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Japan is the country of wonders - you can find almost everything there and what is really important is that you find it there first. For example, we have found that ATI and its partners had launched two new PCB versions for the RADEON 8500 and several Japanese stores have already started selling such videocards.

Jetway hs recently launched new RADEON 8500 with cheaper design of the board. Take a look at the photograph, the videocard on top is the the new card, while another one is ATI reference adapter:




After a brief look you will surely notice some PCB layout changes and R200A mark on the top of the new card. The most important thing to notice is that it does not have external RAMDAC for the second monitor! It means that this card cannot support two independent analog monitors!

RADEON 8500 from Jetway is clocked at 275/275 MHz core/memory.

The PCB design of RADEON 8500 based videocards is quite complex and manufacturers have to mount memory and some more components on the backside of the board. This increases costs quite hign making the GeForce line solutions a bit easier to built (especially GeForce3 Ti200 ones which utilise 6-layer PCB design).

As we know, asian manufacturers want to reduce costs even more so to compete with each other. And they have designed another PCB that places memory and other components on the front side of the videoadapter making the board easier to built and reducing the price.



Unfortunately, we should again note that the card is not equipped with external RAMDAC and does not support two independent analog monitors.



The RADEON 8500LE card is being sold under Mouse Computer brand in Japan for ¥25.800 ($194).

The good sign is that Taiwanese partners have started price-wars with their RADEON 8500 powered videocards and we will see great price reduction in the coming months. The bad sign is that those price reductions may cause serious changes in the PCB design (read quality issues) and board functionality (read multi-monitor support and DVI-I presence).

We should point out that such "cheap" solutions will soon hit the stores in Europe and maybe the US, so, you have to be really careful now when purchasing non-ATI RADEON 8500 based accelerator so not to get a "castrated" one.

Kakšna sreca da ne kupujem atijevih kartic :)

In predstavljajte si kupiti Radeona v Slov., če taki zaidejo k nam. Boš vprašal trgovca, na kolk se goni procesor in ram, ali ima dva RAMDACa... Heh, ATI si pljuva v skledo, glede na to, da R8500 ni baš karta za OEM trg.

Pol pa nekateri govorijo, da nVidia sux :\

Cel podn je Ati !

nVidia sux, pa ne ker se meni tak zdi, ampak ker izkorišča svoj položaj na trgu (glej npr. GF4), da ne omenjam groženj o uporabi samo njenih čipov, itd.

ATi je vedno delal dobre kartice in jih še dela in se bo treba sprijaznit, da je na veliko področjih boljši od nVidie.

Pravim isto kot AngelOfDeath