retail means you get it in abox with drivers & bundled software and a manuf warranty etc, rather than oem which is just a bare card with no warranty except with the shop you bought it from.

SE, just a stripped down repackaged version of a better card. I wouldn't bother no matter what the apparent saving, pay the extra and get a proper Pro or an XT.

Edited by - Tawakalna on 10/31/2004 8:31:39 AM

Aren't drivers free? I think I'll stick with the lite then. Warranties aren't worth £100.

___Corsair~MMIV
Truth, justice freedom and all that other nonsense

some oem cards come without drivers, sometimes people don't actually know how to download and install drivers (yes it's true) and there's often things like DirectX on the disk, you'd be surprised how many people don't even know what DirectX is and that they have to have the correct (latest) version for their card. Also not everyone has a fast internet connection, and if you're installing from scratch you may not have an internet connection set up at all.

I'd still stay away from the SE's if I were you.

btw that lcard on your linky is exactly the same as mine and it is excellent. top of the line card a year ago and still head-and-shoulders above many many others. however the Nvidia 6800 Ultra is now top of the tree. Ati are losing an awful lot of ground

Edited by - Tawakalna on 10/31/2004 10:05:30 AM

Somehow I doubt I can get a 6800 for £150/£200. (If you see it for £200 don't hesitate to tell me though!)

___Corsair~MMIV
Truth, justice freedom and all that other nonsense

funnily enuff I was offered one by a distributor for personal use for £230, which is prob more than a ton less than the chea[est they'll go for in the shops.

Ah well, £200's my budget peak anyway. I was originally going for £150, so anything even slightly past the £200 mark is beyond me.

___Corsair~MMIV
Truth, justice freedom and all that other nonsense

The 9800 SE has only 4 pixel piplines and a lower clock compared to the 9800 Pro. However, if you download omega drivers then you can reactivate the 4 pipelines to raise it to 8. Then get a massive heatsink and you can overclock it to a 9800XT.

And about you wondering about a 6800 (LE or Extreme Gamers Edition) for £150-200, say no more: here

Also, go to newegg.com to see if you can get better prices.

WATCH OUT FOR SAPPHIRES!

They've been known to practice questionable business by selling 128-bit memory 9800 cards without labeling them so properly. For the uninitiated, 128-bit cards have HALF the memory bandwidth of a standard 256-bit video card, and perform at roughly half capacity.

Examine the box VERY, VERY CLOSELY before you buy, be sure it specifically states "256-bit memory". NOT "256MB of Memory", you want BIT .

Sapphire eventually named these cards "9800 Atlantis", but you never know when they might try to dupe the public again, or when you might be picking up a used one.

Otherwise, yeah you're good to go. A 9800 will blow Freelancer away. I use a 9500 Pro, 1280x960, full detail, AA and AF to full and it never skips or slows down the framerate.

Edited by - [MC Random Task on 11/1/2004 1:08:52 PM

Ah, but nVidia LE 6800's are UNFATHOMABLY bad compared to their
GT/Ultra versions (so bad, because instead of just using locked pipes
nVidia lasers them out completely)(and they only have
normal DDR ram, not GDDR3

with ATI cards, SE = s h i t e edition

200 quid for a 9800 pro is a bit high, and the card wont use that extra
128MB of ram unless you run games at 1280x1024 (which is dumb)

so get one of these:

stay away from the sapphire "ultimate" cards, because they use passive cooling
which sucks for OC'ing (and the All-in-wonder cards(unless you need the features)

thar ye go.

The Extreme Gamers Edition from XFX is a good card