ATI Radeon 9800SE Video Card Review
Two graphic boards built on the ATI Radeon 9800SE chip took part in the tests: one on the base of the PCB from ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (PowerColor Radeon 9800SE) and one on the base of the PCB from ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (Sapphire Radeon 9800SE).
PowerColor Radeon 9800SE 256-bit
Package bundle:
Since the board came to our test lab not in the retail version, but as an OEM version, then there's nothing much to talk about the package bundle:
- The graphics board itself;
- A user's manual in 5 languages;
- 1 CD with the WinDVD 4 software suite.
This is an absolutely standard delivery package for a board supplied in the OEM version.
Design and layout
As we have already noted, the ATI Radeon 9800SE video card is manufactured on the base of the PCB from Radeon 9700 Pro. We couldn't find any differences from the reference ATI Radeon 9700 Pro board - the reference PCB design was used.
The board offers ATI's traditional bright red color of the PCB, has 128 MB DDR memory onboard, the AGP 2x/4x/8x interface and a standard set of outputs: one analogous, one digital, and one TV-OUT. The board does not provide any third-party codecs to implement the TV-OUT - the features to support it are already integrated in the Radeon 9800SE chip. The good old two-phase SC1175CSW of Semtech is used as a voltage regulator.
The video card is equipped with 128 MB DDR memory packaged in 8 chips (4 chips on each of the sides - front and rear) within the advanced BGA packaging, with the 256-bit memory bus. Note that the number of rendering pipelines is 4, not 8 (the other 4 are disabled programmatically). The memory produced by Hynix (HY5DU283222) offers a 2.8 ns access time, which is equivalent to approximately 355 MHz of memory operation (710 MHz), but the memory runs at its intended frequency 340 MHz (680 MHz). That is, there is a small overclocking margin for the memory. The graphics chip also runs at 380 MHz as per the specifications.
 There is absolutely no cooling for the memory chips. To cool the graphics processor, a low-profile cooling system is used which hardly can be regarded as effective enough. A standard reference small fan is fitted on the radiators. Nevertheless, in the nominal mode during the long 3D testing session there were no stability problems found. At the same time, the radiators were heated up quite immensely.
On the whole, the layout and design are good in that they replicate the design of ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, not ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (these boards, as we already mentioned, will soon prevail on the market), so the owners of ATI Radeon 9800SE on the base of the PCB of Radeon 9700 Pro can safely get round to enabling the 4 programmatically locked rendering pipelines. Nothing prevents the owners of Radeon 9800SE on the base of the PCB of ATI Radeon 9500Pro from doing the same, but because of the rigid restriction of the memory bus width (128 bit) and lower frequencies the performance will be SUBSTANTIALLY lower than that in the unlocked Radeon 9800SE on the base of the PCB of ATI Radeon 9700 Pro that came to our test lab.
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800SE (128-bit)
Retail bundle
We found the following items in the package box:
- User's manual;
- A drivers CD;
- A CD with the proprietary RedLine utility, PowerDVD;
- Game Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness;
- TV extension cords;
- DVI-to-D-Sub adapters;
- SVideo-to-RCA;
- A splitter adapter for external power supply.
Quite a rich package bundle. Once again, Sapphire makes the users happy.
Design and layout:
The board offers ATI's traditional bright red color of the PCB, has 128 MB DDR memory onboard, the AGP 2x/4x/8x interface and a standard set of outputs: one analogous, one digital, and one TV-OUT. The board does not provide any third-party codecs to implement the TV-OUT - the features to support it are already integrated in the Radeon 9800SE chip.
The video card is equipped with 128 MB DDR memory packaged in 8 chips (4 chips on each of the sides - front and rear) within the advanced BGA packaging, with the 128-bit memory bus. But the chips are positioned in a way different from that in Radeon 9800Se. Note that the number of rendering pipelines is 4, not 8 (the other 4 are disabled programmatically). The memory produced by Infinion offers a 3.3 ns access time, which is equivalent to approximately 355 MHz of memory operation (710 MHz), but the memory runs at its intended frequency 340 MHz (680 MHz). That is, there is a small overclocking margin for the memory. The graphics chip also runs at 380 MHz as per the specifications.
 There is absolutely no cooling for the memory chips. To cool the graphics processor, a low-profile cooling system is used which hardly can be regarded as effective enough. A standard reference small fan is fitted on the radiators. Nevertheless, in the nominal mode during the long 3D testing session there were no stability problems found. At the same time, the radiators were heated up quite immensely.
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