Battle of my top 3 9800 PROs

[Arsenal11]

So Im looking to get a new video card, and just wanted to hear some opinions on which of these three would be the better overall pick.

HIS Excalibur 9800PRO
Hercules 9800 PRO
Gexcube 9800 PRO

Ill post links in a sec

[AsianBatman]

Hercules looks good so does HIS. But i would go with hercules.
My personal favorite is Sapphire or Powercolor.

[Arsenal11]

Im leaning more towards the HIS because of its great cooling capabilities, and the fact that it comes with a HL2 ticket.

The only thing Im worried about is how long this card is going to last me, still pushing out great frame rates in new games of the future. What kind of frame rates do you guys think this card would get with medium settings, in a 1024x768 resolution on games like Doom3 and HL2???

Maybe I should just wait for the newer cards in march??

[SearanoX]

Medium settings? What's wrong with you? You'll be wanting to crank everything to highest with this baby.

Half-Life 2 doesn't run as well as DOOM III, around 40-70 average (based on multiple situations), but the game isn't finished yet. Hopefully we'll get an increase in performance.

The DOOM III benchmarks also run better on nVidia cards because they issued a patch before the benchmarks that increased the performance on DOOM III. Currently, nVidia cards are about 10 fps ahead of ATi, even though the game is supposedly optimized for ATi cards. Most likely, this will be resolved, as there's a good amount of time until release.

So yeah, if you want to overclock and want a Half-Life 2 voucher (who doesn't?) then go with the HIS. Can't go wrong with any of those cards, really. It's just a matter of preference, software bundles, and price.

[Arsenal11]

Well, I have read some very great and extensive reviews of these cards, specifically the HIS and the Hercules from the same site, and Ive decided to go with the HIS. It seems that this is the next best card out besides the 9800XT, and seems like its cooling solution really allows this card to outperform any others in its class. I think the Hercules gets great reviews because of it's slick looks, when it really doesn't perform any better than the average ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Also, the HL2 voucher drops the price of this card to 50$ for me, because I know that I would have to buy this game when it comes out anyway.:)

[Wiggo]

I don't know as the reviews that I've seen (includin' this one) don't have the HIS anywhere near the performance of the ATi job.

[SearanoX]

Yeah, but the ATi card is also a 256 MB, while the HIS is a 128. I'm surprised to hear that the card is clocked so high. For something running so fast, you'd think it could perform better. Still, I suppose the cooling makes up for it.

And my system gets better benchmarks than the TweakTown one. I feel special.

[Wiggo]

Cards with 256MB of memory use slower memory chips than those with 128MB as to make them more cost competitive so ya theory goes out the window there.

[SearanoX]

Gah...you and your beer drinking smilies.

Well, if he wants to overclock his VPU and CPU, then that's the best he can get. He should be able to overclock it even more, and hopefully the card won't heat up the case too much. He might also have yet another fan in there...

Overclocker's wet dream, but perhaps not the best performance sums it up about right, I guess.

[Arsenal11]

Yeah, I saw that review before I decided on this card, and basically, here is my interpretation.

The HIS I can pick up for 350$, and it comes with HL2 voucher, and on all of those benchmarks, performs very very close to the XT, which is around 500$, and no HL2:( . I am really pushing it with this 350$ already, there is no way I am going to be able to scrap up another 150$ for the XT, and then another 50$ for HL2 when it comes out.

Also, I can't recall, but I don't think that those benchmarks were done while the card was OCed. If you check out the benchmarks at guru3D, you will see that when this card is OCed, it can push out another 5-10 frames, and the clock speeds are easily above XT defaults. Also, that cooling system realy helps the cooling of the overall system, because of how it rids of the hot air, instead of throwing it around in your case.

Hopefully you guys see why this card is logically the best thing I can get in my position right now.

PS The 2 reviews that I read, it got Editor's choice award in as well:cool:

[AsianBatman]

Whatever floats your boat, remeber the card isn't for us (DAM), so if thats what you want and what makes you happy, don't pay attention to what people say. :p

[The__tweaker]

Originally posted by SearanoX
Gah...you and your beer drinking smilies.

Man you ought to grow up. I haven't read anything i liked from you yet so chill..
What's wrong with our beer smilies..??

I know your just a kid but behave.. :rolleyes2

[AsianBatman]

Lol tweaker on the attack....and nothing wrong with non-drinkers! *sigh wine cooler mix and pepsi for me thank you. :cheers:

[The__tweaker]

Lol tweaker on the attack....and nothing wrong with non-drinkers! *sigh wine cooler mix and pepsi for me thank you. :cheers:

I did not complain about non drinkers. :)
But why wine over our smilies..:confused:

[SearanoX]

Originally posted by SearanoX
Gah...you and your beer drinking smilies.

Man you ought to grow up. I haven't read anything i liked from you yet so chill..
What's wrong with our beer smilies..??

I know your just a kid but behave.. :rolleyes2

I was referring to Wiggo...in a joking way. I just noticed that every post he makes ends in a beer-drinking smilie. I know it doesn't mean anything, rather it's sort of a signature. Do you need to flame me for making comments about somebody else who took it as a joke as it was supposed to be intended?

I haven't done anything to ever offend you, and yet you instantly start acting like an ******* out of the blue. Guess what, my respect for you has slid down about five notches to nil. Congratulations.