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 At
the moment, gamers looking for a "Top-of-the-Line"
graphics card, basically have two GPUs to choose from,
either an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro or an NVIDIA GeForce FX
5900. Video cards based on these two GPUs are so
evenly matched, they swap the first place position in most
of today's popular benchmarks, depending on what
resolutions or settings are used. And to further
complicate matters, the performance landscape changes
slightly with each driver release. It's very
difficult to determine which product is superior or
whether one is better for your personal needs versus
another. Today on HotHardware.Com, we'll be looking
at a Radeon 9800 Pro based video card from Gigabyte, the
GV-R98P128D. For the sake of comparison, we've also
benchmarked a similarly priced GeForce FX 5900. In
the past, we've been very pleased by Gigabyte's video
cards. The Maya II 9700 and 9500 Pros were both
excellent performers, that came with top-notch bundles.
Has Gigabyte continued the tradition with the GV-R98P128D
Radeon 9800 Pro? Continue reading and find out...
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications & Features of the
Gigabyte GV-R98P128D Radeon 9800 Pro |
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Yup, It's A Beast Alright! |
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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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Gigabyte
included an impressive array of software and accessories
with the GV-R98P128D. Bundled with the card, were
full versions of four games, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit,
Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2, Motocross Mania and Serious Sam.
There were also "lite" versions of two more games
included, 4x4 Evo and Oni. We also found a very
complete owners manual, a copy of PowerDVD XP 4 and the
obligatory driver CD that also contains Gigabyte's V-Tuner
overclocking utlity in the box. In addition to all
this software Gigabyte included a DVI-to-15 Pin adapter, a
composite video cable, an S-Video cable, an S-Video-to-RCA
adapter and a Molex power cable splitter. The games
may not be the most cutting-edge titles available, but all
in all Gigabyte did a great job with the GV-R98P128D's
bundle.
The Card & Some
Gaming...
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