Page 1 - The Introduction

Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MBThe GV-R98P128D

It's been a while since the R300 core from ATI was released yet this silicon is still doing good and excellent numbers. It's quite funny to see what has happened to ATI over the past two years, the Radeon 8500 was a true success story and already had to make NVIDIA wonder. Then came the revolutionary R300 which has been dominating the market ever since. And even with the new NV35 (GeForce FX 5900) this core still remains to be close to NVIDIA's latest. Based on that slightly modified R300 core Gigabyte recently released their R350 based GV-R98P128D, or in layman's terms, Gigabyte's  Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB DDR memory. And what a nice  powerhouse this card is. A highly efficient and programmable graphics card with a computational speed that is simply breathtaking.

Instead of moving towards a 0,13 Micron fabrication process, like the new 9600 and 9200 are, ATI decided it would be saver to go with the older 0.15 Micron process. I've been told by several technicians that this process can not go any further than roughly 400-425 MHz. ATI was clever though, they clocked R350 core at 380 MHz which leaves a little 'breathing space' on the graphics core yet is very stable and .. faster. This product will be roughly 20% faster than it's older brother the 9700 Pro and is close and sometimes as fast as NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900. Now who's fast and who's furious ?

One thing is sure, this card looks mysterious

In the retail box we'll find the following:

• One Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro (duh)
• DVI to CRT changer/dongle
• SVideo to composite plug
• Composite cable
• Svideo cable
• Driver CD
• Need for Speed High Stakes, Heavy MEtal F.A.K.K.2, Serious Sam (1), ONI & 4x4 Evo (demo's), MotoCross Mania and last but not least the Excellent DVD suite from Cyberlink, Power DVD 4 or when you are in luck version 5.
• Manual

You'll agree with me that this is a very decent software package!