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"Once More Someone Asks..."

...does anyone have any suggestions for a suitable graphics card upgrade?

My system is;

2.6GHZ Intel P4 with HT
512MB RAMM @ 400mhz
Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 Digital
80GB HD
ATI RADEON 9800 AGP card
19" LCD Flat Panel

The system is less than a year old and at the time it only cost £80 to upgrade it to the Radeon 9800 instead of onboard...I did wonder at the time why the only retail version of the card had PRO on the end of them, but I figured it would be a similar card. Big mistake, but because until recently I've only played older games like Raven Shield and Delta Force Blackhawk Down I haven't had a problem. Then Battlefield Vietnam and UT2004,along with Far Cry ,coupled with the mention of the Radeon 9800SE card in PCFormat and PC Gamer, exposed the card for the steaming pile of excrement it is...

Yup, my Radeon 9800 is an SE, or more aptly, crap and, with a core speed of 324 and a memory clock speed of 290, little better than the sub £50 cards in the Special Reserve Catalogue.

So I'm in search of a new card because I figure that, with the above system, my card is really holiding me back, right? Bit more memory would be nice but right now I'd wager the only thing holding me back from the high settings on most modern and future games is this silly Radeon card.

I'm looking to spend a max of £150-£200

I'm tempted to go to Nvidia for the first time in years (every PC I have had or card I have bought has been ATI but after this, and the fact most new games seem to be built around this Nvidia "Way it's meant to be played" thing).

Any suggestions? I'm guessing the best deals are online but I really want a boxed retail card. The XFX GEFORCE FX 5900 XT in SR at 149.99 looks good....is it?

And before anyone suggests this, I've scanned through pages and pages of guides and read magazine reviews of cards but there are so many to choose from :(

My trusty old radeon 9600 is now permanently overclocked from

324/378 to 423/450

and thats on passive cooling...

I've gone up to 9700 pro speeds.. that's 20mhz more memory clock rate.

Its trial and error, but in a controlled way. :)

Everyone has their own technique, but i like to boost the memory before the core. I dont have your card, nor do i know much about it, but i should think you will be able to get the memory to around 320 before the card starts to pass out. Increase the setting by about 5 each time, use 7-9 if you are feeling impateint. Use 3dmark to check that the card isnt going to pack in by making sure that the graphics are correctly displayed, i.e there isnt any vissible "rip" marks or sparklies on the screen. If you dont have 3dmark, either download it free [URL]http://www.futuremark.com[/URL] or play a game for 15-25 mins.

When you start to get ripping or sparklies cut back about 5mhz (i think that the units anyway) and leave it there. Then move onto the core clock, again 5mhz increases until things start to look dodgy/computer reboots then cut back 5mhz from the setting that failed. A 30mhz increase is a reasonable expectation.

Just watch how hot the heatsink gets. If its anything like mine its a bit guff.

Hmmm....my total lack of understanding about PC graphics cards is showing isn't it?

I've installed the Omega Drivers oncemore, because I found I had been installing them wrong previously (as in did not remove the old ATI Control Panel properly....)....so I may try the Rad Clocker thing again.

Any suggestions as to how far to push the settings? Or is it just trial and error?

The 9800SE is pile of crap, the 9800SE AIW is a different story though, it has a 256 bit bus so can perform as well as the big cards when the softmod works. However no softmod will work on a standard 9800SE card, about the only performance enhancing you can do is to overclock the card.

If you are lucky the card will overclock quite well.

Stranger the Non pro is better than the SE because of this
Radeon 9800 ATI R350 DX 9 325 580 256-bit 8x1
Radeon 9800 SE ATI R350 DX 9 380 675 128-bit 4x1

It has 8x1 pipelines and a 256bit bus it is more future proof then most other medium range cards.

I bought my PC last June from Dell, and I 'upgraded' to a Radeon 9800... and even though my PC tells me it's a PRO, RiverTuner does not... I O/Ced it in the past and it really didn't make much difference... I'm going to upgrade in the summer I think- I have exams soon so I won't be playing much.

Ah, I understand, my 9800 is actually worse than a 9800SE !

I've already tried soft modding the card to a PRO using the Omega Drivers and something called Riva Tuner, but the Omega driver made the card perform even worse, and the Riva Tuner patch didn't work at all.

I'd, even with my limited knowledge, say miserableman is wrong to say no game will push a 9800SE right now - because you're not telling me that a card than, in places, is priced below a £100 outperforms cards twice or 3 times it's price??? PC Gamer and PC Format both pretty much suggest that the card is utter crap and not worth having - plus I know from my own games that it won't run UT2004 and Battlefield Vietnam anywhere near decently...Pandora Tomorrow is like a flip book at high settings!

I also, from reading elsewhere, found out why the card originally, using ATI's drivers, registered as being a 9800 PRO - it's something to do with ATI only making the PRO chips but then the rejects (or something) are messed around with by the card makers - the link below this post is the only thing I have ever seen refer to a 9800 by the actual name.

Anywya, thanks for the input, I'm off into the real world to compare prices with some online ones.

Read This before you go around saying it's a SE and that it outperforms the 9800 NON PRO not SE
[URL]http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html[/URL]
If it's clocked at 324 Core Clock rate and 290 Memory Clock rate then it's a NON PRO

Erm the 9800 non pro is a slightly under clocked 9700 pro HELLO?
Nevermind i sound like a computer geek now ;P