 |
Untitled Document
Sapphire 9800 Pro
The Radeon 9800 Pro has been around for quite a long time now, and used to
be a top end ATI card. Due to ATI concentrating on the PCI Express market, they
have failed to introduce a mid-range AGP card. Their answer has been to produce
a new batch of 9800 Pro cores and let these assume the role.
With 8 pipelines and 256-Bit memory, on paper it looks pretty good and it manages
to pull the job off quite well. However, if you try turning on anti-aliasing,
the age of the design really shows itself.
Old as it may be, it handles the latest games perfectly well at 1024 x 768,
and the value for money rating seems good, but at £130, it is competing
with the much newer Geforce 6600 GT.
Buying yesterdays top of the range products instead of today's mid-range products
should mean that all the potential problems and compatibility issues have been
eliminated, but Half-Life 2 refused to run at our highest test settings, giving
numerous cryptic error messages. In general, the scores obtained were a little
strange, with a huge step down in performance shown when increasing resolution.
This is almost certainly the fault of either Half-Life 2 of the Catalyst drivers,
neither of which are renowned for being perfect.
Although these issues should be fixed in a new release, this is beside the
point, as it really isn't capable of high settings. Ignore this card; it's yesterday's
news. Dig around under the couch for that extra tenner, and get a 6600 GT instead.
| Manufacturer |
Sapphire |
| Model |
Radeon 9800 Pro |
| Price Inc VAT |
£131.88 |
| Value For Money Rating |
45.9 |
| Retailer Website |
www.savastore.co.uk |
| Interface |
AGP 8X |
| GPU |
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro |
| GPU Rendering Pipelines |
8 |
| GPU Clock Speed |
380MHz |
| Memory Size |
128MB |
| Memory Type |
256-Bit DDR |
| Memory Clock Speed |
340MHz |
| Cooling System |
Heatsink and Fan |
| Power Connectors |
1x Large 4-pin Molex |
| Slots Occupied |
1 |
| VGA Outputs |
1 |
| DVI Outputs |
1 |
| TV-Out |
Yes |
| VIVO |
No |
| Adapters |
DVI-VGA, S-Video to Composite |
| Bundled Cables |
S-Video, Composite, Power Splitter |
| Bundled Full Games |
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow |
| Misc. Bundled |
None |
Benchmarks
| 3D Mark 2003 Standard Test |
6,053 |
| Aquamark 3 Standard Test |
47,722 |
| Unreal
Tournament 2004 Maximum Detail |
| 1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS) |
121 |
| 1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS) |
123 |
| 1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS) |
72 |
| Doom
3, High Detail |
| 1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS) |
52 |
| 1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS) |
27 |
| 1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS) |
11 |
| Half-Life
2 Maximum Detail |
| 1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS) |
98 |
| 1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS) |
6 |
| 1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS) |
No Result |
| Far Cry Maximum
Detail |
|
| 1024 x 768 0x AA 0x AF (FPS) |
50 |
| 1280 x 1024 2x AA 2x AF (FPS) |
25 |
| 1600 x 1200 4x AA 4x AF (FPS) |
11 |
<< Back | 1 | | 2 | | 3 | | 4 | | 5 | | 6 | | 7 | | 8 | | 9 | | 10 | | 11 | | 12 | | 13 | | 14 | | 15 |
| 16 | | 17 | Next >>
|
|
