ATI Radeon 9800 Graphic's card

[Richie]

MY current graphics card is an old NVidia GForce 3 with 64Mb .... and it doen't run the newer games at all.. ie Battlefeild 2,
It can only just run Halo but is a little jumpy
My next door neighbour swears by the ATI Radeon 9800,
So is this graphic card any good ?

my system is a AMD Athlon XP2600+ running 1.25Gb of RAM.

Cheers for any info.

[rictus01]

if I'm not mistaken the 9800 comes in both 128mb & 256mb flavours, (think it came out in about 2003) and is a few years old now, you can get better with more on board memory.

If however money is a factor them it'll be alot better than your current one.

Cheers Mark.

[Richie]

Thank you, that is the answer I was looking for. :wink:




now ... open tab to Ebay , search ATI 9800.... cheapest first... :wink:

[kwak zzr]

i'm having the same trouble with my nvidia fx5200 :? it was great but its old hat now and i really need to upgrade.

[valleyboy]

There are different versions of the 9800... You have the bog standard 9800, then the 9800 Pro, then the 9800 XT

differences are clock speeds for the GPU and memory... the XL is the top one, ATI and NVidia use differnet naming methods... XL on Nvidia stuff tends to be the cheap nasty stuff, ATI used it for their higher clocked stuff...

so if you can get a 9800 XT, you are sorted.... I have the 9800 Pro... bought it when it was first out for a whopping £300 :? now my PC is just about capable of running the games I want to play.. and its an XP3200 with 1Gb of 3200 RAM.... must get faster! :lol:

[454697819]

i have the radeon 9600 ati whatsamacallit and its great, bit low on memory but still great , running AMD 64 3000 & 1 giga ram..

[Marshall]

i was runnin a 9600xt and that ran BF2 and CS with no problems, unfortunatley it blew up, and im now running a 9550 which ive over clocked, and they all still run, so a 9800 is a good card especialy the XT version

[_drummer_]

It all depends on how much you have to spend really as it's all relative, especially if you dont want to upgrade your your mobo (& cpu, ram etc) to PCI-E.
I have a 9800 Pro & it's a good card but it's a low end card (bought mine a few years ago after they became bargains). It will begin to struggle, & you'll be turning some of the eye candy down in newer games. If you can find one cheap it will play BF2, others like Oblivion, X3 etc pretty well but personally I would look at other ati cards if I was buying now. If you do go for one they were available in 128 & 256 bit forms aswell as 128Mb & 256Mb cards, so make sure it's 256 bit whatever RAMs on it.

HTH

[Heed]

The 9800Pro is a decent card for the money. By todays standards it's not amazing but I was running a similar rig to yourself and could comfortably run HL2 and run FEAR and Quake 4 with the graphics around medium. So for around £60 it's not a bad card. The stock 9800 isn't much good. Also 128MB or 256MB of memory isn't going to make that much difference on that level of GFX card.

[_drummer_]

Just as an example for 70 ish quid you could get a X1600 PRO 256Mb, better core & 4 extra pipelines amongst other updates. Just search around & use hardware guides. :wink:

[northwind]

There's an AGP 7600GS and GT I think, not sure what they cost but the PCI-R 7600GT is around a hundred pounds these days and eats the old 9800 for breakfast... It'll play any game now out, and at reasonable res too.

AGP's going to limit your choices a lot, mind, and increase your costs. Not to mention that AGP cards generally underperform compared to their PCI-E equivalents.

[SoulKiss]

I never buy ATI, but thats because their Linux drivers are useless compared to the Nvidia ones.

I always assume that my GFX cards will end up in a Linux box at some point - has been the case so far.

My Laptop has a Geforce 7300MX equivilent (they gave it a more business sounding name for the laptop model.

This will quite happily run Guild Wars, UT2K4 and WoW all at max res (1440x900).

My main gaming rig (currently awaiting a new mother board under warranty) has 2x7800GTX in SLI mode - which plays all of the above but at 1920x1200 :)

David

[mysteryjimbo]

This will quite happily run Guild Wars, UT2K4 and WoW all at max res (1440x900).

