Hercules ATI Radeon 9800 SE AIW Graphic Card Review

Overall Rating

As fast as a 9600PRO at stock speeds, but wait for it... 50% chance it will be SOFT-MODDABLE!!
All-In-Wonder features are excellent.

At stock speeds the performance is good, mid-range, but nothing to write home about.

I do a lot of reading up on hardware and the like, and when I heard about a new card from ATI, the 256-bit 9800SE, I was more than a little excited...

As anyone who knows about computer hardware will remember, there was a lovely little card called the Radeon 9500. While this card was not as fast at stock speeds as it's faster sibling, the 9500PRO, it had a 256-bit memory bus, and was essentially a Radeon 9700 with 4-pipelines disabled.

"So what?" I hear you say, "and what the heck are pipelines when they're at home?

Well, without going into too much detail let's just say that 4-pilelines provide only half the performance of a card with 8-pipelines, that's all you need to know for now.

To cut a short story even shorter, those 9500 cards could be modified via a simple software program to turn them into a full Radeon 9700 with 8-pipelines enabled, essentially doubling their performance. At half the price of course...

And now, with the new 9800SE, we have exactly the same scenario, except for one big difference... it is based on the legendary 9800PRO, with the same default clock speeds.

I bought the Hercules 9800SE AIW from Ebay with a guarantee that it would successfully modify into a full 9800PRO, so there was no "will it or won't it" syndrome with me, I knew what I was getting. When it arrived I put it into my machine and with a simple driver download, enabled those extra 4-pipelines and BAM, there was my 9800PRO (cue tears of joy).

As the 9800SE has the same default clock speeds as a 9800 PRO (380/340) the software mod is all you need to be up and running, and all I can say is that I was utterly flabbergasted. 18000 on 3DMARK 2001 is nothing to be sniffed at, and neither is 6000 3DMARKS in 3DMARK 2003! When you think that without the mod the scores would be roughly halved then you begin to see what a big deal this is...

The latest up and coming DirectX9 games will NEED a card like this to run smoothly, and all your old ones will look superb with advanced features like Anti-Aliasing (smooths out jagged edges) and Anistropic Filtering (makes textures clearer. This card is the only way to future proof yourself (if there is such a thing in the computing world) for another year or so.

Modification aside, the card is the coveted AIW edition, which esentially means it provides a TV-Tuner with the ability to record TV to your hard-drive, top video-editing capabilities, and a fantastic radio-signal remote that you can use to control your entire PC without even going anywhere near the keyboard!

The remote is amazing, you can use it to open all of your multimedia programs, DVD's, video files, heck you can even use it instead of the mouse using the directional pad! It really is a step closer to providing the full multimedia functions that PC's are made for.

Of course with me ranting and raving about this great soft-modification to turn the card into a full 9800PRO it's now time to be a little more realistic. There's only a 50% chance that one of these cards will turn into a fully-fledged 9800PRO. This is because some of the 256-bt 9800SE cards have their extra 4-pipelines disabled for a reason, they are defective 9800PRO's!

So bear that in mind when buying one, although some online stores DO sell their 9800SE's as 100% guaranteed soft-moddable, and it is worth finding them using a search engine like Google.

I paid £200 for my card, and with the mod turned it into a card worth over £350. For value for money that is a feat I have rarely, if ever, seen equalled.

If this review has made any sense to the more technically aware among you, then I suggest you get one of these wonderful cards straight away before they become rarer than a North-Sea Cod. You won't regret it... now that's 100% guaranteed!