Ati 9800 cards vs other makers 9800 cards

im in the market for a 9800 card. What is the diffference in buying
ati's card or something by sapphire, asus, powercooler?

Thanks for your help

 

ATI make the chips for all of the cards and provide reference designs for
those cards made by the other companies (normally referred to as OEMs -
although there are other terms too) - these are the makers of "Powered by
ATI" cards. Some OEMs introduce features or functions not seen in the "Made
by ATI" products. A good example of this is Sapphire's "Ultimate" range of
high end cards which use passive cooling through very large heat sinks
whereas the "Made by ATI" cards with the same chips use chip coolers with
fans.

Which brand you buy may be dictated to an extent by where you live/what
country you buy in. An example of this is that these days ATI only
distributes its retail product range to North America and Canada so outside
of these areas it may be hard sourcing genuine Made by ATI retail packaged
products. Just to confuse things, ATI also make products themselves just for
OEM markets, these may be distributed through different channels to the
retail products. An example is that here in the UK we'll soon be seeing the
OEM but "Made by ATI" eHome Wonder become more widely available (although
it's already around here if you look hard enough). Pesonally I don't like
the fact that retail made by ATI products aren't sold here anymore (they
used to be) because its one less player in a competitive market but then you
could always buy the product over the web from a US store. The exception to
this is with "Wonder" products which incorporate TV Tuners (eg TV Wonders,
All In Wonders and eHome Wonders) because the NTSC Broadcast format products
made for the US and Canadian markets won't tune to the PAL/SECAM Broadcast
format used in most other countries worldwide.

ATI has a facility on their website whereby you can actually compare the
features present on different manufacturers cards going by the "series"
here's a link: http://apps.ati.com/compare/

Paul

 

At least for the once from Sapphire and PowerColor there should be any
differences for the Radeon 9800 Pro. Don't know about the one from
Asus. If you look on "9800SE" and "not-so-official-products", there
might be differences.

 

Thanks for that Paul. So what would you buy....an Ati card or a another maker?

 

Depends on the features you want eg does it need to be silent or is a fan
acceptable, also where you live and the price you can get each one for. One
things for sure, I'd stay away from a 9800SE based card and only go with the
full 256 bit memory bus 9800 Pro chip based card (watch out there are/were
some 128 bit Pro cards about too). Even though the Pro costs more it will
outperform the SE version significantly. But then my needs and situation may
be different to yours....

Paul

 

Unless you soft-mod the SE to full Pro like I did mine Then you get the
Pro for the price of an SE ))

 

I cannot find the test I saw. I was on a site 2 days ago that was given a
9800 pro by 6 or & manufacturers, and they ran extensive tests head to
head.

The best Radeon 9800 Pro was the Powercolor. Because they are the only
ones who really modified the basics. Everyone else cloned except for a
few little things. The next best two were the Sapphire and the HIS. I'll
point out that the PowerColor would also be the most expansive.

Any though, is better than anything else. Except nVidia fans and some
others will argue the new nVidia 6600GT is better. If you look into these
note all are the PCI Express BUS. A coupe are now making a AGP BUS model.
...D.

 

Certainly not "better" than the ATI X800 series.

The 6600 and 6800 nvidia boards _are_ better than the 9800s. They're a
generation newer so one would expect them to be. They compete with the
X600 and X800, not the 9800.

 

Soft-mod??? i'm intrigued. Tell me more.