OEM, White box, Retail...

[daddog]

I am looking for the ATI Radeon 64 DDR. I use pricewatch.com but those under $160 don't have the Retail box.  You guys think OEM would be ok? Also what is a whitebox?

Would it be worth it to spend $30 more and get the 8500?

Any specifics I should look for?

Thanks!

[Skuzzy]

You might want to look around some more daddog.  I found a Radeon 64MB DDR Retail card at Best Buy for $99 U.S.  With the 7200 card, ATI willprobably be killing the Radeon.  I have no concrete information on that, but it would seem to be logical.

The OEM and white box ATI cards are usually underclocked versions of the retail one.

[Kratzer]

Not really, Skuzzy... OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer - these are cards that are sold to systems integrators to put into computers that they are building, so they don't have the fancy box, and are probably missing some of the software extras (such as bundled games if they come with the retail version.)  I believe white box refers to the same cards.

The Radeon 8500 is currently the cream of the ATI crop, and benchmarks higher than most GF3s.  It would be very, very worth it to spend the extra $30, though at that price, I suspect you are looking at a Radeon 8500 LE, which is clocked down a bit, kind of like a Ti 200 vs. a Ti 500.  Whatever you are going to buy, make sure you read the complete product description on the site you are going to buy from (I recommend newegg.com - they have most stuff for cheaper than most other places, and will get it to you very quickly), and compare that to the chip manufacturer spec to make sure you know exactly what you are getting.  A site like newegg will have links to reviews of the exact model you are looking at in most cases.

For $160, you could get the Gainward GF3 Ti 200 I just bought (which has me changing my pants regularly).  

What are you currently running?

[daddog]

PIII 450 with the Viper 770 ultra.
Frame rates are 4 to about 20 depending on clear skys or a low level furball.

I have a new case, 300w power supply, AMD 1.4 and an Epox 8k7a all ready to hook up, but need the new vid card. Have about $170 to spend on it.

[Thorns]

Go for the white box, it's the same card, just no frills or manual, and is much cheaper.  You can usually get all you need like driver's and info from the card's website.

Thorns

[Camel]

If this thread was about which card to buy for $172 including shipping(newegg), I'd say Gainward Gf3 Ti 200.

[Kratzer]

With that setup, I'd definitely recommend the Gainward GeForce3 Ti 200 as well - $162 from newegg, and it has a guaranteed overclock straight out of the box.  I was pointed at this card, and it has been the best upgrade I've made, hands down.

[SOB]

While 'White box' or 'OEM' are usually the same product minus retail packaging or bundles, some of ATI's products are indeed clocked down version of the same card.  In these products, they use memory that didn't test out as stable at the standard clock speed for the regular version of their card.


SOB

[Skuzzy]

Actually, it goes further than that SOB.  The white/OEM box version of the 8500 uses slower ram than the retail version.  You can sometimes clock the white/OEM box up to the retail box speed, but it is a gamble.
This is true for the 7200 and 8500 series.

The original Radeon and older cards were the same boards in the white box, OEM box, and retail box.

On the other differences, the OEM version from ATI has absolutely no software (no biggie, as the installation CD is never up to date anyways), the white box has the installation CD in it (which makes a good coaster), and the retail version has other stuff added (i.e. games, demos...)

[CJay]

With that CPU you wont get the full value of any card you buy. I just got rid of my p3 450. was running about 25-30 fps with radeon 64, then switched to Duron 900 with same card and now i get 60 fps. You should look into getting a better chip and Mobo also.

[Kratzer]

Read his post again CJay - he's got an Athlon 1.4 sitting there, waiting for a video card.

[Makarov1]

Hey daddog,

You may want to look at the Hercules Prophet 4500. It uses the Kyro II chip. I picked one up for $99 for my wife's computer and it is very fast. It beat my Radeon 32MB DDR and GeForce 2 GTS in 32bit high res. Works on all games I throw at it. Drivers are much improved since it first came out. You can probably mail-order one for pretty cheap. Many good reviews out there on this card:
3DNow.net Review
Avault Review

Of course if you want to go all out, I'm loving my Radeon 8500.

[Nifty]

OEM/White box sometimes do NOT come with a manufacturer warranty.  Be very sure what kind of warranty comes with that OEM/White boxed card.  Sometimes it's 30 day vendor, sometimes 90 day to 1 year manufacturer warranty.  Personally, I wouldn't get anything that didn't have a one year warranty on it.

ATI did ship lower clocked 8500 chipsets to their OEMs.  There was a big deal about this and when called on it, ATI retroactively called the chips 8500 LE (or something, it's been over a month since I read the article.)  I'll look for info on it and post it if I find it.  

In terms of memory see times on video cards, it actually varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.  I was looking at info on Ti cards, and retail box versions had different seek times on their memory.  some Ti500's had 3.8ns (nanosecond) while others had up to 5ns seek time.  The Ti200's ranged from 4.somthing ns to 5ns (I don't think I saw a Ti200 lower than 4.3ns, but I might be mistaken.)  It's due to the brand of memory they put on their card, from what I can gather.

Skuzzy, do you know for sure if the OEM clock settings on nvidia cards is less than retail box?   I was under the impression that this was an ATI-only "feature".

[Nifty]

Here be the article.

There's a couple of links on it as well.   one goes to a more concise description of the issue and one goes to a short Q&A with ATI.

Basically the retail ATI chip is clocked at 275/275 (effectively 550 on the memory) but they send 250/250 clocked to the OEMs.

[Kratzer]

I think this ATI thing is a one-off type of situation, and 'underclocking' OEM cards is NOT standard practice.  And yes, the slower 8500 is the LE.