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ATI Radeon 8500LE OverclockThis card comes with 128 MB DDR SGRAM using 128 bit pipelines and processing data at 250MHz. Core and memory clocks at 250 MHz and can be increased to 275MHz without showing any adverse effects (artifacts or stability problems). However you can't just expect to pump more data through with out there being additional resistance to that throughput...
HEAT is generated. Pushing past 275 MHz it is wise to have some passive cooling (heat sinks) on the ram chips if your case temperature runs hot. In this case (no pun intended) I don't need the SGRAM cooled, as airflow is sufficient past the vid card. There is however a problem with that heatsink and fan combo which ATI has baked onto the GPU... instead of taking it off to add a better HSF, I decided to work around the problem by cooling from the BACK of the GPU.
The mass of wires are not easy to work around, so cable ties come in quite handy just to make things a LITTLE easier.
An overclocked vid card usually needs extra cooling. See the extra fan on THIS side (back side) of the vid card? Well, it's not flush with the back of the GPU, this allows a slight air regulation to occur. I considered SGRAM heatsinks but they don't seem to get overly warm so I left them alone. 300MHz/300MHz is stable enough for benching! You may see the 512 MB Corsair PC3200 DDR-all Corsairs of recency come with their own silver/black heat spreaders -ooh PRETTY!!
Radeon 8500 LE Stock HSF does not need to be replaced (just cleaned) and extra fiddling is not necessary as long as good case air through-put is achieved. Raid requires good cooling, rounded ata133 cabling here is necessary so air can flow un-impeded by flat ugly ATA100 cabling.
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