Ok so I did the pencile trick as directed at Pcstats. Used the multi-meter (voltmeter) to test after each application of HB pencil.

The most I could get the Hynix 3.6ns ram to was +3.42v any higher than that and the bios screen would have instant artifacts...

The vcore I was able to achieve a +2.05v but lowered this to +1.76v.

The card I have is a 64mb LE (250/250) and before the mod my voltages were at +3.01v for the memory (severely under the +3.20v - +3.65v that Hynix specify for this memory) and +1.54v for the vcore (under the +1.65v that retail cards get!)

The results I achieved were not as good as I expected. I have seen many people getting these cards at 300/300 easily and much higher. Before the mod I was able to clock the core at 290 and the mem would pack it in with artifacts at 265. Now after the mod the core still will only do 290 and the mem at 290 also so 290/290 was the best stable results I was able to achieve.

I am not sure why I was not able to get either higher? The ambient temp in the room was 24 degrees celcius and the MB temp was at 48 degrees!!!! This was after over an hour of streuous testing in 3dmark2001 SE (which I can now achieve nearly 11000 with a P4 2.8 and pc3200 DDR400 mem) I am not sure if heat was the problem? Any ideas would be great... I really want to get this card over 300! I have stock heat sink and fan on card and no ram sinks.
I am using the bios version 7004. If I flash this to another bios with less aggressive ram timmings will this help to clock higher?

I just picked up a Retail ATI 8500LE 128mb last night (Infineon 3.6 BGA memory).

Right out of the box it ran 3Dmark2001 loops all night @ 315/305 (default cooling & voltages) @ 17C ambient room temp. I'm not sure what temp the motherboard was at but my dual overclocked PIIIs and three HDDs keep it fairly toasty.

How old is your card? It may be an older stepping core.

I'm not sure what BIOS I have offhand but I'll check.

<A HREF="http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125340&perpage=50&pagenumber=1" target="_new">Here's a little database</A> of Radeon speeds.

- JW