Review: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB

The amount of shaders being executed and the mammoth amount of textures used per scene, mean that 256MB memory should become very useful when IQ is enabled and the resolution turned up as the board struggles for memory to put all its edge samples and aniso samples before it has to punt them to AGP memory. Baseline first, as usual.

Nearly 15% quicker than 9700 Pro, it's all down to the clocks and slightly better memory bandwidth efficiency on R350. Both those boards bunch up, scared, in preparation of what's about to come. IQ on now.

Wait for the PD graph before commenting. Here's the same test, just at 1600x1200. 1.92 million pixels, each needing 32-bits of colour data and that's after edge sampling for the anti aliasing has been done and after aniso filtering is done on the textures that need it. 7.68MB just for the final pixel output is fairly scary, given everying thing else that goes on before that happens.

All cards choke to death, here's the PD graph so we can analyse things a little better.

There we have it, proof the 256MB board does have a use. The performance drop when we move to 1600x1200 hurts a lot lot less on the big board than it does on the other too. We had to engineer this situation and it's not real world, but it gives you an insight into just what you have to be doing to your graphics card to need all that memory. Does that bode well for our conclusion?