Club 3D, a well-known graphics cards vendor in the European Union, unveiled plans to make cheaper versions of the ATI RADEON 9800-graphics cards with 128-bit bus. The new product will serve performance-mainstream market segment and will be positioned against GeForce FX 5900 XT.

RADEON 9800 Gets 128-bit Bus

The RADEON 9800 LE graphics cards from Club 3D feature fully-fledged RADEON 9800 PRO graphics processor with 8 rendering and 4 geometry pipelines, but are based on PCBs similar to that of the RADEON 9500 PRO – with 128-bit memory bus for 128MB of DDR SDRAM memory.

The original RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB graphics cards were clocked at 385MHz/680MHz for chip/memory and equipped with 128MB of DDR SDRAM with 256-bit bus. Club 3D’s RADEON 9800 LE graphics card operates at 350MHz/700MHz for chip/memory.

Club 3D is not the first company to offer RADEON 9800-class graphics cards with 128-bit bus. Earlier this year Sapphire Technology started to produce RADEON 9800 PRO “128-bit Edition” product, but after facing condemnation from a group of computer enthusiasts renamed its product into “RADEON 9800 128-bit Edition”

The Netherlands-based Club 3D does not make its graphics cards itself, but orders its products from large computer parts manufacturers, such as Tul Corporation. It is not clear who makes RADEON 9800 LE SKU for Club 3D.

RADEON 9800 LE: Positioned Above RADEON 9600 XT

“The RADEON 9800 LE is an equivalent to the GeForce FX 5900 XT. The RADEON 9800 LE is currently $40 cheaper than the RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB and also $7 than the GeForce FX 5900 XT 128MB,” Club 3D said.

Cutting down the memory bus width to 128-bit from 256-bit is likely to seriously reduce performance of the graphics card in applications that rely on rapid memory access as well as in situations when full-scene antialiasing is enabled. The GeForce 5900 XT graphics card offers 256-bit bus and is likely to be faster in cases when “eye-candy” settings are activated.

Club 3D positions its RADEON 9800 LE above the RADEON 9600 XT, but below the RADEON 9800 PRO. The company showcased benchmarks, with no antialiasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, where the RADEON 9800 LE outperformed the GeForce 5900 XT.