radeon 8500 uk price drop

[borat]

just been looking here

http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-search.asp?action=search&tid=700&mid=351&ob=manufacturer

and found hercules radeon 8500 le's for sale for £120 + vat.
hercules are a pretty decent manufacturer so this looks like a great deal.no stock at present though.

[mdhome]

Borat
What is a LE. Is it some cut down version with missing pipelines etc?

regards md

[DuRaNgO]

clocked slower and no dvi-i output, many have clocked the le up to 8500 speeds without any additional cooling

[mdhome]

DuRaNgO,
Thanks for the info.

Regards MD

[rubank]

In US you can buy them for $155, in Sweden you´ll have to pay at least the equivalence of $300 - if you can find one.

It´s a rotten world.

rubank

[borat]

the le mentioned does have dvi and video outputs which i think is unusual for an le.

[borat]

also le's can have their bios flashed with a genuine full speed bios and the are then the same card as the full speed 8500.the hrdware appears to be exactly then sam for both the 8500 and 8500 le it is just a bios restriction which slows the le down(well this is true for ati branded cards anyway).

[Bohrn]

Yep, only difference is that the LE is clocked at 250/500 instead of 275/550. And its only a bit slower really. I have an LE Radeon8500 and it is PLENTY fast. My P3 running at 896 is the bottleneck, not my Radeon.

I haven't flashed mine yet, as it can screw it up(most people have had good luck, but there is the occasional screwup) up and I don't want to risk it. Plus you need another PCI card on hand to flash it back if there is problems, and I don't have one. There is a 44(!!!) page thread over at www.rage3d.com about how to do it.

With voltage mods, either by the same sort of pencil trick that the AMD people are familiar with or by soldering in different resistors(balls the size of grapefruits) you can make these things hit 315/630 or higher.

Just stay away from the LE/LE or lite versions. They come clocked at 230/460 and they are noticably slower than the retail 275/550 cards. And stay away from cheap chinese made cards or other off brand ones. Get an ATI card or a Herc like you saw. There is a spot on ATI's site that you can compare your cards serial number and see who made it. I don't remember the exact url, but you can find it at www.ATI.com

best of luck

[Fat Tone]

I had a Super Grace 8500LE which came at 250/500. It was great but wouldn't o/c very far, even with a bios flash (not that I really needed it). It was actually an ATI card!

I sent it back due to some serious shimmering on the second head, which seemed linked to any sort of activity (scrolling, HD access etc). For some reason it was replaced by a genuine ATI card at 275/550! This baby will o/c a long way (300/600+) but I haven't really felt the need to push it.

Unfortunately it also suffered from shimmering on the 2nd head. I have reduced this to 5% of what it was by replacing the PSU (same nominal rating, slightly more current capacity).

Current drivers are pretty good too, so at those prices, get one!

[Tom]

I noticed that the ATi online store has dropped the
price of their retail 64MB Radeon8500 from
$299.00 U.S. to $199.00 U.S.
the 128MB cards must be on the way........