The Radeon 8500LE is ATI's answer in the performance mainstream market. Their plan is to bring the high-end gaming level performance of the Radeon 8500 down to mainstream market pricing. What you won't find on ATI's main spec pages, but you should be aware of, is that the LE is clocked down to 250MHz core and 250MHz (500MHz DDR) memory. The retail 8500 has a 275MHz core and 275MHz (550MHz DDR) memory. The differences do not end here. ATI still sells chips to OEM's at an even further reduced speed. There are reports of some "OEM 8500LE" chips being clocked down to 230MHz core and 230MHz (460MHz DDR) memory. I'm sure you can see where some of the confusion comes from. ATI is now selling their GPUs to third party manufacturers for use on their own PCBs and customized to what they feel the market would want to buy. This is a good thing for ATI and certainly for the consumer. We're pleased to be able to show you a 8500LE video card from a company you may not be too familiar with
FULL STORY @ HARDOCP (http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidcards/ati/8500le/index.html)
