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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
Behold the Sapphire Ultimate
Edition Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro! At first glance,
this card looks nothing like any other Radeon 9800 Pro
currently available. The massive heatsinks with the
heat-pipe, built by Zalman, are very menacing.
Underneath all that metal though, this card is basically a
reference design Radeon 9800 Pro. This particular
model is equipped with 128MB of DDR RAM, but there is also
a 256MB version on the way. Unlike most other 128MB
Radeon 9800 Pros, the memory modules on the Sapphire
Ultimate Edition are equipped with heatsinks, which should
help with overclocking, provided your case is properly
ventilated. If you don't keep the air moving around
this card though, the RAM-sinks will basically be stuck in
a mini-oven. They will absorb the heat trapped
between the PCB and main heatsinks, so keep that air
moving! Also notice the size of this card.
Ultimate Edition Radeon 9800 Pro owners will have to
sacrifice their first PCI slot, and must also be sure
there is ample room behind the card. We didn't have
any problems installing either of these cards into the MSI
875P Neo2 powering our test system, but some of you may
not be as fortunate. Make sure your CPU, RAM or
Northbridge coolers won't get in the way of this bad-boy
if your planning on picking one up.
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Specifications & Features of the Atlantis
Ultimate Edition 9800 Pro |
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What's Under the Hood? |
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RADEON? 9800 Visual Processing
Unit (VPU)
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
MB
of DDR SDRAM - 340MHz DDR (Effective 680MHz)
3D
GRAPHICS FEATURES
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Eight parallel rendering pipelines
process up to 3.04 billion pixels per second
Four parallel geometry engines
process up to 380 million transformed and lit
polygons per second
High precision 10-bit per channel
frame buffer support
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support
SMARTSHADER? 2.1
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Full support for Microsoft® DirectX®
9.0 programmable pixel and vertex shaders in
hardware
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2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16
textures per rendering pass
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2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex
programs with an unlimited number of instructions
and flow control
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128-bit per pixel floating point
color formats
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Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
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Shadow volume rendering acceleration
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Complete feature set also supported
in OpenGL via extensions
SMOOTHVISION? 2.1
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State-of-the-art full-scene
anti-aliasing
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New technology processes up to 18.2
billion anti-aliased samples per second for
unprecedented performance
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Supports 2x, 4x, and 6x modes with
programmable sample patterns
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Advanced anisotropic filtering
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Supports up to 16 bilinear samples
(in performance mode) or trilinear samples (in
quality mode) per pixel
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2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing
modes
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Adaptive algorithm with programmable
sample patterns
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2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering
modes
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Adaptive algorithm with bilinear
(performance) and trilinear (quality) options
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Bandwidth-saving algorithm enables
this feature with minimal performance cost
HYPER Z? III+
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Hierarchical Z-Buffer and Early Z
Test reduce overdraw by detecting and discarding
hidden pixels
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Lossless Z-Buffer Compression and
Fast Z-Buffer Clear reduce memory bandwidth
consumption by over 50%
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Fast Z-Buffer Clear
- 8.8 : 1 Compression Ratio
- Optimized Z-Cache for enhanced performance of
shadow volumes
TRUFORM? II
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2nd generation N-patch higher order
surface support
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Discrete and continuous tessellation
levels per polygon for dynamic LOD
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DirectX 9.0 displacement mapping
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VIDEOSHADER?
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Seamless integration of programmable
pixel shaders with video data
High quality, hardware accelerated
de-blocking of internet streaming video
Noise removal filter for captured
video
Integrated MPEG-2 decode
Hardware accelerated iDCT, motion
compensation, and color space conversion
Top quality DVD and all-format
DTV/HDTV decode with low CPU overhead
Back-end scaler delivers top quality
playback
Upscaling and downscaling with 4-tap
horizontal and vertical filtering
Filtered display of images up to 1920
pixels wide
Unique per-pixel adaptive
de-interlacing feature combines the best elements of
the ?bob? and ?add-field? (weave) techniques
FULLSTREAM?
video de-blocking technology
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Noise removal filtering for captured
video
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MPEG-2 decoding with motion
compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
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All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
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YPrPb component output
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Adaptive de-interlacing and frame
rate conversion
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Dual integrated display controllers
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Dual integrated 10-bit per channel
400MHz DACs
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Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter
(DVI and HDCP compliant)
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Integrated TV Output support up to
1024x768 resolution
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Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD
Athlon? 3Dnow!
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PC 2002 compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
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Dual integrated display controllers
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Drive two displays simultaneously
with independent resolutions and refresh rates
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HYDRAVISION? software provides
complete control over multi-display configurations
with a user-friendly interface
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Dual integrated 10-bit per channel
palette DACs operating at up to 400MHz
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Integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter
supports resolutions up to QXGA (2048x1536) and
complies with DVI and HDCP specifications
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Integrated TV-Out support up to
1024x768 resolution
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YPrPb output for direct drive of HDTV
monitors
DISPLAY SUPPORT
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15-pin VGA connector for analog CRT
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S-video or composite connector for
TV/VCR
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DVI-I connector for digital CRT or
flat panel
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Independent resolutions and refresh
rates for any two connected displays
GENERAL FEATURES
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Comprehensive 2x, 4x, and 8x AGP
support
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High performance quad-channel DDR or
DDR2 memory interface supports 64/128/256MB
configurations
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Fully compliant with PC 2002
requirements
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Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD
Athlon? 3Dnow! processor instructions
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Supports optional THEATER? 200
companion chip for NTSC/PAL/SECAM video capture
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Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine
with support for new Windows® XP GDI extensions
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Sapphire included a very nice
assortment of software and accessories with the Ultimate
Edition Radeon 9800 Pro. Bundled with the card
itself, we found a very complete user's manual, a Molex
power cable splitter, a DVI-to-DB15 adapter, an
S-Video-to-RCA adapter, an S-Video cable and a composite
video cable. These accessories give users the
ability to take full advantage of the dual-monitor and
TV-Out capabilities of the Radeon 9800 Pro. Sapphire
also shipped some great software with this card. Two
great games, Soldier of Fortune II and Return to Castle
Wolfenstein, shipped with the Ultimate Edition 9800 Pro,
along with a full version of the excellent DVD playback
software, Cyberlink's PowerDVD XP. They also
included a driver CD and another CD-ROM with a copy of
Sapphire's proprietary Red-Line overclocking utility.
(Update: As of July 25, 2003, Tomb Raider: The Angel
of Darkness will be included with this card)
Now, The Radeon 9600
Pro
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