I googled '5800 ultra vs 9800 pro' and found a few comparisons that indicate the 9800 pro is faster.

The old Dustbuster is something many of us we wish that we had but I wouldn't use it daily so yea upgrade to the 9800, the 9800 XT is worth having if you get the chance to get one at a low or fair price.

5800 has better support for early D3D games. It has 8bit palettized texture and table fog support. Old OpenGL games also tended to target NVIDIA cards, sometimes using proprietary NV extensions. Bioware games for example will likely work better. Sometimes you need NV to get all effects on those games.

The 9800 will blow away the 5800 in most DirectX 7 and newer games.

you can simply buy a 5900 or quadro equivalent, those are likely better than the 5800U and easier to find (5900s have 256bit memory, the 5800U had 128bit) and with the same compatibility

but the 9800PRO is clearly a nicer card for the games that were popular around the time both were new,

Any people that has the card can confirm how much is loud the fan noise compared also to modern cards?

Geforce FX was one of Nvidia's worst generations ever. They were an absolute laughing stock at the time. ATI went on to do the same thing with their 2000 series a few generations later.

9700 and 9800 were absolutely fantastic for the time for Windows games. Not as good for DOS games, less memory available for VESA modes, but will still work with some DOS games just fine.

Fan speed will vary between OEMs, but in general try to find cards with larger heatsinks, and then hopefully the fans will be quieter by default, or you could at least quiet them down with software.

IT wasn't very good, the 5800 Ultra would at times loose to a Ti 4600 or RAdeon 9500, its about as useful for gaming as a prostitue in a church chior.

Thanks all for the response, it helped me decide to keep the 9800 Pro I purchased off Ebay, but then again a nice 5900 Ultra or 5950 Ultra would be cooler in my opinion to the 9800 Pro (cool factor, not 'heat production' 🤣.)

About the noise these cards make, well, with my system it really doesn't make a noticeable increase in noise as I also have a Scuzzy 320 Cheetah drive running at 15000 rpm and a Zalman cooler, plus two extra interior fans to keep this beast cool. With the dust buster going the only difference is it makes the noise higher pitched. But, if you put one of these 5800 Ultra's in a quite computer you will definitely be annoyed with the high pitch squeal of the fan during heavy use. With just regular use the fan usually is off, but It is the loudest card I ever used.

Tommaso

Tommaso72 wrote:

Thanks all for the response, it helped me decide to keep the 9800 Pro I purchased off Ebay, but then again a nice 5900 Ultra or 5950 Ultra would be cooler in my opinion to the 9800 Pro (cool factor, not 'heat production' 🤣.)

Honestly, why? Nvidia was playing catchup with their early Direct3D 9 generation hardware. They got back on top with the introduction of SLI and ATI fumbling the launch of the HD 2900 series cards.

the FX5800 along with the whole FX line sucked in DirectX 9 perfomance, and their lower end models even loses to the competition and older nvidia cards like the Geforce 4 MX and the Geforce 4 Ti 4200. FX5800 couldn't outperform the Radeon 9700 Pro fully when it came in the market and the Radeon 9800 Pro even dominated the FX even more

If you are going with an nvidia GPU, i would recomend at least a Geforce 6800 card over the Radeon 9800 Pro, Geforce 6600 GT series can be an option as well if you don't have much money

Carlos S. M. wrote:

the FX5800 along with the whole FX line sucked in DirectX 9 perfomance, and their lower end models even loses to the competition and older nvidia cards like the Geforce 4 MX and the Geforce 4 Ti 4200. FX5800 couldn't outperform the Radeon 9700 Pro fully when it came in the market and the Radeon 9800 Pro even dominated the FX even more

If you are going with an nvidia GPU, i would recomend at least a Geforce 6800 card over the Radeon 9800 Pro, Geforce 6600 GT series can be an option as well if you don't have much money

Well that depends at the time most games where opengl quake3 so the fx was faster and for true dx9 like farcry, fear or hl2 you need gf6 or radeon x to really enjoy the settings

candle_86 wrote:

IT wasn't very good, the 5800 Ultra would at times loose to a Ti 4600 or RAdeon 9500, its about as useful for gaming as a prostitue in a church chior.

hahahahaha 🤣

In all seriousness the 5800 is a pretty bad card. Performance-wise it's slightly faster then a FX 5700 Ultra, but gets quite a bit hotter. If you're looking for a good FX card go for a FX 5900XT or a Quadro FX 3000 wich can be flashed or soft-modded using riva tuner into a FX 5900 Ultra. The quadro FX 3000 is pretty cheap and easy to find. It's pretty quiet, the cooler is really good and it performs well in all period correct games.

As for opengl being faster on nvidia cards, it's a mixed bag actually. It really depends on generation. Have a look here: Re: 99-03 video card performance scaling (Q3, Unreal, DK2, 3DM2k, 3DM2001) - I've benchmarked my whole nvidia and ATi card collection, and results speak for themselves. The best cards to have performance-wise, depending on generation and what games you're looking to play are the Radeon 8500 / GF3 Ti500, the Geforce Ti4600 and the 9800PRO. At the top end the 6800 trades blows with the X800, and while it is marginally faster in quake 3 at 1280x1024, it's usually slower then the latter in most direct3D games and benchmarks, old an new.

I was playing around a couple of weeks ago and started testing the fastest portion of my Nvidia agp cards in 3dmark 2003 (standard settings) and 2 Ati cards.

