ATI Radeon 9800 (R350) - Thoughts and opinions?

I have read some reviews on the card - and to me - it just seems like a GAP / time filler until their release their R400 cards... nothing overly impressive, but still a nice looking card.

Supposedly the 256mb version will be called the 9900.


Some review sites (thnx lazerin)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1794

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDM5

http://tech-report.com/reviews/2003...ro/index.x?pg=1

http://www.bjorn3d.com/_preview.php?articleID=237

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files...on9800pro.shtml

http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=520

http://simhq.com/simhq3/hardware/previews/radeon_9800/

http://www.nordichardware.com/revie.../Radeon9800Pro/

http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware...9800pro/001.htm

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r350/index.htm

http://www.rage3d.com/previews/r350/

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r350/

http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=220&page=1

http://www.extremetech.com/article2...3,917575,00.asp

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030306/index.html






Enjoy nd let me know what you think!

frankly i am just glad to see ATI will finally have 256mb cards out as early as April! (next month)

Also, i love how ATi does not need a vacum to cool a card more powerful then Nividia:


9800 and an FX

Good card if you are planning to upgrade from an older card,

But if you have a GF4 or 9700 pro I would wait a while

^^^^

exactly - really no need to if you already have one - unless u got a hole burning in your pocket

Since ym friend bought a video camera - may keep an eye out for when they relase a 256 AIW card

Nope, that was the rumour going around though. The 256MB will be a 9800 model.

I'm guessing the 9900 model numbers will be kept for their next big thing. As mentioned, the 9800 doesn't bring a huge increase over the 9700 (I think it ranges between 5% and 10%), so I doubt many will be rushing to buy it if they have these cards already.

The one good thing about it is that it should push down the price of the 9700 cards a bit. Good news for me, as that's what I'm looking to buy next

I read somewhere that the 256MB version will be using DDR II not original DDR, dunno what truth there is in that though.

As for prices coming down, yeah - would be nice, but what would be really nice is if 9700 AIWs eventually got released in this country!!! The longer it is until they're released, the longer it it will be before there's any price drop in them.

Another thing that sucks is that Tyan apparently aren't making an AIW version of their 9700 Pro with hardware monitoring & heatsink covering not just GPU but RAM on both sides as well.

You can order the 9700 Pro AIW from Komplett. It's not cheap, but it is available.

Yeah, as a pre-order. & I agree about the price, for that much you'd think they could include the remote!

yeppers - i just read that a few times, the 9900 is supposed to be out in late second quater

and will have 256mb and DDR-II - but no details of clock speeds or anything,

Frankly i want to see the 256mb AIW cards - can not wait for one of those - that i would buy!

well going on the delay between when Radeon cards have been released in USA/Canada & when they've become available over here, I reckon there ought to be 256MB AIWs over here by oh... late 2004-ish! We still haven't got the 128MB AIW 9700Pro yet! [except on pre-order] I'm really PO'd @ ATI for not releasing cards they made themselves in this country, thereby making us wait for other companies [AFAIK Hercules & Saphire are the only ones that will be releasing AIW variants] to get around to releasing their products.

When the price drops enough, I may look at a 97/9500 Pro card from Hercules or Tyan since I like the blue PCB they use.

Brian, if you don't want an AIW, I reckon the Tyan Tachyon 9700 Pro-M would be your best bet.

ATI is allowing other companies to make AIW cards? that is a suprise.

Wierd how they would not want to get their cards world wide!!!

You can't get genuine ATI 9xxx [AIW or otherwise] outside US/Canada AFAIK. You certainly can't get them in this country.

In this country you can get 9xxx series cards made by Connect3D, Saphire, Hercules, PowerColor, Crucial, & Gigabyte. However, out of those, the only 1s making AIW variants are Saphire & Hercules.