Benchmark 7: RtCW @ 1024x768 (Default Settings)

Benchmark 7: RtCW @ 1024x768 (Default Settings) Overclocked to 405/353

The Radeon is able to boast incredible scores when overclocked. The Omega drivers seemed to improve image quality under RTCW as well.

Overclocking

Overclocking the Radeon 9800 Pro was certainly not easy. With the memory already running hot to the touch and with the core using such a small, simple cooling solution, we knew that the Radeon 9800 Pro was not built with overclockers in mind. Regardless, we forged ahead. Using the stock voltage of 1.5, we were able to push to core to 405 MHz and the memory to 353 MHz before instability and tearing began to occur in benchmarks. Pushing the AGP voltage to 1.6 did not net any increase, most likely due to the limits of the cooling system on the 9800 Pro.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is one of the faster video cards today. It proved to handle itself quite well throughout each benchmark and managed to pull decent framerates at high resolutions (additional resolution and AA tests can be found here). A bump in core and memory speed proved to be even more beneficial to gaming performance, as scores improved quite nicely when the card was running at the maximum stable overclock.

Overclocking was not the cards strongsuit, I am afraid, although overclocking the card to its maximum did indeed improve scores. I was able to clock the core to a respectable 405 MHZ. On the other hand, I managed a paltry 353 MHz overclock on the memory. Needless to say, the lack of overclocking capability is a bit concerning, as such a low overhead is not that great and could lead to instability in hot systems. Typical memory instability leads to a shimmering effect in games with a bunch of white flickers on the textures.

The 2D quality of the card was superb, as expected. DVD playback was incredible and the included TV out function allowed me to watch crystal clear images on my 27" television. The one area ATI continues to excell in is visual quality, with the 9800 Pro offering the best mix of 2D and 3D quality of any video card available today. Multi-monitor support is a great feature, as many of us do have the necessary real estate to use more then one monitor at the same time.

The tweakers and driver sets we used today also show us another side of things. The Radeon 9800 Pro is quite easy to tune, or tweak, in order to get ideal performance in certain applications. Using driver defaults we achieved a score of 16,813 in 3DMark 2001SE, when using Rage3D tuners built-in setting for 3DMark 2001SE performance our score increased to 17,348. It is quite evident that the currently available tweakers, especially the one we looked at today from Rage3D, will allow users to tweak their cards for maximum performance without doing any hardware modifications.

The drivers we tested from ATI proved to be quite good as far as stability and performance goes. On the other hand, while Omega's drivers improved visual quality a bit, they also managed to down performance a bit as well. There was a trade-off between using the different driver sets, which should be expected. If you want the absolute best visual quality, as well as a driver set with overclocking built in, be sure to check out Omega's drivers. If you want maximum performance, download the newest Catalyst drivers along with the Rage3D tweaking utility. I should say that both drivers are extremely stable and I noticed no glaring issues. One small issue occurs in Windows Media Player where the battery effect does not run full speed. It is quite odd and I am not sure what it is caused by, but it never happened when using NVidia cards.

Any driver issues aside, this card is simply amazing. It performs admirably, has great TV out functionality and most importantly, a large fan base. I would not hesitate to buy this card to replace anything under a GeForce 4 Ti4600. If you plan on playing Doom 3, this card will definitely allow for some kickass gaming and visuals. ATI needs to come up with a better cooling system and this card would truly be perfect in pretty much every aspect. That said, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is more than deserving of the Viperlair Editor's Choice award.

Pro's

Excellent performance
Great feature set
Looks great
Huge user base and enthusiast oriented drivers available

Con's

Weak cooling unit
Memory runs a bit hot and doesn't overclock well
Odd Windows Media Player issue

Bottom Line

The ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is one of the fastest video cards available today. It will be able to play Doom 3 quite nicely (albeit, likely at lower settings), as well as allow you to play current games with the eye candy turned on. The community of ATI fans has grown substantially and the availability of modified drivers, BIOS files and tweaking utilities can only allow for more satisfaction with the product. If you got any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.