What's the difference between ATI Radeon 8500 and 8500LE?

[papalion]

I've been reading all the posts abot the ATI Radeon cards
8500 vs. 9000
BBA vs. generic ****
Type of memory chips
Memory speed
etc.

I'm getting a bit confused and a complete search of the ATI website was (purposely, i think) not helpful.

Would somebody set the record straight please.
What is the difference between the Radeon 8500 and the Radeon 8500LE?

I'm talking strictly about the BBA cards. I have no interest in generic, OEM, pot luck, memory chip-du-jour cards!
:confused:

[_Mystical_Night]

LE sucks , Nuff said

[athlonxp]

Originally posted by _Mystical_Night
LE sucks , Nuff said

not so sucks :rolleyes:
u can always OC it to the default speed of 8500

[bushmaster]

LE's can be flashed and made to perform as 8500's

[papalion]

Originally posted by _Mystical_Night
LE sucks , Nuff said
Why?
Originally posted by athlonxp

u can always OC it to the default speed of 8500
How?

But still, what is the difference? Please explain. :confused:

[porchey]

original bba are clocked at 275/275 where LE versions are lower around 250/250 ...Radeon 8500 has hynix memory chips(which are faster and overclock better) where LE version has slower ram

[papalion]

Here's what i need the card for:

I am not a gamer. :eek:

But since i am building a new system, i am getting a new card. My old card (ATI Rage PRO 32MB) is 3.3v and will not work with my new motherboard.

I do mostly buisness applications; Corel Word Perfect, Quicken, etc., and surf the web. I also do photo scanning and i currently get errors stating that i do not have enough memory. (My system RAM is pc133 256MB- upgrading to pc2700 512MB)

Mostly for the scanning, i want a card with 128 MB of RAM. And snce i don't game, 3D rendering is a non-issue. But i also don't want to spend more than ~$125 for a card.

The 8500 has faster memory, which may be better for me, than the 8500LE, but so does the Radeon 9000.

Now i know that the 3D performance of the 9000, is poor compared to the 8500 and 8500LE, but if all i do is photo scanning, woudn't i get the most bang for the buck with the 9000 with its faster memory despite its slower GPU?

Opinions please

[Brian48]

If photo scanning is your priority, then it's really irrelevant which card you get. You are not going to notice any speed difference between the various cards solely by the speed of the on-board RAM. So long as you have plenty of system memory, you should be fine with any of the cards you listed.

In regards to image quality, based on my own experience with the 8500 to 9700 series, the 8500 cards seem to have slightly better image quality in 2D. The higher end 9700 especially, seems susceptable to a condition of "wavy lines" much like EMI interference (but it's not) at higher resolutions and refresh rates.

In case you ARE interested in occasional gaming, I would tend to agree that the newer 8500LE do suck. They, even the retail packages, are clocked much slower than what they used to be (230/230 or worse). What's worse, these come with slower memory components so you can't even overclock it very much. I would avoid all 8500LE's unless you're assured that you're getting one of the older ones.

Personally, I'd opt for a Matrox G400/G450 if this is going to be a dedicated work station as you've implied. They're relatively cheap now and the image quality is absolutely superb.