VisionTek XTasy 9800 PRO Yo!

RECENTLY I WAS building a few computers for friends, high end gaming machines. We went out to get the final piece of hardware, the video card last, having already decided on a ATI Radeon 9800. If the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra had been available, the choice would have been a lot harder, but until next month, there is no competition, only a choice between which make of 9800 to buy.

Most stores had sold out of the few 9800's they had in, but eventually, we found a place with not one, but two makes of 9800 in stock, the ATI and the VisionTek. Both cards had no bundled software, after all, what do you expect for a mere $400, shareware? The choice between the 2 was made because there was only 1 ATI card and 2 VisionTeks in stock. Based solely on that, we went with the VisionTek, everything else was the same.

Once back at the lab, we took the time to read the box. It was sic (sic). The following is the exact wording of the back of the VisionTek XTASY 9800 PRO 128MB AGP card box. Really.

KICK'N gaming performance
ILLEST BRO ON DA BLOCK. The Xxtasy 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 fo ya, try 4 parallel GEO-Metry engines, kick'n 380 million [T&L] 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.

FREAK'n SICKest Visual Effects
SMOOTHVISION" 2.1 serves up awesome full-scene anti-aliasing. The 9800 Pro be front'n mo' than 18 BILLION (with a 'B') anti-aliasing samples per second for FREAK'N AWSOME performance up to 16 trilinear filtered texture samples per pixel. ATI's programmable SMARTSHADER" 2.1 makes lighting and texture effects look even mo' real.

Ever Have TWO MONITORS at one time?
ATI's HYDRAVISION" supports ol' school CRT monitors, digital flat panels, and TVs while VIDEOSHADER" enables integration of unbelievable digital video stuff, including advanced adaptive de-interlacing for FREAK'N SICK video quality. You just connect to a digital flat panel and dig crisper images and ease eyestrain directly.

Now, I am known for an extremely sarcastic, and some say acerbic sense of humor. I read the box, and quite simply, words fail me. I can't make more fun of it than they do, and that saddens me. If I ever get to opening the box, I will write something about it, but I am not sure I can bring myself to do that. Sic (sic). µ