ATi Radeon 8500 LE

The ATi Radeon 8500 LE is my current video card, so I figured I would do a review on how well I like it. The 8500 is the first card I have ever owned from ATi, being so, I was a bit skeptical considering I had never dealt with ATi before and didn't know the quality of their products. Well, right off the bat, I had a few issues with this card. First and foremost, it simply would not work in my motherboard, EPoX 8KHA KT266. This was a major issue and required purchasing a new board, of course, there was a BIOS update released that solved this issue, but since I already have a new board, I have not tested the new BIOS. After purchasing a compatible board, this card works rather well. One of the things I happened to notice about this card is the build quality, the card itself feels as if it were manufactured in far superior facilities than those used for any other card. I noticed this because, upon removing it from its packaging, there was a striking weight difference from any other card I have owned, all of the components seemed to be much cleaner and much much higher quality, the PCB board itself was also much stronger. I feel this was a good first impression, however it matters much less than the actual performance of the card. It was a major upgrade from my nVIDIA Geforce2 GTS. It has 64MB DDR RAM on my model and is fully DirectX8 compliant. Early driver releases proved to be buggy and yielded low performance but they have been very much refined by now and can pump out a lot more from this card. Aside from the motherboard incompatibilites, now that ATi drivers are up to speed, I have not had any more issues involving this card than a card from any other manufacturer. The performance of the 8500 chip is very good, especially for the cost of a card. I would say that this card is a commendable breakthrough for ATi in terms of quality and compatibility. If you are in the market for a budget video card that can still pack a punch, this card may be a contender for you.

-DeRusto

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	ATi Radeon 8500 LE
	The ATi Radeon 8500 LE is my current video card, so I figured I would do a review on how well I like it. The 8500 is the first card I have ever owned from ATi, being so, I was a bit skeptical considering I had never dealt with ATi before and didn't know the quality of their products. Well, right off the bat, I had a few issues with this card. First and foremost, it simply would not work in my motherboard, EPoX 8KHA KT266. This was a major issue and required purchasing a new board, of course, there was a BIOS update released that solved this issue, but since I already have a new board, I have not tested the new BIOS. After purchasing a compatible board, this card works rather well. One of the things I happened to notice about this card is the build quality, the card itself feels as if it were manufactured in far superior facilities than those used for any other card. I noticed this because, upon removing it from its packaging, there was a striking weight difference from any other card I have owned, all of the components seemed to be much cleaner and much much higher quality, the PCB board itself was also much stronger. I feel this was a good first impression, however it matters much less than the actual performance of the card. It was a major upgrade from my nVIDIA Geforce2 GTS. It has 64MB DDR RAM on my model and is fully DirectX8 compliant. Early driver releases proved to be buggy and yielded low performance but they have been very much refined by now and can pump out a lot more from this card. Aside from the motherboard incompatibilites, now that ATi drivers are up to speed, I have not had any more issues involving this card than a card from any other manufacturer. The performance of the 8500 chip is very good, especially for the cost of a card. I would say that this card is a commendable breakthrough for ATi in terms of quality and compatibility. If you are in the market for a budget video card that can still pack a punch, this card may be a contender for you. -DeRusto Go Back to Reviews Hompage