Image Quality:
There is not much to say on the image quality of the 9800 XT other than it’s just as good as the 9800 Pro. The only difference is that the 9800 XT does the same image quality at a faster speed.

We have included 2 screenshots in our results file, these screenshots are will allow you to compare the XT’s visual quality to your own card.

Screenshot 1:
3Dmark03, game test 4. Frame 680 – 1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF (Bmp format) DOWNLOAD

Screenshot 2:
Aquamark3 Frame 4000 – 1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF (Tga Format) DOWNLOAD

As mentioned above the XT is faster for the same IQ…but just how much faster?

Well here are a few results…

3dmark2003

Card	Settings	1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
9800 Pro		1126 marks
9800 XT		1247 marks

Aquamark3

Card	Settings	1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
9800 Pro		17.14 fps
9800 XT		18.57 fps

Unreal Tournament 2003
1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF

Not a lot splits the cards in Aquamark however in UT2003 and 3DMark03 the difference is quite large.

Overclocking

The overclocking section of this review was always gong to be one of the most interesting sections. Firstly we have a card that is using core which has evolved from one which taped out in mid 2002. Secondly we have the new advanced cooling system that monitors the temperature of the card and adjusts the speed of the fan accordingly.

Out of the box the card is clocked at 412Mhz Core and 365Mhz memory, up from 380/340 on the 9800 Pro. To overclock the card we used Radclocker which is available from
http://www28.brinkster.com/chrisww1942/
Radclocker gave us a stable overclock of 461/401 on the 9800 XT, an increase of 48mhz core and 35mhz ram. (The core was stable 99% of the time at 467mhz however did at times show small pixel errors, no major artifacting however enough for us to have to reduce the clock slightly.)

Heres how it affected the results:

 

3dmark2003

Card	Settings	1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
412/365		6092 marks
461/401		6570 marks

Aquamark3

Card	Settings	1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF
412/365		39,119 Triscore
461/401		40,709 Triscore

Unreal Tournament 2003
1600x1200 6xAA 16xAF

412/365

461/401

Whilst Aquamark has a small increase, UT2003 shows a large increase in benchmark considering the settings used and 3DMark03 shows a huge increase of nearly 500 points!

 

Next: So if I overclock my 9800 pro its an XT then???