So what does the 9800 Pro have to offer?

[saturnotaku]

I'm seeing places start to take pre-orders for the Radeon 9800 Pro. According to CompUSA, the Visiontek cards are scheduled to ship on April 1. So what does this card have to offer over the R300 line? How much more performance is there to be realized from this updated chipset?

[Myrmecophagavir]

Well you could do the rounds!

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1794

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

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDM5 and http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDQ4

Etc.

In a nutshell? Slightly faster clock speeds, slightly more efficient antialiasing, f-buffer. Oh and don't forget the rumoured 256 MB version with much higher clock speeds.

[GlowStick]

Well if you dont want to read the reviews i can try to sum it up.

It has Improvements over the R300 with better AA and AF Tweaks.

Anand downclocked the R350 to R300 speedds and noticed gains varing from like 10% to 30% with AA and AF tests.

And it also is Clocked HIGHER than the Radeon 9700Pro so that is allways good.

and has the F-Buffer witch dose stuff and has all the Features of the 9700Pro plus the new ones.

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

Yeah you know... That F-Buffer, the one that does stuff.

[ricercar]

http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=227&page=11

The MSI Geforce FX 5800 Ultra ... beats the
9800 PRO in a fair few benchmarks. It's the fastest card out
there...

[nin_fragile14]

HardOCP's analysis of the 9800 Pro vs. the 9700 Pro wasn't as impressive as anandtech's. Most gains, when clocked at the same speeds, were 3-10% at most.

[muzz]

Originally posted by ricercar
http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=227&page=11

The MSI Geforce FX 5800 Ultra ... beats the
9800 PRO in a fair few benchmarks. It's the fastest card out
there...

As long as you dont use AA/AF at acceptable levels....... and it SHOULD..... it's already overclocked!!
OC the 9800 and see what happens then.....

The FXUltra is not that bad, but results like those DON'T tell the WHOLE story.

[-=DVS=-]

So what does the 9800 Pro have to offer?

Well main reason for its release is as advertised Unlimited Pixel Shader Instructions useing that F-Buffer bla bla....

R9700Pro does alot of PS
GefarFX does even more 1000+
R9800 does infinite number :p

Speed is about same between all cards give or take few % depending what and how you play games.

[StealthHawk]

considering that there are hacked drivers for the r9700Pro which enable driver optimizations made for the r9800 which can give ~10% or so increased performance with FSAA/AF, I would say that the r9800Pro doesn't bring much in terms of performance over the r9700Pro ATM.

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
considering that there are hacked drivers for the r9700Pro which enable driver optimizations made for the r9800 which can give ~10% or so increased performance with FSAA/AF, I would say that the r9800Pro doesn't bring much in terms of performance over the r9700Pro ATM.

Can you gimme a link where they test that? Cuz i clicked on a link that from 3dgameman a while ago saying that they tried it and found no increase on their 9700p

[StealthHawk]

well in this thread some guy tested 3dmark2001 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9162

[ChrisRay]

IMOP the Radeon 9800 pro was one of the worst rehashes of a current card,

Kinda like a Geforce 3 Ti 500

[Nazgul]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
IMOP the Radeon 9800 pro was one of the worst rehashes of a current card,

Kinda like a Geforce 3 Ti 500

It isn't even close to a GF3 Ti. The GF3 Ti was the exact same chip at a different clockspeed. The new "features" were simply things that were finally fixed in the drivers(as evidenced by the fact that the new drivers also enabled those features in the original GF3's). The R350 does not represent a significant change from the R300 architecture, it's fundamentally the same design, just tweaked a bit. But ATI never claimed anything different. Remember, their campain was "are you ready for more?", not "are you ready for something new?".

[GlowStick]

for some kinda related news, CompUSA pushed back their ship date grrr.
bastages!

[Dazz]

And don't forget full OpenGL 2.0 support (R300 & NV30 supports 1,4)

[Skuzzy]

Well, ATI manage to make it lighter (smaller heat sink) and quieter than the 9700Pro.
It appears to have quite a bit more room for overclocking than the 9700Pro as well.
Power consumption with higher than 9700Pro clock rates is lower on the 9800Pro vs the 9700Pro.
And it performs slightly better than the 9700Pro.

All in all, I would say it was a pretty good refresh.

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by Dazz
And don't forget full OpenGL 2.0 support (R300 & NV30 supports 1,4)

The R350core dose not support OGL 2.0
that is marketing talking. It has alot of the feasutres OGL2 will use (so dose the NV30 and R300) but if they add any new features it wont really matter, it will still work with it.

[Lezmaka]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Well, ATI manage to make it lighter (smaller heat sink) and quieter than the 9700Pro.
It appears to have quite a bit more room for overclocking than the 9700Pro as well.
Power consumption with higher than 9700Pro clock rates is lower on the 9800Pro vs the 9700Pro.

That would be due to them switching over to copper.

[Hellbinder]

Well... The 9800pro is cool for people with GF3 and older cards. But as a 9700pro owner i just cant get excited about a card like that when i am currently getting over 70 FPS in BF 1942 with 4x FSAA +16x AF... know what I mean?

I AM however going to get the 9800pro 256 card. Which will be a nice big boost in performance over my current card. It has now been confirmed at 400/460 for the FIC. And i have seen indications that the Powercolor card will be 435/460 sooo...

Considering that the even the Nv35 is now rumored for release at 400/400.... ;) i get the feeling that the 9800pro 256 is going to again win the FSAA+AF tests by at least a small magin. But it should be a dern good fight.

[schuey74]

Well, that 256 Meg version does sound impressive and having a choice between that and the NV35 in the June timeframe is a can't lose situation for the consumer! I hope people realize how good the competition between ATI & Nvidia is for us. There is no way we'd be looking at cards at the levels of the NV35 & 256 Meg Radeons this year.

Now I can't see getting excited about the 9800 Pro. The first reviews were quite deceiving as they showed big gains in AF/AA, which turned out to be, for the most part, driver optimizations. I'd have to say that it would be crazy to pay $400 for a 9800 Pro when you can pick a 9700 Pro for $270 and most will do the same clocks.

Just to be clear..........the 9800 Pro is a Great card, but at 1.5 times the price ($270 x 1.5 = $405) of the 9700 Pro, it just makes zero sense.

If you want a High-end card today, your only logical choice is a 9700 Pro. If you want to spend $400, then wait two months for ATI & Nvidia to give you a real reason to!

[saturnotaku]

I think my next video card upgrade will have full OpenGL 2.0 support. Be it the NV35/40 or R400 (or later). I can't really get excited about the 9800 even the 256 mb version, considering the card I have no is performing more than acceptably. And it should be even better when the latest round of Catalyst drivers comes out.

[ibGoodEnuf]

Sat,

Knowing as I do how you so love synthetic benchmarks, I respectfully offer my signature as an answer to your question.

[RobHague]

You guys seen this?

http://www.rivastation.com/news/news_de.htm#1050373774

Interesting...