Radeon 9800 PRO 256MB

[Platinum]

Just read this review here

ATI have chosen to debut DDR-II memory modules for the first time on one of their solutions

All the info I can see online i.e other reviews / ATI's site dont mention DDRII.

Ive got the Connect 3D varient of the 256MB 9800 pro in my box atm and see no mention of DDRII.

Does the card indead have DDR II?

Just wondering

[Platinum]

Also adding to that the review states :

Core clock 400MHz
Memory clock 700MHz

Where as mine defaults to :

Core clock 380MHz
Memory clock 680MHz DDR

[Axion]

different variants seem to default at slightly different clocks.... the powercolour does 400/700 whereas the sapphire does 380/680 default.

Ehm seeing as all 256mb 9800pro's are, by ATI spec, built with DDR-II im sure yours is... otherwise it wouldnt contravene ATI's specs...

ah rest easy... the difference between the 128 and 256 is minimal, so the difference between 256mb ddr and 256mb ddr-2 wont be noticeable EVEN if you didnt have ddr-2... which you *should*

[Platinum]

all that I can see on the ATI site is : 128MB or 256MB of double data rate SDRAM

My driver CP shows DDR, my vid card box shows DDR.

I find it odd that if the card does indead have DDR II why this feature isnt spalshed all over there site and boxes?

[Platinum]

Sent a email to Connect 3D and got this reply :

"The card is not DDR II memory. The 9800 Pro chips from ATI allows DDR II memory to be used but this memory is very very expensive and as yet no one has built any using DDR II."

Fast DDRII cards sent out to review sites and slower DDR I out to the public?

[Austin]

Well DDR-II is still in its infancy and as such it's a little more complicated. DDR-II has much higher latencies but can (mostly in theory) run faster than (in mhz) than std DDR ... the latency off-sets the speed increase. DDR-II is also expensive and really offers very little improvements over DDR at this moment in time so you shouldn't truly be losing out with DDR on your card. In fact at std clocks the DDR will actually be faster as latency should be lower and (some of) the cost savings hsould be passed onto you the consumer.

[Platinum]

Wonder why the hexus review states the card has DDRII? surly if there card did then it would be performing slower than retail cards due to the latency issues?

[Austin]

IIRC the cards using DDR-II (all 256MB according to ATI's reference design) used slightly higher clocks otherwise they would have been slower. Using DDR-II in the samples sent out to the press (or simply the early review samples) probably used DDR-II in order to get favourable RAM o/c's, DDR-II sh/would reach a higher rate of mhz even though some of the perf would be lost due to latency.

I would imagine ATI knew some of the 3rd party cards would use std DDR and that is why they weren't more generous with the RAM clock speed.