My main gaming rig (currently awaiting a new mother board under warranty) has 2x7800GTX in SLI mode - which plays all of the above but at 1920x1200 :)

David

Not exactly taxing games though are they? I could have listed better to boast with :)

SLI or crossfire doesnt justify double costs IMO. Perhaps for future upgrades i'd consider it and plan it in to the pc build. As 2 years down the line it'd be cheaper to bung in an older graphics card than new top spec one.

I'd be more impressed if you had the final release of Vista. :wink:

[mysteryjimbo]

I'd be more impressed if you had the final release of Vista. :wink:

PS i do and it works rather well. MSDN is great.

[Damoulianos Marios]

Whatever card you get, be sure it supports DirectX10. Without it you won't be able to play Gears of War or Crysis or any other next-gen game anywhere near the screenshots we see. DirectX10 is a huge leap forward concerning graphics technology and comes with Windows Vista. I don't know if this particular card supports it or even if there are any cards out there yet that can do it but if not, a couple of months waiting will surely be worth it.

[northwind]

Whatever card you get, be sure it supports DirectX10. Without it you won't be able to play Gears of War or Crysis or any other next-gen game anywhere near the screenshots we see. DirectX10 is a huge leap forward concerning graphics technology and comes with Windows Vista. I don't know if this particular card supports it or even if there are any cards out there yet that can do it but if not, a couple of months waiting will surely be worth it.

Don't agree with that. The only cards that support it so far are the brand new Nvidias, and they're going to be very expensive for a good while to come- and unlikely ever to come out in AGP form, for that matter. Direct X 10 is Vista only too, so it's not going to be an issue unless he replaces his whole OS- so we're talking huge expense here. I believe Halo 2 is the only game currently announced that will be DirectX 10 only.

TBH, a PC running a GForce 3 is almost certainly going to be pretty old- processor, ram, and mobo infrasctructure are all likely to be limiting factors on this buy.

[SoulKiss]

This will quite happily run Guild Wars, UT2K4 and WoW all at max res (1440x900).

My main gaming rig (currently awaiting a new mother board under warranty) has 2x7800GTX in SLI mode - which plays all of the above but at 1920x1200 :)

David

Not exactly taxing games though are they? I could have listed better to boast with :)

SLI or crossfire doesnt justify double costs IMO. Perhaps for future upgrades i'd consider it and plan it in to the pc build. As 2 years down the line it'd be cheaper to bung in an older graphics card than new top spec one.

I'd be more impressed if you had the final release of Vista. :wink:

Nope it doesn't but hey, I built the system off the back of a redundancy payout, so wasn't really watching the price - spent the same as an SV on puter bits :)

As for Vista, its what I am planning on sticking on that machine when I get it replaced - from MY MSDN :P Tho I would rather have LINUX if only I could play what I want on it :)

Those games were mentioned from the Laptop point of view, which when it isn't a gaming laptop, isnt bad really :)

[ethariel]

Slightly off topic BUT, iirc Vista will be 2 instalations EVER from a key, so if you UG you Mo Board thats it forever.

Kind of crap really if you ask me.

[northwind]

Slightly off topic BUT, iirc Vista will be 2 instalations EVER from a key, so if you UG you Mo Board thats it forever.


Yep, ridiculous isn't it. And how they plan to tell the difference between a reinstall after a hardware upgrade, and a reinstall after a fatal error or hardware failure I don't know. Having said that, I believe the current Windows licence is technically only for one machine, defined as the motherboard. I recently replaced a soundcard and found I had to reactivate windows, and because there'd been a hardware change I had to phone Microsoft to do it- plain daft, that.

[mysteryjimbo]

Slightly off topic BUT, iirc Vista will be 2 instalations EVER from a key, so if you UG you Mo Board thats it forever.


Yep, ridiculous isn't it. And how they plan to tell the difference between a reinstall after a hardware upgrade, and a reinstall after a fatal error or hardware failure I don't know. Having said that, I believe the current Windows licence is technically only for one machine, defined as the motherboard. I recently replaced a soundcard and found I had to reactivate windows, and because there'd been a hardware change I had to phone Microsoft to do it- plain daft, that.


