Radeon 9600 XT vs Radeon 9800 SE

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hm
  • Start date Start date
H

Hm

Hi, I'd appreciate some advice.

In the UK I can get a 128Mb Sapphire 9800 SE for around the same price
as a Sapphire or Hightech 9800 XT.

What would be the better choice? I know the 9800 SE is considerably
slower (and cheaper) than a 9800 Pro or XT, but how does it compare to
a 9600 XT?

I'll be using the card with a Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2 (nforce2) board
and an Athlon XP2800 (Barton).

Thanks,

Harry
 
In the UK I can get a 128Mb Sapphire 9800 SE for around the same price
as a Sapphire or Hightech 9800 XT.
Click to expand...

Buy all the 9800XT's you can at the SE price. Sell them on eBay. Get
rich quick!!

Gotta go,
Magwheelz
 
check tomshardware, puts the 9800se a whisker in front of the 9600xt. How
much and where?
 
check tomshardware, puts the 9800se a whisker in front of the 9600xt. How
much and where?
Click to expand...
Thanks for this.

Have already bought a 9600 XT, but was surprised to see the possible
software mod that might bring the performance of the 9800SE to very
close to that of a 9800XT.

At www.ebuyer.co.uk the current prices are:

Sapphire 128 Mb 9800SE £109.11 + VAT
Sapphire (or Hightech) 120 Mb 9600XT £101.19 + VAT

Harry
 
Have already bought a 9600 XT, but was surprised to see the possible
software mod that might bring the performance of the 9800SE to very
close to that of a 9800XT.
Click to expand...

I recently discussed this in another thread. My 9800SE AIW with a bit of
overclocking is running at over 9800 Pro speeds. The only card in those
tomshardware tests which beats it is the 9800 XT which is £350 compared to
the £150 I paid for this card with All-in-Wonder facilites :)

Here is the original article:

-----
It's something bad you can't see. The 9800SE is similar in performance to a
low end 9600.
Click to expand...

Not always true. There are two versions of the 9800SE: one with a 128bit
memory bus and the other with 256bit. You can see here:

http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/faq.php

that the cards with an L shaped arrangment of memory chips are 256bit and
those with an I shaped arrangement (i.e. all in a horizontal line) are
128bit. All the All-In-Wonder 9800SE's have a 256bit bus as they need to
have an L shaped memory chip arrangement to make room for the TV-tuner.
As mentioned in that tomshardware.com article, they are testing one with
a 128bit bus. The Sapphire 9800SE is a 128bit version.
Here is a review of the 256bit version of the 9800SE:

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02NTU=

You can see it performs very well compared to a 9600 Pro. Sometimes the
9800SE's 256bit bus gives it the edge and sometimes the 9600Pro's higher
fill-rate wins out. Further to that, if the card can be softmodded to
unlock the other 4 pipelines then you effectively have a 9800 Pro.
I purchased a Hercules 9800SE AIW 3 weeks ago. I successfully applied
the softmod patch to unlock the other 4 pipelines, making my card
effectively a 9800 Pro AIW, for £150 rather than the ~£270 a real 9800 Pro
AIW would cost. I got mine from www.lowestonweb.com, although I notice
they are out of stock now.
Be warned though. Only on some of these cards do the other 4 pipelines
work perfectly. A friend tried the softmod and he had an unwatchable
chessboard effect during games. He now uses the standard driver and is
thus running with that standard 4 pipelines.
-----
 
Back
Top