Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Video Card

This card was the next step up for...

Strengths: Wicked Fast, and Incredibly High Performance. Games Never looked better.

Weakness: Sticker Shock, but I'll recover.

This card was the next step up for me. I had a Radeon 9600PRO then a 9600XT, so this card was the natural progression up. It made a HUGE difference in 3D Mark ratings and it makes games look great with super fast frame rates. All in all I am very pleased. A great gamer card.

By Nexgen LLC - Mar 10, 2005

This is the best value card out...

Strengths: r360 core

Weakness: possibility of overheating because of skimpy fan

This is the best value card out there. Last year, this was the best at $399. But now, with the release of the XT, and the PCI express models, this has become a bargain. It is really a waste of money to buy anything else. No real performance gain will be visible in my opinion, running all the newest games at highest speeds right now.

By kenanr - Oct 29, 2004

This is a great card. A perfect...

Strengths: Price, Speed, Bang for the buck

Weakness: Noisy Fan

This is a great card. A perfect clone from ATI, but cheaper. I would recommend to install a VGA Silencer on it.

Overclocked it and turned it in a 9800 XT, works great.

By StellatoBR - Jul 30, 2004

I had a Gainward Geforce 5900...

Strengths: Great OOBE! Solid, stable card with good performance.

Weakness: Standard ATI reference board, nothing fancy, heatsink and fan just standard.

I had a Gainward Geforce 5900 Golden Sample prior to this, which I returned due to all the news regarding the poor Pixel Shader 2.0 support on the nvidia-based cards. So I returned to the fold (ATI) and waited for this card to go down in price. Thought I was going to grab myself the ATI official card itself (since it was $20 less than this Sapphire model), but after hearing people raging about...
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I had a Gainward Geforce 5900 Golden Sample prior to this, which I returned due to all the news regarding the poor Pixel Shader 2.0 support on the nvidia-based cards. So I returned to the fold (ATI) and waited for this card to go down in price. Thought I was going to grab myself the ATI official card itself (since it was $20 less than this Sapphire model), but after hearing people raging about the greater potential for overclocking Sapphire cards, I figured why not get this a try.

Purchased from NewEgg, and though I haven't checked this out , their OEM Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pros supposedly have the R360 core (usually reserved for the Radeon 9800 XTs). In appearance, this Sapphire 9800 Pro looks identical to the official ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card, so I don't see how the Sapphire is any more overclockable than the ATI one. I know Sapphire manufactures the official ATI ones anyways, so...

All in all a good card and I do like it. Stick with this Sapphire over the stock ATI card, if you want a better chance of getting good overclocking potential and a nice core upgrade.

By gravelpit - Mar 30, 2004

Good card with features for both...

Strengths: Fast, reasonably compatible with both MSWindows and Linux

Weakness: Seems to have a thermal stress problem -- original card started producing artifacts after being in service for 11 months; ditto for replacement.

Good card with features for both the game player and scientific visualization. Previous reviewers comments regarding fan and heat sink sizing prompted me to submit my experiences.

By clint420601 - Mar 20, 2005