5600 Ultra -> 9800 NP: Good upgrade? YES!

Originally posted by: apac
The 9800np also overclocks like a beast. Without flashing the bios, with the crappy infineon 3.0ns memory and the stock sapphire HSF unit mine is running at 425/350 stable.

Go for it 😀

I've never overclocked a beast before. What's it like?

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: gorillaman

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Hmm, a look at the ATI product comparison pages shows that the 9600 Pro has a higher Core and Memory clock than the 9800 NP. Do the extra rendering pipelines and memory interface width really make up that much of a difference? Does the 9800 offer significant performance improvements over the 9600 Pro?

Thanks.

That's like asking, "What would you rather have, 4 cylinders or eight cylinders?"... PS gas mileage isn't a factor in video cards..
LOL

Your analogy is not quite right but I get your point. 🙂

For the record, I'm already very pleased with the 9800. Freelancer was gorgeous, better than with the 5600 Ultra. Tomorrow I'll mess around with UT2003 and see what things look like in that game. Now that I have a truly powerful videocard I don't have to worry about games being unplayable when I select high quality options, I'm gonna go nuts with this thing. 😛

I guess I should peruse Rage3D forums :disgust: to find out how to tweak this card's quality settings. I was going to try to learn how to o/c and/or flash the card's BIOS to make it a Pro, but it is already fast enough. I'm gonna wait until there is a game that I want to play that brings it to it's knees before I do that.