As we have expected (see this news story) ATI made an official press-release explaining the situation with the availability of two different RADEON 8500 graphics cards in the market: a retail version with 275MHz working frequencies and OEM version with 250MHz working frequencies. The company has just officially announced the launching of the "lite" version called RADEON 8500LE, which core and memory work at 250MHz.
They report that these graphics cards will be supplied to OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) and AIB (Add-In Board Manufacturer) customers only, and ATI itself will be making only retail products with the standard 275MHz core and 275MHz memory frequencies.
RADEON 8500LE based graphics cards have been already announced by: CP Technology Co. Ltd., DFI Inc.; Ennyah Technologies Corp., Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd., Jetway Information Co. Ltd, Joytech Computer Co. Ltd., Power Magic Multimedia Ltd., Raising Rich Ltd., Sapphire Developments Ltd., Shuttle Inc., Super Grace Electronics Ltd., Wistron Corporation, Yuan Yuan High-Tech Development Co. Ltd. And some of them have already started shipping these products in mass quantities.
So, this not very pleasant situation seems to have finally become clear. We wonder why they didn’t do the same thing from the very beginning instead of puzzling the customers with some unknown chips clocking...