ATI 8500 OEM $129

[anth0ny]

<< I'm heading out to my parent's tonight to spend the holidays with them. I can prolly swing by on Thursday afternoon sometime. Anyhow, this REALLY seems like a misprint the more I'm digging into other Radeon prices. >>



ATI Radeon 8500LE's from ATI are going for $180. This specific card is not from ATI and is from Powercolor. That might explain the big price difference. I am still trying the GD BBB. I can get any company's report except for PCDynamic.com. I get some stupid error:

WebSpeed error from messenger process (6019)
Msngr: Disconnecting - all agents are currently busy, please try again later. (5832)



[EDIT] Seems the local BBB that has a report on file for the company is having problems I guess. They better fix the problem soon [/EDIT]

 

[xenolith]

<< Even if these are 230/230, it is still a good deal and from what I have heard, these are pretty stable when overclocking. So it will probably be easy to get back up to 275/275 if it's 250/250. >>



Not so fast, I read reviews that state just the opposite. That these 230/230 cards can't even o/c to the 250/250 without problems (artifacts, instability). Some of these 230/230 cards are starting to show up at newegg.com, read the user reviews for the "ATI RADEON 8500 LE 64MB DDR - OEM/White Box."

But if this is a 250/250 Powercolor (3rd party) card, jfunk is right, it's more likely a typo, wrong price or a 7500.

Buyer beware.

 

[Thunderbirdaholic]

I went ahead and ordered it, I have ordered from there before and got the items I ordered ok so hopefully it will come. I'll post if it comes or not if no one has yet, seems like a hot price to me.

Thunderbirdaholic

 

[babylon5]

So as far as one can tell, this is clocked at 250, and the reason why it's so cheap is because it's made by a non-ATI third party. The drawback so far is only a handful people have experience with them on reselleratings, and I don't know how long the store has been in business. Their store is kind of within driving distance of me (i.e long drive), still I am really tempted to check out the card in person myself. If things checked out, I might get one. Since I have no experience with Power Color product, I wonder if the card is as good as ones made by ATI.

 

[Mustanggt]

When I was searching for a 8500 all the LE models were clocked at 230 MHz core, non LE OEM is 250 MHz core, but even this being the case for that price its a great deal, cheapest I could fing LE was $179 so if price is not a misprint this should sell out fast.

 

[xenolith]

Best case scenario; pcdynamic.com mis-priced these as a Radeon 7500, but actually is a Radeon 8500 LE, and honors the orders.

Neutral scenario; they mis-priced these cards and cancel all orders.

Worse case scenario; they send you a 7500. :|

I'm very tempted to order before they change the price or is sold out... everyone knows the anandtech effect.

 

[Tarobap]

I've ordered from PCDynamic a whole bunch of times . . . they were the cheapest to carry the ECS K7S5A Motherboard for a while before it was worth while to go ahead and get it from newegg. I've dealt with them online and on the phone . . . good company in my book . . . we'll see after this whole episode. D@MN nice price though . . . this should definetely be OC'able . . . I'm in the market for a dual monitor card so I'm eagerly awaiting results!

 

[xenolith]

I succumbed. I ordered hoping for the best; a RADEON 8500 LE with 250/250 clock speed showing up at my door.

 

[brian_riendeau]

Can these cards use the standard ATI drivers? I had a Powercolor Kyro card and there was an issue with it not taking the STMicro drivers because the BIOS was not updated by Powercolor

 

[t3chvest]

I'm gonna go ahead and order one of these... we'll see what happens. Hopefully ATI uncrappifies its drivers by the time I get my computer setup (halfway through building custom).

 

[HepDude]

I live 250 miles from these, and for an order with only this card:

<< UPS Ground Shipping: $12.08 2nd Day: $16.99 >>

Perhaps one of those places that makes all their profit on shipping ?

 

[oldiex]

This is not an OEM board. It is a RETAIL Powercolor 8500le and I think all LE boards are 230mhz

 

[JRez]

Even if it is 230/230, for a retail boxed product that is a good price. From a gaming & framerate perspective, it's going to suffer. Heck, it may not even overclock well... but for that price, you do get the feature set

 

[DaeSlappy]

Is this card just release from powercolor? How come I can't seem to find any reviews or even other places selling them? The only reference I found so far is from powercolor's website.....ummm

 

[anth0ny]

BBB report:


Our complaint history for this company shows that this business has a clear record. To date, no customer complaints have come to our attention. A Better Business Bureau report is based on our file information and experience with an individual company over the past three years. The Bureau does not endorse, recommend, or disapprove of any company, product or service.

 

[KaBudokan]

I placed an order for this card a little while ago. I'll letcha know what comes of the order tomorrow.

 

[davisdog]

ditto...for $130 bucks, any type of 8500 sounds like a bargain..haven't seen anything in that price range that is comparable

 

[unclebud]

echo mr. Jrez comments

 

[HepDude]

The one thing that is making me hesitate is the driver issue (ie that it is not an ATI card).

I can't count how many otherwise excellent pieces of hardware I've owned that ended up as paperweights due to poor driver or firmware support (the latest being my MSI motherboard, for which my Soyo replacement is due to arrive tomorrow - a nice Christmas present to me from me.

 

[deeznuts]

weird, from what i understood, regular Radeon was 275, OEM Radeon was 250, and LE was 230. but the link to PowerColor says 250. either way, should be pretty good if it does all the things regular Radeon does (of course at a lower speed) all i play is CS anyway, hmm. those who ordered it, let us know.

 

[jfunk]

<< weird, from what i understood, regular Radeon was 275, OEM Radeon was 250, and LE was 230. but the link to PowerColor says 250. either way, should be pretty good if it does all the things regular Radeon does (of course at a lower speed) all i play is CS anyway, hmm. those who ordered it, let us know. >>



I believe LE = OEM.

Most are 250/250, those funky 230's just started showing up recently, (which this is not), apparently from some japanese company.


j

 

[larciel]

so what if this isn't made by ATI .. but PowerColor (who makes ok nVidia cards)

230-250-275 .. 45mhz difference.. $100 price difference.. the choice is YOURS...

 

[Spike]

well, I just ordered mine. time to RMA my 230mhz Radeon back to Newegg. Heck, even if this is a 230mhz, I am still going to save money as Newegg charges $185 for their 230mhz version, plus this version comes with all the cables. Cool. thanks for the link

 

[Spike]

The one thing that is making me hesitate is the driver issue (ie that it is not an ATI card).

Wait, I thought that even though this is not made by ATI, you still used the drivers provided by ATi, or am I completely wrong? you mean to say that if I get this card, I cannot download the drivers from ATI's webpage? I hope I am just hearing that wrong as you can still get drivers for nVidia cards even though they are made by other companies

 

[jfunk]

As far as I know, ATI drivers should work.

Supposing they don't out of the box, you should be able to flash the BIOS to an ATI one to get around that, but I don't think that will be necessary.


j