VisionTek XTASY Radeon 9800 XT 256MB

The battle for video card supremacy recently became more interesting with the latest product refreshes from NVIDIA and ATI. The hardware I'm alluding to is of course the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and the ATI Radeon 9800 XT. I recently took a closer look at a retail 5950 Ultra (Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra TDH MyVIVO), but this time around, a retail 9800 XT gets the spotlight.

That's right. It's time to turn the focus on the VisionTek Xtasy 9800 XT, which is a 256MB card just like the 5950 Ultra. Also just like the 5950 Ultra, it's basically just an overclocked version of its father. In this case, that father is a 9800 Pro, which has a VPU core clocked at 380MHz and memory running at 340MHz (680MHz DDR). The XT flexes its muscles a little harder and runs at 412MHz core and 365MHz memory (730MHz DDR). In addition to being clocked higher, the XT features a new and improved cooler design. It's a lot more interesting design than on the basic 9800 Pro cards.

In this review, I will focus on how the card performs compared to the Leadtek 5950 and also briefly cover the new Overdrive feature available in ATI's latest sets of Catalyst drivers. As usual though, let's start with the features, specs and package contents.

Features:

• AGP 8x Support
• CATALYST Driver Support
• SMARTSHADER 2.1
• SMOOTHVISION 2.1
• Hyper Z III+
• TRUFORM 2.0
• 8 Parallel Rendering Pipelines
• 4 Parallel Geometry Engines
• F-Buffer Technology, 128-bit floating point color precision, 2nd generation N-patch higher order surface, FULLSTREAM VIDEOSHADER
• Integrated TV out support up to 1024x768 resolution. De-interlacing and frame rate conversion, dual integrated 10-bit per channel palet DACs, integrated 165MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant). Unique per-pixel adaptive de-interlacing. Optimized for Pentium 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon 3Dnow! PC 2002 and FTF compliant.
• Lifetime warranty
• Toll-free tech support

Specifications:

• ATI Radeon 9800 XT VPU
• 412 MHz VPU Core
• AGP Bus
• 256MB DDR Memory
• 256-bit, Quad-Channel Memory Interface
• Memory Clock: 365MHz (730MHz DDR)
• Dual 400MHz DACs
• API Support: DirectX 9.0, OpenGL 2.0
• Connectors: VGA, DVI-I, TV/S Video

Package Contents:

• XTASY Radeon 9800 XT Graphics Accelerator
• Quick Install Guide
• 3D Demos
• ATI Catalyst Drivers
• S-Video Cable
• DVI-to-VGA adapter
• Power Cable
• Composite Video Cable
• Half-Life 2 Coupon

Xtasy 9800 XT Box - Front

Xtasy 9800 XT Box - Back

Xtasy 9800 XT

Cables ... Exciting Aren't They?

Half-Life 2 Coupon -- 'Nuff Said!

VisionTek opted to use the exact same packaging as they did with the Xtasy 9800 Pro. The box is plastic instead of the typical cardboard. It's kind of neat but tends to be annoying when opening and closing. As is common with VisionTek's graphics cards, the package is rather sparse. There is one major exception to this though, and that is the inclusion of a coupon to get Half-Life 2 free once it is released! You probably already know that VisionTek is not the only company to offer Half-Life 2 in its card bundle. Most, if not all, of ATI's board partners have opted to include this coupon in their XT packages, and I've even seen it offered in some non-XT bundles.