Well these have been discussed a few times already, but today Sapphire officially launched the two cards.
For those who aren't up to speed with these cards, they are basically a Radeon 9800pro and a 9600pro with a Zalman passive heatsink installed, which of course makes them silent.
http://www.sapphiretech.com/VGA/ult-main-launch.asp
There's a couple of links to articles about the two cards, together with pictures and benchmarks (I think there hasn't been a review of the 9800 ultimate before these).
Must say that the 9600pro ultimate is looking really nice performance and price wise, I may just have to get one myself
It's really great to see how companies are starting to invest more and more in silent components.
Edit:
Another article which isn't linked on Sapphires page:
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/revi ... ate_1.html
And one more:
http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev= ... index.html
Yet another review:
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V ... _eds.shtml
Sapphire launches R9600/9800 Ultimate editions
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Sapphire launches R9600/9800 Ultimate editions
Last edited by Fabool on Fri Jul 25, 2003 7:09 am, edited 2 times in total.
Seems like the Sapphire link went down or something.
Well, the other reviews which were linked there can be found here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/sapphire/ults/
http://www.hardware-mag.de/hardware.php?id=176
(in german)
I'd say the Radeon 9600-series is a better purchase than the FX5600 Ultra. The performance is about the same, but overall the 9600 seems to perform better, especially with Antialiasing.
Check out the Digit-life 9600 roundup (which also has the ultimate card) for FX5600 comparisons and their conclusions here:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/r9600-2.html
Well, the other reviews which were linked there can be found here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/sapphire/ults/
http://www.hardware-mag.de/hardware.php?id=176
(in german)
I'd say the Radeon 9600-series is a better purchase than the FX5600 Ultra. The performance is about the same, but overall the 9600 seems to perform better, especially with Antialiasing.
Check out the Digit-life 9600 roundup (which also has the ultimate card) for FX5600 comparisons and their conclusions here:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/radeon/r9600-2.html
Holy mumma.. I recently bought a Crucial 9800 Pro (stock ATI fan cooling) for ~280gbp inc del. because I really couldn't wait any longer for the Sapphire 9800 pro ultimate. But 409 gbp!!!! yikes! A ZM80A-HP only costs 30 gbp so why is this card another 100 gbp more!?! Ok so the Sapphire has a ZM80C-HP but a hundred quid?!Fabool wrote:Well, the other reviews which were linked there can be found here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/sapphire/ults/
DonP.
The Tom's Hardware review seems to conclude otherwise, actually much to my surprise. They show the 9600Pro falling behind the 5600 non-Ultra in many tests. Then again, there's been many people questioning the validity of review results in Tom's these days. Thanks for the Digit Life link.Fabool wrote:I'd say the Radeon 9600-series is a better purchase than the FX5600 Ultra. The performance is about the same, but overall the 9600 seems to perform better, especially with Antialiasing.
There's also a recent article (linked from AnandTech news) that said there's a bug in current DX-9 anti-aliasing hardware, and there's a workaround for ATI but not for nVidia.
Extremetech also has a series of articles about nVidia and their "optimizations". Of course, ATI is hardly innocent in this as well. Just that they didn't seem to cheat as much - oops I mean optimize as aggressively
Personally, I feel that the 9600 Pro is a more elegant design, though I can't exactly explain why when I think about it. Is it the result of a good marketing effort on ATI's part? Can't trust those Canadians, like South Park showed us And the Sapphire Ultimate fanless heatpipe (cheaper than 9600Pro + Zalman heatpipe) is icing on the cake.
In case you're wondering, I'm still waffling over which $200 card to buy. Or should I get the DVD burner instead.
Maybe I'll just get both
Yeah, for some reason I too think that the 9600pro is more elegant than a FX5600.
Nowadays I question almost every review I read, especially those on Tom's. Their quality has really been falling over the years and the rumors of so-called 'bribes' don't do them much good either.
My opinion is that the 9600pro is a good card for it's price if you're not a huge gamer that requires the best of the best (note that this is based on the ridiculous prices here in Finland, which are easily $50-100 higher than those in the states). Especially the ultimate edition since it's passive straight out of the box, has a good bundle, 0.13 micron=less power usage/less heat and even overclocks fairly well without additional cooling.
Though if you can get a 9700 non-pro with the price, it's most likely a better deal (although I've been reading of a strange "shimmering" bug with the 9500/9700 series..), but I think their production has been halted as all the retailers here have been sold out on almost every brand of 9700 non-pro for weeks and no estimate when, and if they get more.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/rad ... ro-ue.html
9800 ultimate edition 256mb review @ Digit-life if someone's interested. I think Digit-life's reviews are a bit odd as well and some of the results are quite different than in other reviews, but I like how they review the cards, with pictures of the bundle and memory chips and all..
Nowadays I question almost every review I read, especially those on Tom's. Their quality has really been falling over the years and the rumors of so-called 'bribes' don't do them much good either.
My opinion is that the 9600pro is a good card for it's price if you're not a huge gamer that requires the best of the best (note that this is based on the ridiculous prices here in Finland, which are easily $50-100 higher than those in the states). Especially the ultimate edition since it's passive straight out of the box, has a good bundle, 0.13 micron=less power usage/less heat and even overclocks fairly well without additional cooling.
Though if you can get a 9700 non-pro with the price, it's most likely a better deal (although I've been reading of a strange "shimmering" bug with the 9500/9700 series..), but I think their production has been halted as all the retailers here have been sold out on almost every brand of 9700 non-pro for weeks and no estimate when, and if they get more.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/rad ... ro-ue.html
9800 ultimate edition 256mb review @ Digit-life if someone's interested. I think Digit-life's reviews are a bit odd as well and some of the results are quite different than in other reviews, but I like how they review the cards, with pictures of the bundle and memory chips and all..