FIC Radeon 9800 Pro - Conclusion
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FIC ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (R98P) Review
(Overclocking continued...)
3DMark2003 (Build 330):
Again we see an almost exactly 10% increase in the overall score. Our default score was 5596 and we gained exactly 549 marks. Looking at the project details of both runs shows the same scaling that we see in the overall scores pretty much. Again, take these scores with a grain of salt, but fun to look at all the same.
JUST FOR FUN:
Just to show you a quick example of what this card can do when you put the whole system behind it I went ahead and overclocked the CPU as well as the video card to run a quick 3dMark01. The 2.6c CPU was at 273MHz FSB (3.51GHz) and the video card was at the speeds indicated in the overclocking section. Driver performance bar was slid to "optimal performance" but no other tweaking was done to achieve this score.
Both this Radeon 9800 Pro and system have a lot of headroom left, but this is just a quick run to show the potential.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
This is the part where I'm supposed to ramble on with words of wisdom about this card, I don't know that in this particular case it is necessary. The Radeon 9800 Pro from FIC showed us two things basically. 1) FIC has put together a quality Radeon 9800 Pro without straying far from the ATI reference design. 2) When the quality is turned up the Radeon 9700 simply can not hang with the Radeon 9800 Pro, period.
One thing that really amazed me is that in more than a few benchmarks ran at even the default "balanced" settings, the Pentium4 2.60c CPU was the bottleneck. Let me say that again to emphasize the importance, a 2.6 GIGAHERTZ processor running at 800MHz system bus was a BOTTLENECK! That my friends, is no easy task, What that really tells me more than anything is that the FIC Radeon 9800 Pro is a card that will scale with you for a while as it's not already on the edge of it's capabilities. For the purpose of this review I ran almost all benchmarks at default speeds on the CPU, which I personally felt was the preferred presentation for a video card review. I can tell you that when I take the 2.6c to the 3.3 to 3.5GHz range the scores would scale up quite nicely. Even in our overclocking section we did not see huge performance gains really, this again attributed to the fact that the CPU was in the way a bit. That is just down right amazing for such a cutting edge CPU.
With all the hype and impressive performance of even the Radeon 9700's I've sat idly by awaiting the next best thing from nVidia, refusing to give the deserved credit to the ATI line of graphics cards. I must admit, here and now, ATI is "where it's at" in performance graphics cards. That FIC can come in and offer a card that performs so incredibly, and at least in our card, overclock so well, is a good, no.. great thing for the end users. FIC has been working hard to make a name for itself in the enthusiasts market and with products like this Radeon 9800 Pro I'd have to say they are well on their way to doing just that.
CONCLUSIONS:
The conclusion.. It is here that by design I am to tell you whether to spend your jack on this product or not. Unfortunately, I'm not in the position to do that. The reason I can't tell you whether to buy this or not is because there are so many type of users out there. Let me try this.. If you are still running a GeForce4 of any kind, or any ATI product other than a R9700, a Radeon 9800 Pro makes sense for you. It's a card that will perform unbelievably now, and still grow with your system for the foreseeable future. If you already own a Radeon 9700 Pro and don't like running super high resolutions with all of the bells and whistles, you're probably OK where you sit. However, if you get wood thinking about 1600x1200 with 6x FSAA and Antisotropic filtering maxed out, it's time for a change, a change to a 9800 Pro because it will deliver the goods.
Taking all of this into consideration, it's never easy to recommend someone go drop USD$400 on a video card, but that's where we're at today. With DoomIII around the corner and CPU's ramping up in speed to insane levels, the video card remains the hottest item in your system. Simply put, if you're looking for the best card AVAILABLE, a 9800 Pro is your only real choice. That said, FIC's offering was solid as a rock and gave performance that to a true enthusiast warrants the price. When you stack the price of the FIC against the price of other popular 9800 pro's, you may find that this is the card that belongs in your box. I can tell you from my perspective anyway, it will be in mine.
HIGHS:
- Stellar Performance
- Priced Competitively with like cards of other manufacturers
- Overclocked well
LOWS:
- No stock memory cooling
- Ho-Hum chipset cooler
Considering the target audience and the price versus competing cards of the same chipset, I have no problems at all awarding the FIC Radeon 9800 Pro the OCAddiction.com Editor's Choice Award! Grats to FIC on a solid card that competes nicely in the high end graphics card market.
Thanks for checking out the review here on OCAddiction.com. If you'd like, head into the forums to discuss this article, or cruise back to the front page to check out other GooSH!™ here on OCA. Thanks to FIC for working with us on this review release. If you're interested in calling one of these cards your own, CLICK HERE to search for the best price available...
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