One of the nicest cards on the market (Apr 05) (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro)

Member Name: Siswell

Product:	ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Date:	20/04/05 (259 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Quick, Full DirectX support

Disadvantages: Use a lot of power, and need its own power connector

I personally own the Readon 9800 Pro (Saphire) card and to put it mildly i'm very happy with it. Decided to buy this card after my Gefore 3 Ti 200 was starting to get a bit dated. Did the usually good things when buying a card looked round the net to see what people recommend. One thing immeditely jumps up at you - this card is highly recommended by the Hlaf-Life 2 creators Valve (and they weren't just bribed by ATI either). If you compare this card to the only other rival the Geforce 4 series you notice they apear pretty much matched with similar draw rates however quite noticably the Geforce 4 doesn't correctly support DirectX 9 so when you play games like Half-Life a lot of the finishing touches to the graphics just aren't there - this is the reason Valve like the card. You can however go to the series of cards above and get a Geforce 5 which they fixed the DirectX problems on but as the price is rather a step up i really wouldn't want to.

As with all computer bits this card is starting to get dated and has been super seaded by a new ATI series which is even faster . . . but this card is still the one to buy and i believe it will be for a few more months.

On the down side this card (as with many of the top end ones) requires its own power connector as its sucks a lot of juice. Finally this series of cards has the extra bonus of being able to have 2 screens out on the same card which is always a laugh even if i bit useless.

Summary: