PowerColor RADEON 9800 Platinum Edition

Introduction

Today we are looking at the PowerColor RADEON 9800 Platinum Edition. For those that don't know, Tul owns the PowerColor brand and is the third largest provider of ATI-based graphic cards. The company makes very competitive products that are known all over the world. Although the RADEON 9800 has been around for some time now, this card is something totally different -- and I do mean it.

If you remember, back in May Sapphire introduced a weird card based on the R350 core. The introduction of the 128-bit 9800 Pro created a lot of confusion in the market. The main problem was the company sold the card as a regular 9800 Pro, when in fact it was not. Although there was a little sticker informing the customer about the 128-bit memory architecture, the card's name was very misleading. The problem was addressed and official response from Sapphire can be found here.

The PowerColor RADEON 9800 Platinum Edition is similar to what Sapphire introduced few months ago. I could only assume those cards were introduced because there was a strong need to get rid of older chips and make room for the R420-based cards. Whether this is true or not, products like these should be labeled correctly without misleading potential customers. I'd like to point out again, that this is not a high-end RADEON 9800.

Despite the stated facts, PowerColor's offering is pretty interesting that's why we took some time and looked what's under the hood.