Question About My Radeon 9800 256ddr

[XvMMMvX]

After doing quite extrensive research on why my system (see sig for specs) was only recieving a 17000 in 3dmark one when other people with the same system (or less) were getting way better than me. I read that the extra memory on the 256 version of the 9800 was a waste because you could not possibly fill it. And that the memory was clocked slower. Would having this card have an affect on my performance in 3dmark 01 and 03, I am thinking of buying a Radeon 9800 Pro 128DDR and trying it out, but before i do, i would like somebodys thoughts on if this would improve my performance.

 

Daniel

[AYoKoNA]

are you running dual channel ddr on your board???

[XvMMMvX]

Yes I am running dual channel DDR.

[AYoKoNA]

make sure aa and af is off.

 

Also make sure no programs are running in the background.

 

If this is an old install of Windows that you are running you may have to do a reinstall of the OS to get better scores (sometimes there are old drivers or programs conflicting or still running)

[FanATIc205]

yeah turn off all your aa and af setting and move all sliders in the ati control panel to performance. the 256meg 9800pro mem is clocked 10mhz faster than the 9800pro 128 and it uses ddr2. the 256megs will help a lil with aa on newer games but not that much the gpus need to become alot more powerfull to use the extra 128 of mem . to give you a idea of what it would take to use all 256megs would be a game like hl2 with a res of 1200x1600 with 4xaa and 8xaf but then the gpu would become the bottle neck. remember 3dmark01 is more dependant on cpu speed and 03 is highly video card dependant. i would keep your 256meg card it will help out some with games that use like 140megs of vid mem like one map on ut2k3 face with high gfx settings uses about 140megs. the 9600 256 is the one that uses slower ram compared to the 128 version