ATI Radeon LE (Low End?!)

[bolomite]

Anyone out there have any definitive info on the new Radeon LE? What exactly has been disabled/modified?

 

[oldfart]

I'm trying to find out. It has a passive HS with no fan. 32 meg 6ns DDR, 148 MHz instead of 166 or 183. Maybe Hyper-Z, maybe not, maybe a lesser version of it. Maybe 64 Vs. 128 bus. There is very little information on it. The cards are very cheap. Less than $100. I'll have one next week and will do some testing on it. Here is a Chinese review translated by babelfish: Review:.

 

[Engineer]

Hot Deals Thread with benchmarks

oldfart,

I tried some benchmarking with the registry settings you gave in the Hot Deals thread (sorry, I don't have Quake III or UT, but used what I had)....The results were suprising. I overclocked the memory (core I think too, but there was no adjustment for it in Powerstrip, but I think the core and memory are tied together) to 180MHz (around the same speed as my GeForce 2 GTS card).

See the interesting results there...I'm beginning to think that this card at 32 bit mode is a very good price per performance (when overclocked slightly and using the HyperZ regedits you provided)...

Thanks oldfart!!!

Consolidate info from the other thread:

Benchmarks so far (All Windows 98) (before Registry mods from oldfart, but with overclock to 180MHz):

WinTune 98 (all graphics tests):

Radeon LE (Overclocked to 180MHz):


Video Board RADEON DDR
Video Mode 1152x864@32bits/pixel


Video(2D) 123.5511 MPixels/s
Direct3D 133.9238 MPixels/s
OpenGL 174.0666 MPixels/s


GeForce 2 GTS (Creative running at stock speed):


Video Board NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro
Video Mode 1152x864@32bits/pixel


Video(2D) 90.41792 MPixels/s
Direct3D 190.2815 MPixels/s
OpenGL 25.32779 MPixels/s

3D Mark 2001 (1024 x 768) x 32bit depth:

Radeon LE (overclocked):

3742

GeForce 2 GTS (stock):

4709

System setup:

Athlon TBird 1 GHz
384 Megs PC100 CAS2 ram
AGP4X enabled
Fastwrites disabled
Maxtor 45GB 7200 drive (ATA66)
SB Live MP3+
3Com NIC

NEW TESTS after oldfart's reg mods:After trying Oldfart's (thanks ) regedits on the previous page, my new 32 bit 3DMark 2001 scores is (1024 x 768 x 32bit depth):

4418 compared to the

4702 that I got with the GeForce 2 GTS DDR 32 meg (Creative card).

Also, my wintune 98 scores are now:

RADEON DDR
1152x864@32bits/pixel
120 Video MPixels/s
173 OpenGL MPixels/s
242 Direct3D MPixels/s
335 Direct3D Null driver score
178 Direct3D Primary driver score

You can see my old scores several pages back in this thread.

I'll post more about disabling Hyper-Z in a few moments.



Not really looking that bad (in 32 bit anyway) at this point

Disabled HyperZ (per Oldfart):

3D Mark2001 score: 3679 (apparantly, HyperZ affects this card regardless of what others say)

Wintune 98 scores (HyperZ disabled):

Summary
RADEON DDR
1152x864@32bits/pixel
121 Video MPixels/s
175 OpenGL MPixels/s
133 Direct3D MPixels/s
328 Direct3D Null driver score
177 Direct3D Primary driver score

Big differnece with the HyperZ disabled (worse )...


1024 x 768 x 16bit depth tests (The Radeon doesn't excell at 16 bit as expected):

3Dmark 2001 scores:

Radeon LE (overclocked memory 180): 5036

GeForce 2 GTS 32 Meg DDR (stock: 183 I think): 7002

Sorry for the clutter, but I just cut and pasted the 2 results from the Hot Deals Thread

 

[vicvon]

The memory interface is only 64bit as opposed to 128bit for the original Radeon. This is severely crippleing the card.


I ordered one from NewEgg before finding this out (I have a Kyro) and will RMA as soon as it arrives.

 

[Engineer]

Powerstrip reports the Data Bus size as 128 bit, but I'm not sure if that is correct or not?!?

hmmmmmmm?

 

[Engineer]

More benchmarks:

Quake III Arena Demo 1 (Timedemo 1):

All test run with 32 bit textures in 32 bit mode:

800 x 600 x 32bit: 98.2

1024 x 768 x 32bit: 74.9

1280 x 1024 x 32bit: 48.4

(all frames per second)

HyperZ Enabled or Disabled had no effect on the scores...they were the same in both cases?????!!!!???

Update: Bumped the speed up to 190 MHz ( I have a Nidec Blower blowing across the card for cooling) and the new 3DMark 2000 is 4585 at 1024 x 768 x 32bit...

Update #2: Windows 2000 - 3DMark 2000: 4166

(run at 1024 x 768 x 32 bit color, everything enabled HyperZ, etc)

 

[TravisBickle]

lemme guess it's Ati's spoiler for matrox in the corporate market?

 

[oldfart]

No Travis, that would be the VE. The LE is more of a GF MX type card.

