Theres a new breed of card creeping onto the market, the "LE" variants.

In a nutshell, these are akin to the old Geforce 2 & 4 "MX" ranges, i.e. there produced for OEM manufacturers to place into there PC specs to look good on paper, alas, they don't look good in "real world" performance.

For example, an Nvidia 6800LE is CONSIDERABLY slower than the Nvidia 6800 (Non-LE). The 6800LE costs about £50 less, that £50 is well worth the extra investment.

Ultimately, an FX6800LE will better an ATI 9800XT or Pro, or, an FX5950 the base non LE 6800 will considerably better all three!

Don't be tempted by the 6800LE, its all in the name, little in the performance go for the 6800 or one of the PCI-Express 6600 GT's & you won't be dissapointed.

But, if your currently running an MX then you'll still be blown away by the performance from this £150 beastie despite my above statements!

To sum up, if your looking for a new 6800 then my advice is save that £50 extra and go for the NON LE variants.

Bit less than that £50 is about $90 at the moment    Still a fair bit though.

LMAO, Dollars r crazy! U got US dollars, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars! why cant they all be the same  a dollar is a dollar surely hehehe 

LE models use half bandwidth memory.  They are the same as ATis SE models.  Atleast they are labelling them LE, they never used to do that on Nvidia cards. 

Also the 5200LE is 64-bit memory, instead of the 128-bit you get on the normal model, so it runs at half the performance.

I said bit not MB, bit is the bandwidth, MB is the capacity.  That is if you were commenting on my post?

LE and some other suffixes and sub names are not specified names by the chipmakers, but merely made up by the manufacturers to designate their particular versions.

LE has, however, become a common, manufacturers suffix for de-powered models of many genres of GPU's; it didn't just start with the 6800 GPU.

Some LE models in the past have represented good value for money, while others have not. It really is important to get right down to the specification in order to know what  you are buying, as names are becoming increasingly cryptic

It took me a while to figure the LE thing out, it wasn't until I read a good article on some nv 9800's that it all clicked into place.

I was looking at an LE model at the time, based on price, but then found out it was really just a 9800XT, with reduced memory speed as well!

I phoned the dealer prior to resolving the issue, and they were not helpful in providing details, so I had to find out myself.

EEEEEK ! ! !

I didn't mean 9800's, very sorry, my brain must be slightly bruised.

I meant the nv 5900 series, in which the LE models usually reflect the slightly crippled 5900XT models.

Just thought I'd clarify that in case I caused some confusion.