Arock conroe865pe, core2duo 3ghz, 1gbddr1, windows xp32 I do not remember which driver but it was one that could do geforce4 to geforce7 so there might be a better one for some cards (as always)

I don't have the FX5800 ultra but i do have cards that come very close. Here are some 3dmark '03 scores:

FX5600 ultra 128mb 3533 3dmarks
FX5800 128mb vanilla (stock clocks 400-800) 5012 3dmarks
FX5800 128mb @ 450-900 5620 3dmarks
FX5900 128mb @ 450-900 6696 3dmarks
FX5950 ultra 256mb (stock) 6991 3dmarks
6800 ultra 256mb (stock) 14646 3dmarks
7800GS 256mb (stock) 13487 3dmarks
7800GS 256mb @ 450-1400 15796 3dmarks
7900GS 512mb (stock) 17039 3dmarks
HD3850 (stock) 30137 3dmarks (yep, that's a beast!)
Radeon 9800pro 128mb (stock) 6021 3dmarks

Comparing the overclocked vanilla fx5800 to the radeon 9800 pro it should be pretty close considering your ultra is clocked at 500-1000.

I don't think in games the radeon will ever be slower. The card has a bit more oomph so the harder it gets the better it will be in comparison. Also with AA it is much stronger.
And i only have the 128mb version....

candle_86 wrote:

Well that depends at the time most games where opengl quake3 so the fx was faster and for true dx9 like farcry, fear or hl2 you need gf6 or radeon x to really enjoy the settings

I think HL2 runs pretty well on the 9800PRO, Far Cry is not terrible, Fear I don't know.

for HL2 if you force DX9 it's a disaster on the 5800, but in DX8.1 it should be fine

meljor wrote:

Comparing the overclocked vanilla fx5800 to the radeon 9800 pro it should be pretty close considering your ultra is clocked at 500-1000.

I don't think in games the radeon will ever be slower. The card has a bit more oomph so the harder it gets the better it will be in comparison. Also with AA it is much stronger.
And i only have the 128mb version....

FX 5800 may be better in DirectX 7/8 titles.
9800 Pro will wreck it in ANY DX9 only title.

My 3DMark 03 scores :
9800 XT 256MB (412/770) : 8577 pkt.
5950 256MB (475/950) : 7051 pkt.
5950 256MB OC (501/1002) : 7460 pkt.

meljor wrote:

I was playing around a couple of weeks ago and started testing the fastest portion of my Nvidia agp cards in 3dmark 2003 (standa […]
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I was playing around a couple of weeks ago and started testing the fastest portion of my Nvidia agp cards in 3dmark 2003 (standard settings) and 2 Ati cards.

Arock conroe865pe, core2duo 3ghz, 1gbddr1, windows xp32 I do not remember which driver but it was one that could do geforce4 to geforce7 so there might be a better one for some cards (as always)

I don't have the FX5800 ultra but i do have cards that come very close. Here are some 3dmark '03 scores:

FX5600 ultra 128mb 3533 3dmarks
FX5800 128mb vanilla (stock clocks 400-800) 5012 3dmarks
FX5800 128mb @ 450-900 5620 3dmarks
FX5900 128mb @ 450-900 6696 3dmarks
FX5950 ultra 256mb (stock) 6991 3dmarks
6800 ultra 256mb (stock) 14646 3dmarks
7800GS 256mb (stock) 13487 3dmarks
7800GS 256mb @ 450-1400 15796 3dmarks
7900GS 512mb (stock) 17039 3dmarks
HD3850 (stock) 30137 3dmarks (yep, that's a beast!)
Radeon 9800pro 128mb (stock) 6021 3dmarks

Comparing the overclocked vanilla fx5800 to the radeon 9800 pro it should be pretty close considering your ultra is clocked at 500-1000.

I don't think in games the radeon will ever be slower. The card has a bit more oomph so the harder it gets the better it will be in comparison. Also with AA it is much stronger.
And i only have the 128mb version....

Actually your over clock scores for the vanilla 5800 are very close to what I got. My score was 5740 in 3DMark 2003 with a P4 HT 3060 and only 512 megs PC3200.

I do own a GeForce FX 6800 but I kind of wanted to keep it period correct. I quess it would be close to period correct as the graphics cards in systems are usually a little newer than the processor and motherboard. Do you think my P4 3060 will utilize the full power of the 6800? I also have an AGP version of the 3850, but that would just be totally not period correct and that is important to me. I want to keep it as close to a 2003 system as possible.

Tommaso

I really wouldn't trust 3dmark scores. The driver optimization controversy and all that.

For a good time, try Oblivion on a FX 5900 Ultra. 🤣 9800 Pro runs the game fairly well.

Think of the FX 5800/5900 as a upgraded GF4 Ti. It is great in that role.

swaaye wrote:

I really wouldn't trust 3dmark scores. The driver optimization controversy and all that.

For a good time, try Oblivion on a FX series card. 🤣 9800 runs the game fairly well.

Think of the FX 5800/5900 as a upgraded GF4 Ti. It is great in that role.

"No driver optimisation" you say... OK 😀
Quake III Arena [Demo001] (1024x768 w/TF) :
9800 XT (412/770) : 367,3FPS
5950 Ultra (475/950) : 421,3FPS
5950 Ultra > 9800 XT, by ~15%

Doom 3 v1.0 build-in benchmark (1280x1024) :
9800 XT (412/770) : 37,5 FPS
5950 Ultra (475/950) : 31,2 FPS
9800 XT > 5950 Ultra by 20%

If you want DOS games/Win98 games/non DX9 games, then 5800 Ultra is slightly better for that.
If you want XP games/DX9 games, 9800 Pro is better. MUCH better.

I had a FX5600 Ultra Rev. 2, and it was adequate in said scenarios. It all depends what you want to do with your build.