Radeon 9600 XT vs Radeon 9800 SE

[Hm]

Hi, I'd appreciate some advice.

In the UK I can get a 128Mb Sapphire 9800 SE for around the same price
as a Sapphire or Hightech 9800 XT.

What would be the better choice? I know the 9800 SE is considerably
slower (and cheaper) than a 9800 Pro or XT, but how does it compare to
a 9600 XT?

I'll be using the card with a Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2 (nforce2) board
and an Athlon XP2800 (Barton).

Thanks,

Harry

 

[Magwheelz]

In the UK I can get a 128Mb Sapphire 9800 SE for around the same price
as a Sapphire or Hightech 9800 XT.

Buy all the 9800XT's you can at the SE price. Sell them on eBay. Get
rich quick!!

Gotta go,
Magwheelz

 

[Hm]

Sorry - of course I meant the 9600XT (not the 9800XT) was the same
price as the 9800SE.

 

[Daren Evans]

check tomshardware, puts the 9800se a whisker in front of the 9600xt. How
much and where?

 

[Hm]

check tomshardware, puts the 9800se a whisker in front of the 9600xt. How
much and where?

Thanks for this.

Have already bought a 9600 XT, but was surprised to see the possible
software mod that might bring the performance of the 9800SE to very
close to that of a 9800XT.

At www.ebuyer.co.uk the current prices are:

Sapphire 128 Mb 9800SE £109.11 + VAT
Sapphire (or Hightech) 120 Mb 9600XT £101.19 + VAT

Harry

 

[Daren Evans]

I've got the 9600XT as well - you won't be disappointed

 

[Gilden Man]

Have already bought a 9600 XT, but was surprised to see the possible
software mod that might bring the performance of the 9800SE to very
close to that of a 9800XT.

I recently discussed this in another thread. My 9800SE AIW with a bit of
overclocking is running at over 9800 Pro speeds. The only card in those
tomshardware tests which beats it is the 9800 XT which is £350 compared to
the £150 I paid for this card with All-in-Wonder facilites

Here is the original article:

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It's something bad you can't see. The 9800SE is similar in performance to a
low end 9600.

Not always true. There are two versions of the 9800SE: one with a 128bit
memory bus and the other with 256bit. You can see here:

http://www.ocfaq.com/softmod/faq.php

that the cards with an L shaped arrangment of memory chips are 256bit and
those with an I shaped arrangement (i.e. all in a horizontal line) are
128bit. All the All-In-Wonder 9800SE's have a 256bit bus as they need to
have an L shaped memory chip arrangement to make room for the TV-tuner.
As mentioned in that tomshardware.com article, they are testing one with
a 128bit bus. The Sapphire 9800SE is a 128bit version.
Here is a review of the 256bit version of the 9800SE:

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02NTU=

You can see it performs very well compared to a 9600 Pro. Sometimes the
9800SE's 256bit bus gives it the edge and sometimes the 9600Pro's higher
fill-rate wins out. Further to that, if the card can be softmodded to
unlock the other 4 pipelines then you effectively have a 9800 Pro.
I purchased a Hercules 9800SE AIW 3 weeks ago. I successfully applied
the softmod patch to unlock the other 4 pipelines, making my card
effectively a 9800 Pro AIW, for £150 rather than the ~£270 a real 9800 Pro
AIW would cost. I got mine from www.lowestonweb.com, although I notice
they are out of stock now.
Be warned though. Only on some of these cards do the other 4 pipelines
work perfectly. A friend tried the softmod and he had an unwatchable
chessboard effect during games. He now uses the standard driver and is
thus running with that standard 4 pipelines.
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