ATI Radeon 9800 XT Review by Article Admin
It wasn?t long ago that ATI launched their Radeon 9800 Pro and then followed it up with the 256MB version. With DirectX 9 support and screaming fast gaming performance, the 9800 Pro was and still is a great video card. Recently there has been a lot of debate and speculation on gaming performance with next-generation DirectX titles such as Half-Life 2. Nvidia?s 5900 Ultra has been shown performing quite poorly by Valve and investigations into DX9 performance has shown ATI coming out on top, but not without Nvidia making noise about optimizations that will take place. It?s hard to make a case with current benchmarks, but the DX9 titles are slowly trickling out. Taking advantage of the current situation, ATI has beat Nvidia to the punch with a refresher product ? the Radeon 9800 XT. Whether or not this card is worth it or will perform well is what we are going to examine today.
The specifications of the 9800 XT are pretty much in line with the regular 9800 Pro. According to ATI, the chip has had a little work done to it to improve some things, but the core is basically the same. The clock speeds have of course been ramped up in order to squeeze more performance out of the chip. I asked if they were still using the .15 micron manufacturing process on the 9800 XT and they are. I thought that perhaps they would move it to .13 to possibly improve clock speeds or produce a cooler running chip.
The 9800 XT runs at a clock speed of 412MHz Core and 365MHz Memory and carries 256MB of DDR Memory. This is only up slightly from the 9800 Pro 256MB which chimes in at 380MHz Core and 350MHz Memory. The Core clock is increased by 32MHz, and the Memory by 15MHz. Not a whole lot of speed has been added in terms of clock speed. Let?s take a look at the card.
The Card:
Radeon 9800 XT Front
Radeon 9800 XT Back
One of the most impressive things about the 9800 Pro and 9800 XT is that they are both one-slot designs for the top-end product in ATI?s lineup. Nvidia?s 5900 Ultra is a 2-slot design, as is the upcoming refresher product. The heatsink on the 9800 XT is copper and as such adds a lot of weight to the card and it also uses a larger fan. The larger fan can move more air while still remaining quiet. I should mention that even though you can install a PCI card in the slot right next to the 9800 XT, I would recommend leaving it empty to ensure good cooling. This recommendation effectively makes the 9800 XT take up 2 slots and the 5900 Ultra take up 3.
The copper heatsink really does a good job and though the heatsink does get quite warm, the card ran great. The cooling on the card is supposed to be really well done as ATI told me that there is more headroom in the chip and you will be able to overclock it by a decent amount. We will take a look later to see how the card fared overclocked and how much it could handle. Let?s take a look at some more pictures of the card.
Heatsink Close-Up
Rear Heatsink Close-Up
The 9800 XT?s heatsink covers the RAM on the back of the card and it also has a point that reaches down and touches the PCB right behind the GP?uhh I mean the VPU.
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