http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=1508
Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on May 26, 2004 - 5:19 PM
Digit-life caught some interesting news today. There are Radeon 9800 Pro graphics cards on the market with a 128-bit memory bus, completely misleading the consumer. It basically cuts memory bandwith and thus performance in half. Sapphire is such a company that is selling them. Although Sapphire marks the box with a 128-bit specification most generic users don't have a clue what this means and thus can do for performance.
As you can see, they are designed similar (but not identically) to usual RADEON 9800SE-128bit/9500Pro products, feature TSOP chips, but clock rates are 325/580 MHz instead of PRO's 380/680 MHz. They are suitable for RADEON 9800 more.
In other words, there are three differences:
* PCB design
* TSOP memory chips
* Reduced clock rates
Nevertheless, the card is named Radeon 9800 PRO. It's good there's a sticker on box that notes of 128-bit bus, but the "Pro" suffix is not to mean reduced clock rates, so we are slightly anoyed by this. Very misleading.
Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on May 26, 2004 - 5:19 PM
Digit-life caught some interesting news today. There are Radeon 9800 Pro graphics cards on the market with a 128-bit memory bus, completely misleading the consumer. It basically cuts memory bandwith and thus performance in half. Sapphire is such a company that is selling them. Although Sapphire marks the box with a 128-bit specification most generic users don't have a clue what this means and thus can do for performance.
As you can see, they are designed similar (but not identically) to usual RADEON 9800SE-128bit/9500Pro products, feature TSOP chips, but clock rates are 325/580 MHz instead of PRO's 380/680 MHz. They are suitable for RADEON 9800 more.
In other words, there are three differences:
* PCB design
* TSOP memory chips
* Reduced clock rates
Nevertheless, the card is named Radeon 9800 PRO. It's good there's a sticker on box that notes of 128-bit bus, but the "Pro" suffix is not to mean reduced clock rates, so we are slightly anoyed by this. Very misleading.