SAPPHIRE RADEON™ 9800 XT

[c44151]

is this card any good
http://www.sapphiretech.com/VGA/9800-xt.asp
256mb version
The rason I am thinking of this is I gost got a tv tuner card and it doesn't seem to work to good it is fine in the begining but then is is delayed. audio is in que but the video isnt about a second behind. the card is asus geforce 4 ti 4200 currently and has the updated driver's. Now the ati tuner card recomends a radon card in order for it to work propperly.
I need yo know by saturday as I will be moving to a smaller city with not much computer stores only futureshop

[saladbarkid]

Awesome...card...drool...drool...too...expensive.. .drool

[Jeordiewhite]

Well if you have the money, so far Saphire seems to be ok, however it is one of the more generic manufacters of ati cards.
Certainly it works great, otherwise they wouldn't sell it, so over clocking would be out of the question, however that doesn't really effect anything.
It should work great for you, however they are generally cheaper due to they are generic.

[c44151]

are they just as good as ati cards

[slinky]

9800 XT.. an ok card... better bang for the $ is the Pro.
i noticed the sapphire site says "... and the latest OpenGL® functionality" instead of 1.4.. they must be implying that it doesn't exactly support it in some way?

sapphires are fine.

[SFAAikido]

1) Saphire produces around 40% of the cards that sell under the ATI label. They are not a generic manufacturer. They were one of the first manufacturers to take on the ATI line when ATI opened its production designs to 3rd parties.

2) OpenGL 1.4 is no longer the latest revision. OpenGL 1.5 is the most current. OpenGL 2.0 support should be hitting the consumer market by this Christmas.

[HeadBand]

yeah i agree with slinky its not worth over 2 times the price just for a small 5% gain

but i doubt your videocard is the problem....its probobally the soundcard....if you are using onboard sound i think just about any 5.1ch+ pci card should do great

[Xtreeme]

"Well if you have the money, so far Saphire seems to be ok, however it is one of the more generic manufacters of ati cards."

They make alot of ati's own retail boxed cards. I ran my #'s on this sapphire 9800np and guess what. ITs comes up as built by ati NOT sapphire. But it came in sapphire box! haha. The proof is in the pudding. And as you said ...... "so far"???? They have been making ati's since ati allowed 3rd party manufacturers. They been there since start of it all. They were also one of the first entered into the "partners program". Before THAT they made'em for ati solely. So its been even longer!



"Certainly it works great, otherwise they wouldn't sell it, so over clocking would be out of the question, however that doesn't really effect anything."

King of clockers here and you say it wont clock at all. The Sapphrie I have. THe radeon 9800NP with samsung mem will clock from non pro to pro with bios flash only and this model so far ='s 100% success rate. yep horrible at clocking sapphires are. Now I myself used to dislike sapphire. But in the last 2 years they REALLY turned around and are bringing some great stuff to the table.

"It should work great for you, however they are generally cheaper due to they are generic"

They are cheaper cause A) they are already in good with ati (cheaper gpu's) B) they are 3rd party without gimicks like most have. And its usually bought OEM. IF retail they are priced compairable with other brands.

[flying nimbus]

if you are having a 'sync' problem as you said, you should consider ati all in wonder cards.
i have 9800 pro all in wonder and it's just wicked.
but i guess you already bought the tv tuner...
it should work well with a quality card like ti 4200.
probably a driver issue.

[Xtreeme]

"Now the ati tuner card recomends a radon card in order for it to work propperly."

Mine said the same when I had a
Geforce 3 paired with ATI tv Wonder Ve. It ran fine anyhow, no lag or anything even when recording. Its just a lousy t shooting proggy. Ignore it. It also says my Western Digital 8mb cache 80gig hdd DMA is off when it clearly is on! I checked it about 50x cause of it. LOL. When I got the Radeon 8500 my captures where no worse/better. Now with the 9800, same. But I will say the playback looks better and hardware divx/dvd accelleration is pretty cool!

Audio lag is usually from "dmdmdmdmdmd Drum rool" sound card drivers. Seriously. capture audio problems = audio drivers.