9800XT Vs 9800 PRO

[HMHB]

I've been looking at the benchmark results for these 2 cards and there doesn't seem to be much in it performance wise - yet the XT card is a lot more money. Does the XT card have something that will be utilised in future games or am I safe getting a 9800 PRO ?

 

[KraGorn]

I'm not a bleeding-edge FPS gamer so maybe I'm missing something but the XT seems just a gouging exercise by ATI to take money off the gullible .. 256Mb of memory is useless at present and AFAIK even HL2 won't make meaningful use of it from info available right now.

If you've money to burn then go ahead ... me, I'm happy my 9800 Pro 128Mb will still be totally useful 12 months from now at least.

 

[HMHB]

I'm coming to the same conclusion as you about this - the XT is only marginally better than the PRO and not worth the extra money.

 

[KraGorn]

IMHO the only bigger gouge right now is the P4EE.

 

[HMHB]

I've ordered a 9800 PRO from Crucial as they do free delivery and it's a reasonable price.
Would you recommend that I uninstall my current drivers ? My current graphics card is a Radeon 9000 and so should use the same drivers as the 9800..... I think !

 

[KraGorn]

If you're running a recent set of Catalyst drivers then yes, the 9800 should slot right in. In the past there was at least one instance, around 3.02 IIRC which broke older cards which was a nasty surprise but I've not seen any reports of nasties with versions later than 3.04 or so and the 9800 is now pretty well established.