[G4] Re: identifying a Radeon 8500

[Mel Krewall]

Actually, the Radeon 8500 for Mac was discontinued quite a while ago. 
The current low-end AGP card is the Radeon 9000. You can't find a new 
8500 in the retail channel.
Mel

"They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. Golf is more 
complicated than that."
  ~Gardner Dickinson

On Dec 9, 2004, at 10:24 AM, Sean Collins wrote:

> Kevin & Jim:
>
> I've been running a Radeon 8500 Mac Ed. in my G4/AGP for 2+ years and 
> have never had a problem.  I have never upgraded the firmware 
> (reported as: 113-85710-123).  I believe in the "if it ain't broke, 
> don't fix it" principle.
>
>> I found a number on the card itself that is PN 109-85700-00.
>
> That's the part number for the printed circuit board.  But since the 
> same board was used for PC & Mac, it doesn't help.
>
>> Is the PC version of the Radeon 8500 sold under a different name?
>
> Not really. It was called the " Radeon 8500 64MB" vs " Radeon 8500 Mac 
> Edition".  The boxes had different graphics.
>
> PC box: 
> http://www.ati.com/designpartners/media/pc/popups/r850064mbbox.asp
>
> Mac box: 
> http://www.ati.com/designpartners/media/mac/popups/r8500mebox.asp
>
> Interestingly, the PC version is a discontinued product, but the Mac 
> version is still current product.
>
>> A radeon 8500 will show up as R200 in the system profiler of an apple 
>> machine.
>
> I may be mistaken about this, but I believe that system profiler 
> simply reports what it finds from the firmware.  So, once a PC card 
> has been flashed w/Mac firmware, system profiler will report it as a 
> genuine Mac card.  It can't distinguish further than that.
>
>> there is no
>> real difference except that the PC card had a faster core clock speed
>> (275 v. 250 MHz).
>
> I wasn't aware of that.  Depending on how ATI implemented the core 
> clock, a flashed PC card may or may not still run at 275.
>
> If the clock multiplier is coded in the firmware, then the flashed 
> card will run at 250.  If it is hard coded on the circuit board, or 
> w/in another chip, then the flashed card will still be running at 275. 
>  If it IS a flashed PC card, and still running at 275, that could be 
> the cause of the problem.
>
> Neither System Profiler or the ATI Utility reports clock speed.  I'm 
> not aware of any utility that will report video clock.
>
> There's only one clock oscillator on the board, 27 Mhz, same for both 
> PC & Mac.  It doesn't translate to a very clean multiplier though.
>
>> If the card isn't stable in your machine then you might have gotten a
>> bum card or perhaps your machine is having a hard time dealing with 
>> the
>> 8500 for some other reason.
>
> Kevin, if you're willing, you can send one of your problem cards to 
> me, and I'll run it in my machine for a couple of days.
>
> If it's problematic for me, then it's a bum card (or flash).  If it 
> runs OK for me, then there's an issue w/your computer config.
>
> Sean
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