000-1400 MHz results in no fps gain). It's not fillrate, because adjusting the graphics detail (which adjusts the amount of polys given to stuff in the distance) does absolutely nothing.

All I can think that is the limiting factor is texture bandwidth. Actually this is almost always the limiting factor (which is why GF2 cards do better with memory overclocked) but it seems especially the case in T2. The cool thing is, if the Radeon is using it's third texture unit in T2 (which I have heard is the case) it might actually run the game better than GF2 cards. I talked to someone who has a GF2 Ultra and it sounds like he's hardly getting any more FPS, so this might really be the case.

BTW: Did you realize that the GF2 has twice the fillrate of the Radeon but runs at essentially the same speed? The GF2 was really one of the most imbalanced graphics cards ever. Nvidia made a super powerful core, but it's never fully taken advantage of, even on a GF2 Ultra!