VisionTek Radeon 9800 XT - 256mb

The Radeon 9800 XT is effectively a Radeon 9800 Pro with a few extra trips to the gym.  The XT is powered by the hot new ATi R360 core running at 412MHz as opposed to the 9800 Pro's 380MHz.  The card's memory is also jacked up a bit from 680Mhz on the 9800 Pro to the new standard on the XT of 730MHz.  The extra spank came from some rearranging of the PCB layout.  Every little bit helps you know.  Another nice one on the memory is that there is a lot of it!  The 9800XT packs a whopping 256mb of onboard RAM.  I find this incredible considering that 256mb of system memory was a lot just a few years ago.

What you get

Included with the Radeon 9800 XT was the expected driver/utility disk, an extended four pin Molex power line, S-video cable, TV out cable, TV out adapter and a DVI to VGA adapter.  The nice extra that came with all this was a coupon for Half Life 2.  That's right, no dumpy demos here.  When Half Life 2 hits the streets, it's yours.  Nice addition but then again, given the price of the card my standards are going to be very high.

When you first look at the card, its hard to miss the huge copper cooler and fan strapped on.  The fan you see below is a 70mm variable rate fan.  Variable rate in that there is an internal sensor that adjust the speed of the fan depending on the detected temperature of the VPU. 

The heatsink is copper with a good amount of surface area thanks to the fin design.  Also notice that the fins are encased in a clear shroud of sorts that keeps the air channeled and increases the velocity of the air over the fins.  This increased velocity through the use of a shroud takes some of the pressure off the fan, allowing it to run at a lower RPM and as such, quieter.  That's quite a paint job that shroud has I may add.

The 9800 XT is a power hungry fellow requiring a four pin Molex connector to keep it fed.  The connector itself did not seem to be attached as securely as other cards I have played with having the on board Molex connector.  I had the distinct feeling if I pressed too hard it may break. 

On the reverse side of the 9800 XT we found a nice copper heat plate to keep the memory cooled as well as possible.  The second and third pics below show you a cross bar that snaps in and out of place along with three other screws, for access underneath the heatsink. 

These screws had tension springs under them to keep you from putting too much pressure on things.

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