Digital Trends

Crucial Radeon 9800 Pro

November 24th, 2003 | by Doug Hall

Introduction

Being one of the leading suppliers of memory upgrades for OEM memory modules in the U.S., and known for the reliability of their products in that arena, we were a little skeptical about a video card from the same manufacturer. Simply stated, graphics technology is a completely different animal when it comes to computer upgrades. But since we have known Crucial for quality and dependability since 1996, we gave it a shot, and ended up with some very impressive results.

Features and Design

Features

·          TRUFORM™ technology

·          SMOOTHVISION™

·          Anisotropic Filtering

·          Video Immersion™

·          Full hardware support for DirectX® 9

·          Free tech support

·          Limited lifetime warranty

·          Includes Windows® driver CD, DVI-I to VGA Adapter, S-Video to RCA converter, RCA cable and S-video cable 128MB quad-channel DDR memory

·          380MHz core frequency/2.8ns memory

·          Support for DirectX® 9

The Crucial RADEON 9800 Pro uses Samsung K4D263238E-GC2A memory modules which are 2.8 nano second chips rated at 350 Mhz. They are the same memory chips used by ATI in the ALL-IN-WONDER version of the card. The max speed for these chips is rated at 400 MHz so overclocking is an option for this card should you decide you want to do this. We'll talk more about that later.

The ATI Radeon 9800 Pro is on the left and Crucials Radeon 9800 Pro is on the right

The board layout of the RADEON 9800 PRO is the same as ATI's and most other resellers of the Pro version, and is another example of the OEM PCB resold under a different name. More than likely, the OEM models are not available for modification, but the chance to order and modify does exist if Crucial had designed and produced the PCBs themselves; though they are not in the business of doing that. If having a custom color to match your lighting or case design is an issue for you, you may need to go elsewhere. Companies like FIC and MSI specialize in motherboard design and so those options are much more financially feasible as they can produce them in house and not have to pay to have them outsourced. This by itself was not a big issue for us, but since Crucial is owned by Micron (a 1st tier memory manufacturer and the only DRAM manufacturer in the US) we would have liked to have see some of their own chips on the board as matter of course.