An EZ question ?

[Driverx.x.x]

Hi all ,

I had recently bought a powercolor ati radeon 9600 pro 128 mb grafix card and I noticed that it was an EZ edition, a sticker was pasted on the box "EZ edition core/memory 400/400" . I know that means its 400 mhz gpu core clock and 400 mhz memory clock. I installed 3dmark 2003 and checked the details section and was like showing around 400 mhz for gpu and 200 mhz for memory. I understand that the memory is ddr and that's the reason why probably the actual 200 mhz corresponds to the 400 mhz listed on the box.

What I really want to know is, Is the EZ edition a strip down version of a normal ati radeon 9600 pro grafix card ? or is it supposed to be a step ahead ?
I wasn't impressed by the memory clock speed at all ,and I am guessing that for a 9600 pro card, its usually faster . I tried searching for more info about the EZ edition on the internet but couldn't get much. also am planning on upgrading to a 9800 pro cuz doom3 performance with 9600 pro is a bit sucky.
You can only get satisfactory game performance when set to the medium settings , you can play it on the high settings however when the action starts to set in things start getting outta hand .

Thanks,
Driverxxx

 

[Vaerilis]

It's a cheaper, lighter version of the 9600pro. You probably won't be able to squeeze much more from the card, as the EZ editions usually use memory rated at 5 ns (200MHz) to decrease costs, so even overclocking is out of the question (the core may OC well, but it won't help much).

 

[Driverx.x.x]

Different versions of 9800 pro ?

Hi again ,
do you know if there are different versions even for a ati 9800 pro ? I don't want to get duped again . You order for something and you get the cheapest version of the product out there and you need to pay the actual price too, now thats bad , the rad 9600 pro EZ costed me around $160 , tax and all and that's like really bad , the 9800 pro is offered for about $190. I want to know if the card comes in cheaper and lighter versions of itself.

Thanks,
Driver

 

[Vaerilis]

There are multiple variants.

I advise you to stay away from the 128bit versions (~40% slower), and the 9800SE cards (half speed).

Try to get a regular 9800pro with 128MB, or 256MB of memory (there is no real difference in speed, but in the latter case, be careful not to buy a card with lower-than-usual clock rates), and a memory bandwidth of 256bits.