Control Panel
Let's have a look at the control panel to see if anything major has changed between the Radeon-based cards.
A new driver for a new card. The Catalyst 3.1 6292s were the latest before we got our hands on the R350.
Whilst it is given the name of SMOOTHVISION 2.1, we see no discernable differences from the 6292 drivers.
The same applies here.
You still get the same tweaking for your desktop display.
And the excellent Hydravision-powered multi-display options are present. The Radeon 9800 Pro contains dual 10-bit per channel 400MHz RAMDACs, giving screen resolutions of up to 2048x1536 @ 85Hz. I won't go into massive detail here, except to say that it's a doddle to setup, even for a novice user.
2D quality in Windows, whether via DVI or VGA to an 18.1" TFT was exemplary. ATi are known for producing cards with excellent 2D quality. I couldn't tell the difference between the image quality portrayed by the Radeon 9700 Pro or 9800 Pro; they're both excellent. DVD playback, too, was excellent with no noisy fan spinning up when a media file was initiated.
