Review: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB

• AMD Athlon XP3200+ 'Barton' Processor, 2200MHz, 512KB L2 cache, 11 x 200MHz, Socket A
• Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 motherboard, nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, Socket A
• 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 memory, CL2, 6-2-2, DDR400 on the Asus motherboard

• ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
• Hercules ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
• Sapphire Atlantis ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
• GeForce FX5600 Ultra v2

• Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148 w SP1
• ATI CATALYST 3.4
• NVIDIA nForce 2.41 platform drivers
• DirectX 9.0 Runtime

• 3DMark 2001SE v330
• UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
• Comanche 4 Demo
• Serious Sam 2 Demo
• Quake3 v1.30
• Codecreatures Benchmark Pro

So a Hercules board to provide the regular Radeon 9800 Pro numbers, complete with its blue LED and half a tonne of copper (review soon). My trusty Sapphire gives the 9800's something to embarass. Or will they?

As always, each result is the result of a 3 test run, with the top and bottom results discarded and the middle one kept. If the 3 sampled results aren't within 2% of each other, they are all discarded and the 3 samples taken again. 6 benchmarks with 3 settings to be sampled per benchmark, per card. Blatant copy and paste there from my 9600 Pro article.

I'll stick to the same format as with the 9600 Pro review, four graphs per page including the PD graph at the end, one benchmark per page. Finally, there's one extra test compared to the 9600 article, right at the end.

Before we go crazy with the graphs, CATALYST 3.4 was essential equipment this time around, so all 3 cards used that driver set. Previous drivers are unable to recognise the upper 128MB of the 256MB card so it appears crippled.

Buckle up.