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 In
late September '03, ATi refreshed their fall line-up with
the Radeon 9800 XT, knocking the then dominant Radeon 9800
Pro from its perch atop ATi's video card food chain.
We reviewed one of the first
Radeon 9800 XTs to come out of ATi back then, and were
thoroughly impressed with the card's performance and
in-game image quality, but we did find the $500+ price tag
a bit tough to swallow. With this new XT branded
card, ATi didn't pioneer many new features, but rather
they refined their existing technology so it would run at
higher clock speeds. In doing so, they introduced a
new, massive copper cooling solution with a variable speed
fan that ensured the GPU and RAM hummed along at
acceptable temperature levels. The one new feature
that was added to the 9800 XT, was an on-die thermal
sensor that monitors the GPU's internal temperature.
The data collected from this sensor is used in conjunction
with another new feature added to ATI's Catalyst drivers,
dubbed "Overdrive". The "Overdrive" feature
dynamically overclocks the card, and if temperatures get
out of control, the GPU fan spins-up and clock speeds are
throttled back down to default levels. ATi also
struck a deal with the Game Developer Valve, to bundle
Half Life 2 with all new XT models . The hardware
may not have been revolutionary at the time, but ATi ended
up putting together an overall package that was compelling
to hard-core enthusiasts, with adequate disposable
incomes. It then came as no surprise that a
multitude of ATi's board partners like Visiontek, Asus,
Gigabyte and Sapphire, soon announced that they too would
be adding the Radeon 9800 XT to their product lines.
So far, we've
had first hand experience with ATi's own Radeon 9800 XT
and
Asus' take on the card. Today on HotHardware.Com,
we're going to get up close and personal with Sapphire's
version, the Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT 256MB. This
card sports all of the same features as ATi's model, but
lacks the ViVo functionality found on Asus' card.
Sapphire's card, however, is available at a somewhat lower
price point, and includes some extras not found with
competing products. Read on for the full report...
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Specifications & Features of The Sapphire
Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT |
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ATi's Current Flagship GPU |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW
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RADEON 9800 XT Visual
Processing Unit (VPU)
412MHz Core Clock
MEMORY CONFIGURATION
256MB of DDR SDRAM - 730MHz DDR
3D GRAPHICS FEATURES
- Eight parallel rendering pipelines process up to
3.3 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
- Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
programmable pixel and vertex shaders in hardware
- 2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per
rendering pass
- 2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs with an
unlimited number of instructions and flow control
- 128-bit per pixel floating point color formats
- Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
- Shadow volume rendering acceleration
- Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL via
extensions
SMOOTHVISION? 2.1
- State-of-the-art full-scene anti-aliasing
- New technology processes up to 18.2 billion
anti-aliased samples per second for unprecedented
performance
- Supports 2x, 4x, and 6x modes with programmable
sample patterns
- Advanced anisotropic filtering
- Supports up to 16 bilinear samples (in performance
mode) or trilinear samples (in quality mode) per
pixel
- 2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
- Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample
patterns
- 2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
- Adaptive algorithm with bilinear (performance) and
trilinear (quality) options
- Bandwidth-saving algorithm enables this feature
with minimal performance cost
HYPER Z? III+
- Hierarchical Z-Buffer and Early Z Test reduce
overdraw by detecting and discarding hidden pixels
- Lossless Z-Buffer Compression and Fast Z-Buffer
Clear reduce memory bandwidth consumption by over
50%
- Fast Z-Buffer Clear
- 8.8 : 1 Compression Ratio
- Optimized Z-Cache for enhanced performance of
shadow volumes
TRUFORM? II
- 2nd generation N-patch higher order surface
support
- Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per
polygon for dynamic LOD
- DirectX 9.0 displacement mapping
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VIDEOSHADER?
- 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
- Noise removal filtering for captured video
- MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and
color space conversion
- All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
- YPrPb component output
- Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
- Dual integrated display controllers
- Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
- Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI and HDCP
compliant)
- Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768
resolution
- Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon?
3Dnow!
- PC 2002 compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
- Dual integrated display controllers
- Drive two displays simultaneously with independent
resolutions and refresh rates
- HYDRAVISION? software provides complete control
over multi-display configurations with a
user-friendly interface
- Dual integrated 10-bit per channel palette DACs
operating at up to 400MHz
- Integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter supports
resolutions up to QXGA (2048x1536) and complies with
DVI and HDCP specifications
- Integrated TV-Out support up to 1024x768
resolution
- YPrPb output for direct drive of HDTV monitors
DISPLAY SUPPORT
- 15-pin VGA connector for analog CRT
- S-video or composite connector for TV/VCR
- DVI-I connector for digital CRT or flat panel
- Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any
two connected displays
GENERAL FEATURES
- Comprehensive 2x, 4x, and 8x AGP support
- High performance quad-channel DDR or DDR2 memory
interface supports 64/128/256MB configurations
- Fully compliant with PC 2002 requirements
- Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon?
3Dnow! processor instructions
- Supports optional THEATER? 200 companion chip for
NTSC/PAL/SECAM video capture
- Highly optimized 128-bit 2D engine with support
for new Windows® XP GDI extensions
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The Bundle:
By now, we all
know that a voucher for Valve's highly anticipated first
person shooter Half Life 2 is being bundled with all ATi
Radeon 9800 XTs, but with the Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT
Sapphire took things a step further. Not only are
owners greeted by the coupon for Half Life 2, but they'll
also find a full copy of Eidos' Tomb Raider: Angel of
Darkness as well. That's about $100 worth of games
for those that are counting, and yet there's still a bit
more. One of the best pieces of DVD playback
software is also bundled with this card, Cyberlink's
excellent PowerDVD. Obviously, a driver CD is also
included with the Atlantis 9800 XT, as well as another CD
containing Sapphire's proprietary Redline overclocking /
tweaking utility. Rounding out the bundle is a
user's manual, composite and S-Video cables, an S-Video to
composite adapter, a 4-Pin Molex power cable splitter and
lastly a DVI-to-DB15 adapter, for those looking to connect
dual analog monitors to the card.
The Card & Some
Screenshots
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In
late September '03, ATi refreshed their fall line-up with
the Radeon 9800 XT, knocking the then dominant Radeon 9800
Pro from its perch atop ATi's video card food chain.
We reviewed one of the first
