ATI 9800 Brands

[sodapopinski]

Someone help, please. I've decided to leave the dark side and come over to ATI. I'm just curious, what's the differences between the ATI 9800's and the ones made my Hercules and Gigabyte etc. Just curious, as the ATI ones seem much cheaper. Are the brand name ones optimized differently, or is it more expensive simply because of the name? Thanks for all your help.

 

[Cassius105]

only difference is the HSF and the software bundled with the card

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Very little generally, though i would steer clear of Powercolor... I had a bad experience with that brand. Questionable build quality.

OEM ATi, Sapphire and Gigabyte are all good brands.

And get a 128mb version... the 256mb ones are far too costly and give very little performance benefit.

<b>I am not a AMD fanboy.
I am not a Via fanboy.
I am not a ATI fanboy.
I AM a performance fanboy.
And a low price fanboy.
Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.</b>

 

[ltj311]

I got the Sapphire 9800 oem and it works brilliantly.

--

"I'm a rageaholic."
(<i>starts crying</i>)
"I just can't live without rageahol." - Homer Simpson

 

[scottchen]

I got Sapphire OEM overclockability is excellent.

-Intel PIV 2.4C @ 3.84G -Asus P4P800 -OCZ Gold 2x256 3700EL memory @ 256mhz 2.5-3-3-7 -Sapphire 9800pro @ 490/780 -SB audigy -80G Maxtor Diamond Plus9 Ultra ATA-133 hdd -450 Enermax PSU

 

[jmecor]

hercules

<font color=red>If your nose <b>RUNS</b>, and feet <b>SMELL</b>.
Then you must be born <b>UPSIDE DOWN</b>.</font color=red>

 

[RRAMJET]

I would stay with nvidia as Doom 3 is really going to play a lot better on the fx range. Ati are not using the 13um technology and in DX9 games such as doom3 the cheaply produced Ati chipset will suffer. The recent HL2 that was made with Ati on the sideline has yet to prove anything so dont jump boat to soon.

If he doesn't die, he'll get help!!!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

wrong.
The R9600 series is based on a 0.13 micron core.
As for the R9700/9800 series... well they dont really need one as yet. Heat output of their 0.15 cores is good and they overclock well.

"cheaply produced"

ummm ok... define cheaply produced, and supporting evidence please. Im really curious about this claim!

And the HL2 benchmarks showed alot to me...
They showed that the ati offerings were far more efficient at DX9, even wehn they put alot of time and effort into optimising it for the NV3x.
It doesnt make <b>ANY</b> commercial sense to rule out 50% or more of sales by producing a game that only runs on ATi cards alone.

And its not just HL2.
The Halo beta and The Tombraider game also experienced the same sort of performance issues, As did aquamark3, though to a lesser extent.

Yes the Det 50's did improve things, but at the sacrifice of image quality.

Dunno about you but i LIKE my image quality.

Question: How many more bechmarks do you need before you are convinced taht the NV3x architecture has some fundamental issues that need to be fixed?

<b>I am not a AMD fanboy.
I am not a Via fanboy.
I am not a ATI fanboy.
I AM a performance fanboy.
And a low price fanboy.
Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.</b>

 

[jmecor]

if the Ati Radeon 9600 Pro performed better in HL2 than Nvidia, so it could also be that Ati Radeon 9600 Pro could also perform nicely with Doom 3.

<font color=red>If your nose <b>RUNS</b>, and feet <b>SMELL</b>.
Then you must be born <b>UPSIDE DOWN</b>.</font color=red>

 

[RRAMJET]

MMM, yes i see the benchmarks on HL2 and tombraider but both games were made with Ati cards in mind and the makers realise nvidia will more easily adapt their cards to fix any clitches due to their depth and ability to adapt mainy due to their huge resources on hand. So at the end of the day the game is optimised for both makers within a small degree of error. What will be interesting is how Ati handle any fixes needed when games come out that are made in conjunction with Nvidia. I think this will be the real test, if Ati have the resources and financial ability to adjust. Although i think we are going to see more of this optimization of games to one maker in the future, i think it is going to test both nvidia and Ati equally. Chances are though game producers will keep Ati in mind more often than not knowing nvidia have the ability to adjust. I just wonder how much money is changing hands between game makers and graphics card makers to give us the impression one is better than the other. I suppose it will take another 6 to 12 months to see how it all pans out but i'm guessing nvidia will dominate at the end of the day through their driver optimisation. I'm just a little untrust worthy of Ati i suppose from their past lines of graphics cards, yet these new one are looking slightly better.

If he doesn't die, he'll get help!!!

 

[sodapopinski]

Thanks for all your help.