SUMMARY: Half a grand is a lot of money to spend on a graphics card. In this article we examine visual gaming performance of ATI's latest GPU, the Radeon 9800 XT, in Counter-Strike, NHL 2004, Max Payne 2, Midnight Club II and Halo PC to work out if it is really worth spending all those dollars.
nVidia or ATi? This question once inundated our consumer-tech industry, in search for the ultimate means of graphic entertainment. Due to press in the last couple of months - throughout benchmarks, driver updates, and reviews - it is correct to announce ATi as the current performance leader in the video card industry for mainstream and enthusiast gamers. The line that most certainly bought ATi their newfound fame is the highly-hyped and critically-acclaimed Radeon 9700 series; the latest and most powerful of which is now the Radeon 9800 XT.
Lately, Radeon 9800 XT reviews have been spat out from source to source all over the ‘net; many of these articles contain benchmark after benchmark of comparison tests throughout various applications and programs. We have yet to see many true in-depth looks at this card’s in-game visual performance. With much prestige, we are very proud to present to our readers an article which’s sole aim is to give the enthusiast consumer that extra ‘oomph’ they require before seriously considering purchasing one of these top-of-the-line graphic cards.
In the fervent hands of the Canadian TweakTown Labs crew is a brand new OEM Radeon 9800 XT 256MB, generously donated from Allstarshop. Can the 9800 XT provide a true visual performance gain over older cards? That’s what we plan to find out - read on!
