i am looking to buy a 9800pro and i am not sure what card to buy so i wanted to find out what card you peeps preferred. such as asus, ati, sapphire, tyan, powercolor ect.. oh and i would prefer it to be a good overclocker. hopefully this shouldn't be under the hardware one, but maybe.....

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roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, and I am too!

ATI is definatly my favorite...

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<Outlaw_Torn> you mean your related to that damned sasquatch, Mech?
<MechWarrior> Lets just say the part of the family tree that does fork has bossy the goat in it.

YOu don't really need to OC a 9800 Pro

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

you don't need to but you can, i just like to oc guess its a bad habit

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roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, and I am too!

I'd go with ASUS.

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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

I have ATI. *huggles his card*

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Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a *****?

I know a lot of people who recommend sapphire brand when it comes to ATI cards.

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"She turned me into a newt!"
Pause
"Well I got better..."

I'm happy with my Hercules 9800.

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WARNING: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF PEANUT!!!
----@%

Asus are one of the best, but my Sapphire 9600 is working fine.

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"Apples rule. If it weren't for a conspiracy on the part of fruit manufacturers we'd all have apples."

In general, they all overclock well, but you'd be better off not. They don't need the extra speed, and many games, especially UT2K3/2K4, will run VERY unstable when a card is overclocked, no matter if the card is cool or not. This applies to nVidia also.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

Yup! I have my 9200se (SAVE ME PLEASE!!!!) OCed from 200/166 to 265/175 and in UT2004 I get artifacts only during the briefings of the Onslaught maps. Werid.

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[="Mothers stop cooking take off your aprons; Fathers stop looking at every sports station; Take a second, and think of every poor nation." - Nas=]

Massassian since: March 12, 2001

[This message has been edited by Sol (edited April 27, 2004).]

As far as I know, ATI, Asus, Herucules, and Saphire cards are all are powerful from the star, and overclock well; I'd reccomend any of those four. Avoid Powercolor, and probably every other maker; they just seem to run much slower.

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Nes digs around in the trash can.
Nes finds a hamburger!
Nes puts the hamburger in his backpack.

the reason you are getting artifacts is because you have it overclocked to high, your core is prolly to high. and if you have good cooling and overclock correctly you should have no problems, the purpose of ocing is to increase preformance not to decrease it. powercolor usually does produce a sexy card but their 9800 was kinda crappy, they delivered the things underclocked and barely oc. i am thinking about going with either asus or sapphire, i think it will prolly come down to what is bundled with the cards.

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roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, and I am too!

If you really want to OC, get an XT, they OC themselves... heh, but yeah i agree that they dont really need it. They can handle all games out right now at decent frames at medium res just as long as you have plenty of ram and a nice cpu... (thats provided you use everything at max detail.)

Oh, and I myself have a straight ATI.

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"Ahhhh!! I'm Burnin'! I'm Burnin!!!" - Cleaner from Max Payne 2

As far as I know, the bundles for any Radeons cards don't change much: the main focus of the bundle is HL2, and I have yet to anything that comes with anything else that's not softare for DVDs...

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"I know there's got to be some sort of mathematical equation for this sort of thing, but I prefer trial and error. It's one of the advantages of having a socialized health care system."

As I said earlier, your temp on the card could be EXACTLY the same, and still it will cause artifacts in UT2003/4 and cause instability. Just check out their tech forums sometime. Whenver someone has a crashing problem, the first thing they ask: Did you OC? Simply because UT has a problem with it, even when every other game doesn't. It's weird, and I can't explain why. I just know it does.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net