Setup and notes
Hardware
- PowerColor Radeon 9800XT 256MB, AGP8X, 412/730
- Crucial Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB, AGP8X, 378/700
- Leadtek GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB, AGP8X, 475/950
- AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 2200MHz
- EPoX 8HDA3+ S754 VIA K8T800 Motherboard (12/12 BIOS)
- Corsair XMS3500C2, 2 x 256MB, 2-2-2-6 @ DDR400
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- AMD reference cooler
- IBM 120GXP 40GB Hard Drive
- Dell P991 19" flat-faced CRT monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP1
- ATI CATALYST 4.1
- NVIDIA ForceWare 53.03
- VIA Hyperion v4.51 chipset drivers
- DirectX 9.0b Runtime
- FRAPS 2.0.0
- 3DMark 2001SE v330
- 3DMark03 v340
- AquaMark3
- Splinter Cell (Beyond3D Demo)
- Unreal Tournament 2003 Retail (patched up to 2225) - HEXUS custom benchmark)
- X2: The Threat
- Call Of Duty - HEXUS Custom Benchmark
- RTCW: Enemy Territory - HEXUS Custom Benchmark
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 (patched to v1.1) - HEXUS Custom Benchmark with FRAPS
Notes
We'll be comparing the PowerColor Radeon 9800XT to a 256MB-equipped Radeon 9800 Pro and NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, also with 256MB of memory. Catalyst 4.1 amd ForceWare 53.03 drivers were used. There were no problems during installation.
2D quality
2D quality through the VGA connection was generally good. It seems a strange thing to say, but a Hercules card, which is nigh-on identical, appeared to be that little bit sharper at 1600x1200 @ 75Hz. We have to reiterate that the quality wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination.
Noise
The 9800XT benefits from a variable-speed fan. Pottering around in 2D with minimal GPU load, and this includes media playback, the fan is barely noticeable above the other noise-making components in a quiet-ish system. Under prolonged 3D load, however, the PowerColor's fan speeded up to produce a humming sound. Noise shouldn't be an issue for all but the very, very quietest systems.
The GPU is a hot beastie. Idling around in Windows saw an average GPU temperature of close to 70c. ATI's inbuilt overclocking tool, OVERDDRIVE, in this case, pushed up the GPU speed to 418MHz. That's barely significant enough to register on the benchmarks, and not enough to alter the games-playing experience.
Something new this time around is ATI's Catalyst 4.1 driver set. The drivers retain the 6x FSAA and 16x Anisotropic Filtering Algorithms. Improvements come by way of bug fixes and a more comprehensive OVERDRIVE reporting section. Other than that, performance is similar to the 3.10 drivers.
