There were no surprises when installing the video card, and setting it up was even easier. These days, ATi comes out with new and faster drivers every few weeks, so it’s best to download your video drivers directly off the ATi website. In our review, we used the CATALYST Windows XP 4.5 drivers, which were released right before we conducted this review.

     Setting up the card is simple, you don’t need to do anything… Driver defaults are already set to give you a mix of the best performance and best quality. The one thing that you can do to greatly increase frame rates is to disable vertical sync, but other than that, there really is no need to mess with the driver settings.

Test System

     The test system that I’ll be using this card with is based on a DFI Pro 875B motherboard with a 2.4C P4 overclocked to 3GHz. Below is the full configuration of the system.

Testing

     For testing I'll be using a variety of benchmarks ranging from 3DMark to Halo. Let's get started.

Video Card Defaults / Driver Defaults

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Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo

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Call Of Duty

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Halo: Combat Evolved

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3DMark03

     In the gaming benchmarks, 1024 x 768 gives me about the same scores as my 9800 Pro 256mb card, but when you crank up the resolution, the 9800XT really shines.