Review: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB

This is my favourite benchmark these days, graphics card wise. Baseline first so we can see what's going on.

Nothing really of note, bar a slower, lesser R350 going less than half a percentage point quicker than its big brother. IQ now, to turn up the heat.

The bigger board takes the lead due to clock assist. Lots of pixels now, plus IQ. This is the scenario most likely to show the 256MB board in a good light. Keep an eye on 9700 Pro too.

9700 Pro's result is worth a look since it appears to drop the same percentage of performance as the R350 cards. The faster card is the fastest, quite unexpectedly.

The PD graph says otherwise, R300 loses more performance as things are turned on and turned up, compared to the newer silicon. While there's a difference in the move to IQ enabled when we compare the R350 boards, is it down to the extra memory? It has to be, although it's not much. Our Antalus demo must have just enough going on texture wise, for the board to swap data out to AGP memory just that little bit less on the 256MB board. But it's super marginal.

So, finally, the on test we really have that can destroy performance on cards like this. The fearsome Code Creatures.