ATi Radeon 9800 Pro

ATi is bringing out their new card, the Radeon 9800 Pro, and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews. Here's a few: Hothardware.com, Hexus.net, HardOCP.com, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, Extremetech, PCWorld.

Comments

Another Review

[MjDascombe]

As if you didn't have enough - This one is quite good.

Anandtech

[Anonymous Coward]

The Anandtech's article shows interesting effects when underclocking the 9800 to same values of 9700. Performance is equal without AA or Anisotropic filtering, but with filtering 9800 is 10 to 30% faster.

Re:Anandtech

[Rushuru]

if you use a Gecko browser (mozilla phoenix galeon), you can get rid of those annoying flash ads by using a special 'userContent.css'

Put that file in the chrome subdirectory of you mozilla profile, and all the flash ads on anandtech & other sites should be gone, without breaking legitimate flash usage (stupid games, awkward menus, 900kB site intros, etc.)

Re:Independent review sites?

[stroudie]

For what its worth, the Register also has a review.

They may not be any more independent, but at least they're honest...

Re:Independent review sites?

[UberLord]

As an admin for DriverHeaven the only kinda freebies we get for reviewing products is the product itself - usually on loan.

Payola? Damn - I really wish there was some!

BTW, here's our ATI 9800 Pro review ;)
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r350/index.htm

Re:For ATI developers: Linux support of R200 Model

[Elendil]

From XFree86 4.3.0 release notes:

2.1. Video Driver Enhancements

* ATI Radeon 9x00 2D support added, and 3D support added for the Radeon 8500, 9000, 9100, and M9. The 3D support for the Radeon now includes hardware TCL.

Looks like pretty good support to me... I really prefer that to a binary-only driver such as NVidia's.

Re:I have two questions.

[dnadig]

One of the great myths propogated by the motion picture industry is that your eye can't detect changes in framerates over X (30 is usually the number tossed around, or 24). It's hooey. The rods and cones in your retina all refresh at different rates, and not in synch with each other. Your eyeball is not a digital system, its an analog one.

I, and most hardcore gamers, can not only tell the difference between 45 and 100 fps, but it makes a very real difference in my response times. I simply do better if I play at a high resolution, high contrast, with a high framerate. So much so that I will tweak the settings in any game to be able to run the max resolution at the highest framerate, even if I have to turn off the pretty stuff and kill my sound quality to do it.

As for AA, no I can't tell you whether I am looking at 16XAA or 8XAA without seeing them side by side. I can however tell you instantly whether I have at least 4Xaa and I am in a flight sim (where it REALLY makes a difference)...

Re:ahem

[Zathrus]

Maybe you couldn't get one if you were in Siberia at the long end of a dog run for post, but for the rest of the world you could get one without any issues back in September 2002 - as long as you were willing to pay $400.

Or, of course, you could just assume that this is all made up. Note the 3rd review, written in early September by some teenage fanboy.

Hell, the ATI AIW 9700 Pro has been available since November.

Balanced Review from The Register

[tolan-b]

here
quote:

Unless ATI can manage some major optimisations for the 9800 over coming weeks, before boards become available we're unlikely to be sold on their latest must-have technology