FIC Radeon 9800 Pro - A closer look
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FIC ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (R98P) Review
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL:
There are a few features of this card physically that in my opinion warranted specific mentioning.
The Memory:
As you can see, FIC has outfitted this card with 128MB of Samsung K4D24323RA - GC2A. A quick search on Samsung's webpage reveals that this is the good stuff.
Thinking this sounded familiar I took a quick look at our OCS R9700 Pro Level III review from earlier this year and sure enough, it uses this same memory. Already knowing the stellar performance, both overclocked and stock , we received from the memory on that card, I was VERY pleased to see this memory sitting on our FIC 9800 Pro.
The Power Input:
On thing that simply put always bugged me to death about the R9700's we've seen is the floppy drive power connection it required to run. Here you can see the connector that was on our 9700 Pro.
On this FIC Radeon 9800 Pro they have moved to using a full size four pin Molex, as you can see below..
Not only are there more four pin molex connectors available in the average (or even not so average) computer case, but it's a much easier outlet to plug and unplug from. Every time I've unconnected the floppy style on an R9700 I've always had a sick feeling I was about to break something. That is not the case with this 9800 as it plugs and unplugs smoothly as we are used to this style in everything from hard drives to case fans.
The Cooling:
Above you've seen two great features, now time for a not so great feature. The default cooling on this is not exactly impressive. I know I've said I like a reference design but that same like doesn't always carry over into cooling, and this is no exception. You'll see that FIC has gone with the reference ATI active cooler on the R9800 chipset and has no cooling at all on the memory.
I will tell you up front that their cooling choices seemingly did not get in the way of performance as we achieved very acceptable results, but it warranted mentioning. The one bright side to this is that the card begs for some custom memory cooling and a new chipset cooler, and come on, who doesn't love putting their personal touch on their hardware? :)
BENCHMARKS:
Alright, I can hear ya, all the details are fine and dandy but you're ready for the benchmarks aren't ya? I won't keep ya waiting as I am the first to admit that the package doesn't mean jack if it doesn't have the performance.
The Test System:
We decided to use a logical test system for this card. We began to benchmark this on our 800MHz bus Pentium4 3.0GHz then thought better of it. We are going to use a system that is a little more "within reach" of the average tweaker out there. We'll be using an affordable Canterwood chipset based board and our more affordable Pentium 4 2.6c CPU.
DFI PRO875 Canterwood Motherboard
Intel Pentium4 2.6c (800MHz bus) CPU
2x256MB OCZ Platinum DDR memory
WindowsXP Pro (Service Pack 1) OS
This FIC Radeon 9800 Pro and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro to compare it to.
Catalyst 3.4 drivers for all testing
The CPU was left at the default speed of 2.6GHz and the memory was run at 1/1 (200MHz) using 2.5/7/3/3 memory timings. In the 3.4 Catalyst drivers there is a slide bar at the top of the OpenGL and Direct3D tabs. For the purposes of this review we ran most benchmarks at three settings. Optimal Performance (all the way to the left), Balanced (centered), and Optimal Quality (all the way to the right). We did this to show results across the board in the maximum number of settings that end users may utilize.
We are going to run several 3D applications, some real world games, some synthetic benches based on real world 3D engines, and some straight up synthetic benchmarks. We had contemplated leaving the synthetic benchmarks out completely but decided against it. Whether it's right or wrong a large portion of this community runs 3DMark01 as a braggin' rights tool, and we felt it would be a disservice to you to leave it out. I will say to take the 3DMark01 score and doubtlessly the 3DMark03 scores with a grain of salt, but they are included for your enjoyment and information if you care to view them. The biggest complaint about the new 3DMark03 is it's cross platform comparisons. Since we are comparing two ATI cards here the differences SHOULD (and that IS the operative word) should be card performance driven.
Let's do it...
Unreal Tournament 2003:
Unreal Tournament '03 has basically taken the place of QuakeIII as the first person shooter benchmarking standard. When modern video cards started pushing the average frames per second to over 3-400 frames it was apparent that it was time for a new standard. We ran UT03 in 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 in all three driver quality settings.
DM Antalus Map:
When running in the performance and balanced settings the Radeon 9700 kept up decently with our FIC R9800, but when the resolution was cranked to 1600x1200 and the quality settings were used, the R9800 walked away handedly from the 9700. The 10FPS advantage or so by the 9800 at the less stressful settings is nice, but what it does when the screws are tightened is downright impressive. To run 57 frames per second at 1600x1200 with optimal quality on the driver settings is just phenomenal..
Hit the "Next" button below and let's see if we can't get this card to show some weakness....
Next: Benchmarking >>
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