Digital Trends

ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256MB

April 28th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Features and Design

For the most part, the Radeon 9800XT looks a lot like other ATI graphics cards with the red printed circuit board and a VGA, S-Video and Digital output. The one item that stands out visually is the heatsink. Unlike the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, where the heatsink only covers the graphics processor, the 9800XT's heatsink covers the processor and the RAM, on both the top and the bottom of the PCB. And where the Radeon9800 Pro has an aluminum heatsink, this one is all copper. This big heatsink really gives the Radeon9800 some heft, making it weigh in at around four pounds.

Typical of ATI's Radeon family of products, the 9800XT comes with the standard cables and connectors. Included is a S-Video cable, a composite cable and a digital to analog converter. Since the 9800XT has an onboard molex connector for its own power, ATI has also included a Y-splitter in case you don't have an extra molex connection in your computer. As has been the case for the last few months, ATI also includes a coupon redeemable for a free copy of Half-Life 2, the highly anticipated and often delayed first person shooter. The game has been so delayed though, that when it actually does come out, the 9800XT might not be able to handle it as well as ATI had originally planned.

As usual, the retail box also comes with a product manual and driver CD, however, we always suggest you download the latest drivers from ATI's Website anyway.

The Radeon 9800XT is based on the R360 graphics core, a .15 micron core that runs at 412MHz. The same Samsung 2.8 nanosecond memory modules that we saw on the 9800 Pro are also found on the 9800XT.