Introduction

“Kick’n gaming performance

Illest bro on da block. The Xtasy 9800 Pro, reppin ATI’s RADEON 9800 Pro VPU with 128MB DDR memory be kickn the crap outta demanding applications. Bring’n the heat through 8 pipelines, front’n 3 billion pixels per second! If that ain’t ‘nuff for ya, try 4 parallel geo-metry engines kick’n 380 million polygons per second. The 9800 Pro reps 128-bit, 64-bit, and 32-bit floating-point color formats. Hi-res 32-bit, 3D gaming up to 2048x1536 means that when ‘demanding applications’ comes out to play…the 9800 Pro be kick’n the crap outta that motha…be cry’n like a little girl.”

The above paragraph comes straight from the back of VisionTek’s Xtasy 9800 Pro 128MB AGP card, and is perhaps one of the funniest product descriptions I’ve ever read. In fact, I was “cry’n like a little girl” myself. VisionTek, it seems, has adopted a sassy new image that ranges from employing hip street lingo to poking fun at its competitor’s gaffes.

The company as we now know it was acquired at the end of 2002 when Visiontek, LLC ceased to exist. At the time, VisionTek peddled video cards based on NVIDIA’s entire product lineup. Though not known for extraordinary innovation or tremendous value, VisionTek could be counted on for retail products delivering performance inline with NVIDIA’s own reference designs, ahead of the competition and for a fair price. Then, in December of 2002, it was announced that VisionTek would be making a switch from selling GeForce-related products to exclusively marketing ATI’s RADEON family under the Xtasy brand name. A complete lineup of cards has consequently emerged covering every market from the mainstream RADEON 9100 PCI with 64MB to the top-end 9800 Pro with 256MB of memory.

Standard 128MB Fare

Given the complexity of modern day accelerators (consider that the R350 core is comprised of more than 100 million transistors), it isn’t surprising that most add-in board partners have been forced to forsake the once-popular practice of rearranging components for enhanced performance. Instead, many have fallen upon value adding by bundling games, developing custom tweak utilities and even innovating unconventional cooling solutions. VisionTek has taken a more simplistic route with its Xtasy 9800 Pro card, though. But even while its 128MB solution is a replica of ATI’s own reference design, VisionTek has its ways of standing out. After all, in its own words, the 9800 Pro offers the “freak’n sickest visual effects,” yo.