Video card Jargon

[rjcoolpix880]

Will doom 3 run on my rig?

haha...kidding.

I was looking at the wide world of video cards and i keep seeing that one card will have 2 or three different types (ex: radeon 9800, 9800 pro, 9800 se) what is the difference in these cards. I imagine that the the gpu is the same, right, thats thr '9800' part. I know that the clock speeds are lower on the cheaper versions. but couldnt you overclock it to meet the higher versions? i was also thinking that maybe they use cheaper/slower memory combined with the reduced speed on the cheaper versions. which would make it cheaper. remember im not talking specifically the 9800 series but all video cards tend to have a similar pricing structure.

Thanks
-Ryan

 

[Lonyo]

XT for ATi = High end
Ultra = nVidia high end

Pro = ATi mid range
GT = nVidia mid range
Also possibly a GT coming from ATi which will be above the Pro suffix.

No suffix = "normal"

XT for nVidia = low end
SE for ATi = low end

SE's for ATi often come very crippled (less pipelines, or half the memory bus (eg: 9600SE has 64-bit, compared to 128-bit for normal 9600's IIRC, 9800SE has 4 pipelines compared to 8 for 9800 normal).
Nowadays, lower range cards are coming not only woth slower memory, but also less pipelines (X800XT has 16, X800Pro has 12, 6800Ultra and GT has 16, 6800 has 12)

Also clocks are pretty much always lower on the lower range versions, both core and memory.
Cores can be overclocked (though not always up to higher end speeds), memory is hit and miss, depending on what RAM they stick on your card (some people use better RAM than others)

 

[JBT]

Nv also uses the SE name depending on the brand they are equivalant to the XT spec. I would say Lonyo has it pretty much there for whats what.

 

[cKGunslinger]

:thumbsup: to Lonyo.

Another way to think about it,

From worst to best:

ATI: SE, <nothing>, PRO, XT
nV: XT or SE, <nothing>, GT, Ultra