Conclusion:

The 9800 series, what a wonderful product from ATI. From the basic 9800, to the pro, and now we have the XT. There is nothing to touch the XT for performance right now. Nvidia really arent competing, yes the 5900 and the 5950 are fantastic cards, but are they in the same league? Take a look at the figures on the past pages and you do the math. Doesnt take Einstein to work it out.

This 9800 XT I received from Visiontek is quite simply a superb card, you get a decent package with everything you need to get going along with a coupon for the forthcoming Half life 2. I would like to point out that not only did this card perform flawlessly under 26 hours of almost solid benchmarking but it held a generous overclock of 470 on the core and 400 on the ram without any stuttering, lock outs or artifacts. Nothing crashed. Every benchmark ran first time, every game ran first time, and they all ran beautifully. Even at stock speeds the card was able to chew and spit out anything thrown at it. I even pushed it to 480 on the core and 410 on the ram for short periods of time. These cards will hit awesome clocks on water.

When overclocked the card simply screamed, an almighty 7000+ in 3dmark2003 with my lowly Barton puffing behind it all on stock cooling, a word of advise just dont use ATIs woeful "overdrive". Stick to the good old fashioned methods like Powerstrip or Rage3d tweak to get every ounce out of the card.

So what about Visiontek?, will they give you the all important support if anything goes wrong? Living in Ireland its hard for me to vouch for them as they dont even supply hardware to this area as a rule, but I will say my dealings with them have been of the highest standard, always professional, always ready to supply answers and help. I rarely have seen this kind of "attention to detail" from any of the companies ive dealt with on Driverheaven.

Now for the question on everyones lips .... what about the cost?, are these cards worth your hard earned money? My answer to this is simple. if you want to game at 1600x1200 with all the eye candy in your games on full, then without question "yes". Not only is it capable of running todays high end power crazy games with ease, its has plenty left in reserve for forthcoming titles like Half life 2 and Doom 3. Lets face it, everyone says the 9700 pro and lesser cards are great value for money and they are, but if you are like me and you want to play the hottest games at the highest resolutions with the ultimate image quality then there is no other choice............

Its the best card ive used. period.