Engineer, thanks for the benchmarks. What ver Q3 was that? Demo version? The settings I gave you turn off and on Hyper-Z for D3D. I'm not sure how to do it for OpenGL. I'll try and find out.

To compare, my 3DMark 2000 score for 1024 x 768 x 32 is 4673 with a retail Radeon @ 183 Mhz on a PIII 933. Is there a such thing as 3Dmark 2001? Didn't see it on their web site.

 

[merlocka]

OK, I got myself into a bind by suggesting this card to a few peeps (and I am very pissed at newegg for the misrepresentation).

I just want to sum up (plz correct me if/where I'm wrong)


Clockspeed : 143 vs 166 (LE vs Radeon 32MB DDR)
Hyper Z : Simplified? vs Normal
Memory Bus : 64bit vs 128bit
Cooling : Passive vs Active

Now, granted that the benchmarks and overclockability seem pretty good (thanks Oldfart & Engineer!), in my opinion this is like ordering a TnT2 Pro and getting a TnT2 M64

NewEgg just made my unhappy list.

 

[oldfart]

Newegg is one of many vendors misrepresenting what these cards are. I'm not sure at this point on the 64 Vs 128 mem bus. That may not be accurate. Hyper-Z does work (pretty well it seems). Clock speed can be fixed VIA Powerstrip. The Passive HS is pretty large compared to the very small active one on the regular cards. I'm not defending the vendors by any means. I bought one from Z-buy for a friends PC that was clearly advertised as a 166 DDR normal OEM card. Not too happy about that. The good news so far is that the cards seem to perform very well. These things are less than $100, so they are a pretty good deal. It still doesn't make up for the fact that you didn't get what the product description stated. I'll have that card early next week and run some of my own tests on it.

 

[Taz4158]

If all is as reported the MX had better look out!

 

[Engineer]

oldfart,

The Quake version is a Demo of 1.11 and I ran the demo1 that was included with that version. I'm not too up on games and really don't know how to run all these benchmarks...yet

 

[Engineer]

oldfart,

I tested the OpenGL registry entries in the other thread and gained nothing by having them set to 1:

QuakeIII (32 bit with 32 bit textures)...1.11 with timedemo 1 running the Demo0001 that came with the game:

800 x 600 x 32: 98.4
1024 x 768 x 32: 76.2
1280 x 1024 x 32: 46.1

But...with the 4 entries turned to 0 (off):

800 x 600 x 32: 91.2
1024 x 768 x 32: 62.6
1280 x 1024 x 32: 39.2

A big dropoff! apparantely OpenGL HyperZ is ENABLED by default!

 

[oldfart]

Thanks again, your help in testing has been great!

 

[AmbitV]

I have one of these 148/148 clocked cards and when i just checked my Powerstrip under performance, it said HyperZ for Direct3d was disabled....hmm...

 

[AmbitV]

i just checked my registry, and it says DisableHyperZ = 1
note that I have never changed any of my registry settings or used any tweak software since installing this board. So I guess HyperZ does come disabled at default, at least for D3d

 

[Engineer]

vman,

What version of Powerstrip are you running? I can't find anything about that under "Performance" on my version 2.78?!?

If you're running 3.0, where can I download it from (anyone)?

Thanks

 

[oldfart]

vman, from the testing done so far, HyperZ is disabled by default in D3D, but enabled in OpenGL on the LE cards. If you want to do some testing for us, here is what you do. Without touching the registry, run a D3D benchmark. 3Dmark or UT will do. Record the score. Next, turn on HyperZ with these settings:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\0000\atidxhal]
"EnableWaitUntilIdxTriList2"="1"
"TableFogEnable"="1"
"WFogEnable"="0"
"ZFogEnable"="1"
"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"Vsync"="0"
"AntiAlias"="0"
"ZFormats"="15"
"ExportCompressedTex"="1"
"DitherAlpha"="1"
"ExportWBuffer"="0"

The ones in bold are the 3 that actually turn HyperZ on and off. Note that your key location MAY NOT be /Driver/0000. It may be 0001 or 0002. Go into regedit and look first. If it is different, change the text above. Next, copy the above to notepad and save the file as ati.reg Right click on it and pick "merge". This will put the entries in. Run the benchmark again and report the results back.

 

[AmbitV]

oldfart, get the Powerstrip 3.0 beta here:

http://www.voodoofiles.com/2634

I'll use 3dmark to test those D3D settings...can't test opengl as my quake3 doesnt work (see post in video section)

 

[Taz4158]

Linkified

 

[AmbitV]

"DisableHierarchicalZ"="1"
"DisableHyperZ"="1"
"FastZClearEnabled"="0"
3dmark: 3341

"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
3dmark: 3894

 

[Taz4158]

That's the HyperZ difference. Low scores though.

 

[AmbitV]

yea that seemed low to me too
that is 3dmark 2000 default benchmark on a 550e @ 795mhz...144mhz bus...but mobo only supports AGP 2x
That is at the default clocked 148/148...

 

[Taz4158]

NOT that 3DMARK is important, because it's not, but you should be higher than that. Try rebooting, then OC to 166 and rerun. You only have to run the first three tests to get your score. That'll speed up getting your results.

 

[AmbitV]

geez overclocked to 180/180 and got a little over 4500