Radeon LE ownerz - I need advice!

[KarsinTheHutt]

Ok... I'm now seriously considering purchasing a Radeon LE. I have a few questions though...

(1) If I OC the card from 148 MHz to 166 MHz, do I need a fan on the heatsink?

(2) If you have owned a Diamond Viper V550 TNT card before, how does the 2D quality on the Radeon compare to the V550's?

(3) Are the windows 2000 drivers significantly improved since last March?

thx.

 

[Orbius]

1)You dont need one, but they're so cheap why wouldnt you do it

2)Much much better, the Radeon has very good 2d

3)Win2000 support is better, but still not great

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Where would I buy a fan for a vidcard? What kind of fan would I need?

 

[nortexoid]

thermaltake blue orb..otherwise, what i use are old pentium/486 fans - they work excellent, and can be found for a measly cou0ple bucks.

 

[A5]

You don't need a fan at all for 166...I run at 175/175 stable without one...

 

[Kingofcomputer]

side question:

I bought one from newegg,
the cd they shipped is for old rage pro/rage/rage ii, no radeon driver in it.
is this normal?

 

[MrHelpful]

They probably sent the wrong CD. After all, the drivers can be found on their site, but you can try calling them and asking them to send the right CD to you (driver version might be outdated).

I've heard that the TT Blue Orb isn't all that great a choice because the pins rarely line up with the ones with GPUs or North Bridges. Also, the base of the Blorb is supposedly very rough.

 

[SammyBoy]

im humming along at 175/175 with no fan, but my case is open. I wouldnt run it at that speed without a well ventilated case, my side panel is in the basement with 2 blowholes half done

-Sam

 

[oldfart]

If you want to put a fan on one, a 50mm fan fits perfectly. Keep the stock heatsink, it is pretty decent. You can download divers from Rage3D.

 

[Tonec]

Actually the stock heatsink is 45x45. Your best bet is a 40mm

 

[Wingznut]

1. I built a system this weekend, and it ran 166/166 just fine without a fan.
2. Much better.
3. Very much improved.

 

[Eug]

Get a fan... they only cost $5.

What's wrong with the Windows 2000 drivers? I'm still considering this card.

 

[Schola]

So far mine seems to be running fine at 181/181 without a fan
but then again I have two 80mm blowing on it.

schola

 

[Wingznut]

I don't know, Eug. I have a 64mb DDR, and the system I recently built, I used an LE. Both with Win2k, and I haven't seen an issue yet. I guess the performance is a little slower than win9x, but surely nothing you'd notice without benchmarks.

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

thanks for your responses... I think I may just pick one of these nifty things up soon.

 

[Wingznut]

If you are gonna do it, you'd better not wait too long. It's very possible that ATI might go back and disable the Hyper-Z more thoroughly, now that they see how easy it is to fix.

 

[Tonec]

You do not need a fan to overclock the LE. You can mod the cr#p out of it and it will show almost no improvement
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=431659

 

[Eug]

<< You do not need a fan to overclock the LE. You can mod the cr#p out of it and it will show almost no improvement. >>

I'm not saying &quot;mod the cr#p out of it&quot;. I'm just saying it can't hurt to put on a $5 40 mm fan. Even by your own description, there was a slight improvement. Personally, while without the fan, it's probably OK, I'd still feel more comfortable at 183+ MHz with a fan. Plus, not every core is going to be the same, especially after extended use in a closed hot case.

 

[Mikal]

Don't forget the nifty bios flash to make it a retail DDR.

 

[chansen]

One caveat: I can't get mine to run more than 2MHz over stock speed - fan or no. &quot;Results may vary&quot; is an understatement. That said, I'm very pleased at the performance and 2D quality over my TNT2 16MB card.

 

[Tonec]

Chansen is your card have a yellow tint or is it bright green?. 2mhz overclock is just not right

 

[chansen]

Green. Scraped glue off the GPU and replaced with AS and two small dabs of CA in opposite corners. Added 486 fan. Still no go. Not that I'm a heavy gamer anyway.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

another side question:

I downloaded newest driver, ati dvd player, multimedia center from ati website.
the dvd player install need cd key and cd, the wrong cd does work for it.
how come the newest multimedia center doesn't support vcd 2.0?
how come the newest dvd player doesn't support vob file playback?
the old version in the wrong cd can do so.