Both wrong. Been reviewed and changed by MS. :)

[northwind]

Both wrong. Been reviewed and changed by MS. :)

If it has, it was within the last fortnight... I had to go through a pretty lengthy process on the phone to establish that my licence was still valid, telling them what components I'd replaced etc. Complete pain in the bum. They initially told me that my copy had been reactivated too often and I needed a new one- it was only after a lot of arguing that they gave me the code, since it was such an insignificant upgrade, and the last reinstall was caused by a hardware failure.

[Damoulianos Marios]

I believe Halo 2 is the only game currently announced that will be DirectX 10 only.

May be true but all games currently under development have as their main API DirectX10, so in my eyes investment in an expensive DirectX9 only card is more like a waste of money. What's more, backward compatibility with DirectX9 in any of those games means graphics scaled down to nowhere near those fabulous screenies we are all seeing in games sites/magazines- has anyone seen any Crysis videos? They'll blow you apart, I can tell you, and it would only be a shame to shell out serious buck in new hardware without being able to get to the "kudos".

Anyway, since the GeForce 3 is indeed pretty useless now, maybe the best solution for our friend is for a cheap replacement card that'll last for a year or so, until DirectX10 capable cards reach the "affordable" range of prices. That's what I'd do...

[northwind]

Anyway, since the GeForce 3 is indeed pretty useless now, maybe the best solution for our friend is for a cheap replacement card that'll last for a year or so, until DirectX10 capable cards reach the "affordable" range of prices. That's what I'd do...

Yes, me too... If you're after a high-end card now then an 8800 is still a decent choice, since they outperform everything else in the price range, but it's going to be a long time before there's a DX10 card in this price range.

[mysteryjimbo]

Both wrong. Been reviewed and changed by MS. :)

If it has, it was within the last fortnight... I had to go through a pretty lengthy process on the phone to establish that my licence was still valid, telling them what components I'd replaced etc. Complete pain in the bum. They initially told me that my copy had been reactivated too often and I needed a new one- it was only after a lot of arguing that they gave me the code, since it was such an insignificant upgrade, and the last reinstall was caused by a hardware failure.

Hit the news about 2 weeks ago and a press release came out 2-3 days after.

[northwind]

Top banana... Never saw a thing about that. I might have been the last person to be hassled under the old regime then :)

[Damoulianos Marios]

With such policies, suddenly the word "warez" doesn't sound too... illegitimate. For god's sake, what the **ll is going on with them, just if they haven't got enough money already.

[Richie]

Just got my ATI 9800 PRO 128mb graphics card (fleebay 23.99 & p+p) , installed and just ran BF2 for the first time... OMG :shock: makes my old card seam CACK... and looking at the price of them on fleebay it is.

So just setting myself up with Unreal Tournament 2003 again... in most heavey graphic mode...

:D I'm one happy Bunny now...

[northwind]

It's great, isn't it... When i got Homeworld 2, it'd just barely play, in ssomething ridiculous like 620x400... I just dug it out last week and what a pleaseure to just turn everything up to the top :)

[Richie]

Just a quick question...
Why did I have to re-Activate Windows XP Pro when I changed my Grapgic card ?

[northwind]

Because Bill Gates is a ****. I had to reactivate it when I installed my soundcard, FFS, took me 15 minutes on the phone.

[21QUEST]

Because Bill Gates is a ****. I had to reactivate it when I installed my soundcard, FFS, took me 15 minutes on the phone.

'****' for '****' ? :? :lol:


Cheers
Ben

[northwind]

No, that'd be "an ****" not "a ****". Though he's one of those as well :)

[valleyboy]

Im thinking of upgrading from my 9800Pro to an 7600GT.. which will cost about £100 bucks... its available in AGP format... I cant be arsed to upgrade my PC now... too much money and hassle these days, as well as I would need a new copy of XP if I did build a new one.. do'h :( though tempted to get another 1Gb of RAM, but I run 2x512 in dual channel mode at the moment, and not sure if I want to sacrifice that to put a 1Gb stick in the 3rd slot...

[northwind]

7600GT's a good card. Not really worth it for PCI-E since a 7900GS isn't so much more, mind.