9700pro Vs. 9800 non pro

[narcotic]

both cards run at aprox. $160 which would be a better bang, and why? Thanks in advance.

 

[SickBeast]

9800NP for sure. Its core will definately hit higher speeds if you decide to overclock. At stock speeds they should be pretty similar. The 9800 also has the as-yet unused F-buffer, but it's a pretty meaningless feature IMO. Apparently the 9800s are more efficient than the 9700s clock-for-clock as well.

 

[narcotic]

thanks for the speedy reply. Seems like there's no doubt whatsoever here.

 

[peacemaker1ps]

Go with 9800

 

[Gamingphreek]

Not to rob the thread or anything but what is the F-Buffer and what does it do.

-Kevin

 

[Dman877]

You'd probably be better off finding a used 9800 Pro for that price...

 

[moonboy403]

9800 pro was on sale a while ago
it was only like 150 or something at bestbuy
i'd definitely go for a 9800 pro rather than an se because with a pro.......you're most likely gonna get an xt core

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Not to rob the thread or anything but what is the F-Buffer and what does it do.

Here's an explanation:

Short for FIFO buffer, the F-buffer is what gives the 9800 Pro the capability to do multi-passes
inside the pixel-shader engine instead of over the entire pipeline. With the 9700, the card had
to do the entire rendering proceedure with each pass. The 9800 Pro's F-buffer streamlines this
so that you do each step only once per pixel, making the card a lot more efficient.

While this is all fine and dandy, it is unlikely that games in the immediate future will take
advantage of the F-buffer but as DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0 become more of a requirement,
more support for the F-buffer and long shaders will emerge.

The problem with it is that it has never been implemented in DirectX, not even 9.0c. It is only available in OpenGL, but not even Doom 3 takes advantage of it. That's why I said it's not important. It's basically a phantom feature at this point.

 

[railer]

Not everybody overclocks. If you don't OC, the 9700pro is slightly faster than the 9800np. The 9800 does probably have more headroom if you decide to OC. Not a huge differnce between the two, but I'd get the 9800 and OC it.