ATI Radeon 9800 XT Review - PAGE 2

The Card

The 9800 XT is built on the ATI trademark red PCB and is a single card solution unlike Nvidia's high end reference offerings. The large heatsink is make of copper and there is acrylic piece on top with a fancy graphic design that kind of look like a bunch of turbine engines laid out in a circle. A large fan (probably ¼ of the size of the card) sits over the VPU. There is also a heatplate on the back that draws heat away from the memory chips as well.

The 9800 XT does get very warm during operation so for those with poor air circulation inside their cases, it is advisable to keep an eye out on case temperatures with the 9800 XT in there. Unlike a few of the other cards we have recently reviewed, there are no fancy leds, either red or blue. The 9800 XT seems noticeably louder than both the FIC 9800 Pro and the 9700 solutions that we have although it does not seem as loud as the Gainward 5950 that we recently reviewed and that was verified through the use of our handy sound meter which pegs the 9800 Pro at ~52 DB at a distance of approximately 1 meter away from an open case consisting of the 9800 XT and a stock P4 cooler. (For reference, the 9800 pro came in at about 46 DB and the Gainward at 53 DB in the same case. A quick Discovery Channel moment reveals that decibels are logarithmic meaning that for every 10 DB, there is a doubling in noise. The 6 DB between the 9800 Pro and the 9800 XT will be quite pronounced while the Gainward and 9800 XT will be very close. Also note that our lab had a relatively loud 46 DB of ambient noise as measured by the same meter. The 9800 XT is clearly audible above the ambient noise though. Check out this guide for relative noise measurements with the same meter if you want a point of reference outside of videocards.)

The two cards are the same size but notice all the extra caps on the XT

David, meet Goliath.

Our box included a manual, a driver disc, both a RCA and S-Video cable (and an svideo -> rca converter. did not understand that since there is already a RCA cable), a power dongle and a DVI->VGA converter. The retail version should also include a coupon for Half-Life 2 as shown explicitly on the front but alas our 9800 did not include one.