»
 

Go Back   ResellerRatings Store Ratings > ResellerRatings Forums > Tech Support

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-01-2003, 01:05 AM   #1 (permalink)
Registered User
 
joker_927's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: California, USA
Posts: 1,740
joker_927 is on a distinguished road
9800 Rev 2.0?

I know in motherboards and other hardware stuff, newer revisions come along.

Take the Epox mtherbaord I got. The 2.0 revision is TOTALLY different from the 1.0 and 1.1 that were out.

When you buy these things online there is no way of knowing which revision you will get.

I am planning on buying a Radeon 9800 Pro card. Water-cooling it should get some nice OC's I hope.

My question: Are there more than 1 revision of this card out there? There is quite a large price difference between the one that I found $290 and some others I found $375+. The card I am looking at is OEM, but I don't care.

If there are better revisions out there, I want one of those. If there aren't, then it doesn't matter which one you buy.

thx

__________________
Gateway Top-of-the-line PC = $2014
Home built top-of-the-line PC = $928
Exact clones...

Moral = Don't build your own PC, thus letting me save more money than you!
joker_927 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-01-2003, 02:47 AM   #2 (permalink)
Guest
 
Darthgary's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,203
Darthgary is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Darthgary
Dont know, why not just get a Radeon 9800 and OC it?
Darthgary is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-01-2003, 11:29 AM   #3 (permalink)
Contributing Editor
 
tony_j15's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: CJ,MO:REBEL Base
Posts: 2,169
tony_j15 is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to tony_j15 Send a message via AIM to tony_j15
There is no 9800 rev. 2
tony_j15 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-01-2003, 06:49 PM   #4 (permalink)
Registered User
 
joker_927's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: California, USA
Posts: 1,740
joker_927 is on a distinguished road
okay.

Side note:
Are you telling me that there is ABSOLUTLEY no difference between the 9800 and the 9800 Pro other than default clock speed? If that is right, why would a sane person even contemplate buying a 9800 pro. If this is true a 9800 Non-pro can overclock to the exact same speed a 9800 Pro can overclock to.

People say to overclock the 9800 NP to 9800 Pro levels. That is not what I want this card for. I'm water-cooling it and I want to run it at the maximun possible, not 9800 Pro default levels. The 9800 Pro (acording to benchmarks) tends to hit a cieling at about 440mhz for the Core and 740mhz for the Memory. This is whithout ANY modding.

If what you say is true a 9800 Non-pro should be able to reach the same cieling. Give or take a few mhz.
__________________
Gateway Top-of-the-line PC = $2014
Home built top-of-the-line PC = $928
Exact clones...

Moral = Don't build your own PC, thus letting me save more money than you!
joker_927 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-01-2003, 07:09 PM   #5 (permalink)
Registered User
 
joker_927's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: California, USA
Posts: 1,740
joker_927 is on a distinguished road
Another Question:

Why do I see so many Saphire 9800 cards? I don't want saphire. I want Built by ATI.

Also, there are so many 9800 SE cards out there. The SE's suck. Real 9800 cards are really hard to find.
__________________
Gateway Top-of-the-line PC = $2014
Home built top-of-the-line PC = $928
Exact clones...

Moral = Don't build your own PC, thus letting me save more money than you!
joker_927 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-02-2003, 08:17 AM   #6 (permalink)
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 113
Jarhead is on a distinguished road
As far as I know, there are no "official" revisions to the BBA 9800 series, in either video card BIOS or PCB design. I will say however, unlike motherboards, video card manufacturers do from time to time, make subtle improvements to their products over the course of production without necessarily changing the revision number.

Using my BBA 9700 Pros as an example (the second one purchased 6 months after the first), there were a few subtle, but noticable differences.

1. The newer card had a heatsink that has a little bit more mass to it. The top/left corner does not have the "cut" taken out of it like the top/right corner to accomdate the AIW series. It's just squared.

2. The heatplate on the back of the card towards the bracket seems to have more components beneath it - like white plastic shims and appear to be better mounted.

3. Most important of all, this specimen did not exhibit the all-to-common "wavey lines" problem that my initial 9700 Pro had.

4. Fit and finish just seemed more "refined" with the newer card. Obviously, the more you make, the better you become at it, and with this specimen, it shows.

Now this may give you the impression that it's always good to wait a little while and get a card produced in subsequent runs, but that doesn't always run true. Sometimes, once the cards have been thoroughly consumer tested, manufacturers may cut back on some components if they feel they're not necessary to reduce costs. Visiontek (and Creative before they cut out of the US graphics market) had a habit of doing this. Using my old Visiontek GeForce3 as an example, initial production runs had faster running 3.8ns memory chips that overclocked like crazy, but later runs carried the slower 4ns variety, which did meet the standard clock requirement, but offered no extra headroom. Like wise with Creative's TNT1 and TNT2 series which initially used superb Fujitsu and EliteMT SDRAM modules.
__________________
My specs:
http://users.rcn.com/chinmonster/my_specs.txt
Jarhead is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply




Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Most Active Discussions

Recent Discussions

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 09:40 PM.